Nick Hancock

Last updated 29th, September, 2008

Comedian, TV presenter and actor Nick Hancock is one of Stoke-on-Trent’s most famous faces – and one of Stoke City Football Club’s biggest fans.
He made a return to primetime television in January 2008, presenting ITV1 gameshow Duel.
But Hancock is probably best known as the host of BBC1 sports quiz They Think It’s All Over, which he fronted for 10 years from 1995, alongside cricketer David Gower and footballer Gary Lineker. His other big TV hit was the BBC’s Room 101, which he presented between 1994 and 1999.
Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1962, Nick Hancock was educated at Shrewsbury School and landed a place at Cambridge University. In 1984, he became president of the University Footlights, whose alumni include John Cleese, Peter Cook, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
After graduating, Hancock became a PE teacher and took up stand-up as a hobby. His comedy idol is Peter Cook, and he got the chance to meet him when Cook appeared on Room 101.
Hancock has countless other TV credits to his name, including appearances in Mr Bean and the sitcom Holding The Baby. In 2002 it was announced that keen angler Hancock would host Fish On Five on BBC Radio Five Live, and he is also a major supporter of the BBC’s Comic Relief and Sport Relief.
His professional credits aside, Nick Hancock is also known as one of Stoke City’s keenest supporters.
In 1998, as demolition crews moved in on the club’s much-loved Victoria Ground in Stoke, some areas of the stadium were carefully taken apart because fans like Hancock wanted mementoes. The Sentinel reported that he planned to save one of the metal posts from the Boothen End to put in his back garden.
When Stoke City stars past and present gathered for the funeral of club secretary Mike Potts that same year, Hancock was among the mourners. And he joined thousands who lined the streets of the Potteries to say farewell to Sir Stanley Matthews following his death in 2000.
In 2001, Nick Hancock snapped up Gordon Banks’s blue World Cup 1970 international cap for £8,225 at auction. He said he wanted to bring the cap back to Stoke-on-Trent and that he would possibly be displaying it at the Britannia Stadium. Mr Banks was a Stoke City player when he was awarded the 1970 cap in Mexico, and he played in the side which beat West Germany 4-2 at Wembley to claim the 1966 World Cup trophy.
That same year, Hancock paid £20,000 at auction for the gold FA cup winner’s medal awarded to Sir Stanley Matthews in 1953. The medal was among an array of Matthews memorabilia on sale at Sotheby’s in London.

Die-hard Stoke City fan

Over the years, Nick Hancock has more than proved his credentials as a die-hard Stoke City follower. He’s said to rarely miss a home game at the Britannia Stadium, and in 2003 provided funds to help with the purchase of Ade Akinbiyi from Crystal Palace.
In 2005, Hancock told The Sentinel: “My earliest memory is of the 1969/70 season, then the next two years were really big ones for Stoke. I just presumed the rest of my life would be FA Cup semi-finals, League Cup finals and 2-1 home victories.
“My grandfather would always lose the car after parking up for a home game. It got to the stage where we would head straight to the police station after a match and they’d be waiting there to tell us where we’d parked.”
When he lived in London, he even played for Stoke City. Well, kind of... He was a member of a football team made up of Stoke fans residing in the capital, and for two or three seasons straddling the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s, their home ground was at Wormwood Scrubs.
“It was great fun playing,” Hancock recalled in 2005. “The whole weekend felt like a Stoke weekend. My memory is of going to somewhere like Grimsby on the Saturday to watch Stoke, drinking all the way up and down, then getting up and having to play on Sunday morning.”
Football aside, he’s proud of his Stoke-on-Trent roots and is a keen ambassador for North Staffordshire. When the city was branded the worst place to live in England and Wales in a 2001 survey, Hancock sported a Sentinel Proud Of The Potteries T-shirt after recording an episode of They Think It’s All Over.
In 1998, he joined the battle to preserve The Wheatsheaf pub in Stoke as a live music venue amid a storm of protest at plans to turn it into a Wetherspoon’s.
And in 2004, Hancock highlighted the jobs of pottery workers during the early 20th century in a new BBC Radio 4 series called What Did Your Ancestors Do For A Living?
“The programme was something I was asked to do and one of the reasons I wanted to do it was because one of the episodes was about the Potteries,” he said at the time. “A lot of my family worked in the industry and my great-aunt worked at Spode.”
Hancock has been a committed supporter of local charitable causes over the years, including the Douglas Macmillan Hospice in Blurton, the Donna Louise Trust at Trentham, and the North Staffordshire Special Adventure Playground in Newcastle.
He is also a patron of the Building Futures Appeal at the New Vic Theatre in Basford.
Hancock is married to Iranian-born Shari and they wed in 1997 at St Mary and All Saints Church at Whitmore. The couple live at Woore and have two children.