Alan Stranks
(1903-1959), Scriptwriter, lyricist and composerSitter in 1 portrait
by John Gay
vintage bromide print, 1949
NPG x126580
Comments back to top
We are currently unable to accept new comments, but any past comments are available to read below.
If you need information from us, please use our Archive enquiry service . Please note that we cannot provide valuations. You can buy a print or greeting card of most illustrated portraits. Select the portrait of interest to you, then look out for a Buy a Print button. Prices start at around £6 for unframed prints, £16 for framed prints. If you wish to license an image, select the portrait of interest to you, then look out for a Use this image button, or contact our Rights and Images service. We digitise over 8,000 portraits a year and we cannot guarantee being able to digitise images that are not already scheduled.
Geoff Fellows
26 March 2019, 20:55
Alan Stranks was born in Melbourne in 1903. He left school when he was fourteen or fifteen, started out as a milkman, but managed to get a job as a cub reporter, and started writing for commercial radio. He married a woman also involved in radio and they decided to go to the U.K. the home country. He became a BBC script writer. He wrote the very popular radio program "On the beat with PC 49" that ran for more than one hundred episodes in the late 1949s and early 1950s. He also wrote the lyrics to the U.K. 1957 entry to Eurovision Song Contest.
Alan Stranks's PC 49 changed the view of the bumbling policeman started by Gilbert and Sullivan's chorus of policemen in the Pirates of Penzance into clever cop we see in many police programs today.