Ted Kavanagh


Ted Kavanagh was a British radio scriptwriter and producer.
Henry Edward Kavanagh was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1892. 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, 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 and science fiction/ comedy Time Flies.
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 Ltd. The company was dissolved in 1963.
He's 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. Both writers worked for his agency.
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.
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. His son was the poet P. J. Kavanagh who described childhood among the ITMA characters in his autobiographical The Perfect Stranger.

Radio

Selected radio series.
Selected TV work.