[1] Happy Hammond was born in the Sydney suburb of Summer Hill,[2] the youngest of three children.
He was famous for his bright personality and wearing a tartan suit and hat, sometimes referred to as his "test pattern" outfit, with colors that clashed in real life but worked well on black-and-white TV.
[4] At 3UZ, he hosted The Happy Show, a children's program, as well as partnering Graham Kennedy, following the death of Nicky Whitta in September 1956.
[7][8][9] Hammond switched to HSV-7 in 1960, where The Happy Show, no longer sponsored by Tarax, featured Princess Panda (Panda Lisner), Lovely Anne (Anne Watt), Parer the Magician (Tommy Parer), Funny Face (Vic Gordon), Big John (John D'Arcy), Robbie Rob (Bob Horsfall), Cousin Roy (Roy Lyons) and Sylvester the Talking Sock (Ian Wiliams).
A very small number of kinescopes of The Happy Show are held by the National Film and Sound Archive,[11][12][13][14] despite the heavy Wiping of that era.