Ted Kavanagh

Ted Kavanagh (1 March 1892 – 17 September 1958) 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 (ITMA), a radio comedy series which ran for a decade from 1939 and was immensely successful. It was intentionally 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 went on to co-write 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 (Entertainments) Ltd. The company was dissolved in 1963.

He died in London in 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 (1966).

Filmography

• It's That Man Again (1943) - screenplay with Howard Irving Young
• Time Flies (1944) - screenplay with Howard Irving Young and JOC Orton
• Old Mother Riley Headmistress (1950) - screenplay with John Harlow, from an original story by Jackie Marks and Con West

Publications

• Tommy Handley in Holidayland (London, 1946)
• Tommy Handley (London, 1949)
• Colonel Chinstrap (Evans Bros, 1952)