 Tony Hancock (qv) was notoriously undisciplined about learning his  lines and needed all the available rehearsal time to get them down.  During preparation for "The Blood Donor" he was involved in a car  accident and missed several days rehearsal, but it was decided that  the performance could go ahead if his lines were written out for him  on "idiot boards" so that he could read them. His delivery remains  as good as ever (reading the lines from a script was nothing new to  him 