Henry Edward Kavanagh (7 March 1892 – 17 September 1958) was a British radio scriptwriter and producer.[1]
Ted Kavanagh was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1892.[2] He initially studied medicine in Edinburgh before pursuing a career as a writer. He is best remembered as the writer of It's That Man Again (ITMA), a radio comedy series which ran for a decade from 1939 and was immensely successful. ITMA was devised by Kavanagh, producer Francis Worsley and the Liverpudian comedian Tommy Handley as Handley's specific vehicle; Kavanagh had been writing for him since 1924, and co-wrote two feature films for Handley, It's That Man Again (1943) and science fiction/ comedy Time Flies (1944).
Kavanagh's biography of Handley was published in 1949, the year of the comedian's death and the end of their radio show. A prolific writer, ITMA and his work for Handley constituted only a small proportion of his total oeuvre.
In 1948, Kavanagh set up an agency for writers, Ted Kavanagh Associated (Entertainments) Ltd. The company was dissolved in 1963.[3]
He is credited as bringing solo comedy writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden together, resulting in a successful 30-year partnership that produced Take It From Here and other series.[4] Both writers worked for his agency.[5]
Kavanagh was invited to appear as a guest on Desert Island Discs in 1951, where he selected discs from Tommy Handley, Florence Foster Jenkins and Tod Slaughter.[6]
Ted Kavanagh married Agnes O'Keefe at St Alphonsus' Chapel, Glasgow on the 31 March 1919. He died in London on the 17 September 1958 at the age of 66.[7] His son was the poet P. J. Kavanagh who described childhood among the ITMA characters in his autobiographical The Perfect Stranger (1966).
Selected radio series.
Selected TV work.
