[1] Wilmut's books include The Goon Show Companion, Tony Hancock: Artiste, From Fringe to Flying Circus (a history of Oxbridge comedy in the sixties and seventies) and Didn't You Kill My Mother-in-law (a history of the 1980s alternative comedy movement in the UK).
His parents moved there when they were married in 1940 and his father, who had been teaching in Caterham, Surrey, got a post at King Edward VI School in Stratford.
While writing the accompanying text he was "approached by the late Jimmy Grafton, who had been involved with the Goons in their early days, and had helped to get the show on the air.
Whilst considering a book on Monty Python's Flying Circus, Roger Hancock suggested that he cover "the entire generation of comedy which arose from Oxford and Cambridge Universities after 1961".
He says of his time writing comedy books, "it was, on the whole, fun to do and well worth doing – particularly when you consider that all I was trying to do in the first place was type out a list of just one radio show.