First transmitted on 23 June 1961, the show was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and was produced by Duncan Wood.
Supporting Hancock were Patrick Cargill, Hugh Lloyd, Frank Thornton, James Ottaway and June Whitfield.
After managing to offend two other waiting donors, Hancock amuses himself by reading the waiting room's wall posters out loud, finally singing "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases" to the tune of the Deutschlandlied before being shown in to see Dr MacTaggart (Cargill), greeting him in a broad Scottish accent and taken aback when the doctor responds in an educated English accent – saying "We're not all Rob Roys."
While returning from recording The Bowmans a week earlier, Hancock was involved in a car accident, and rather than cancel the studio booking it was decided to place teleprompters around the set in order to save the comedian the problems of learning his lines after a delay in rehearsals.
Others, though, see no real difference between this and other classic Hancock performances, and lines from the episode have become a part of British comic folklore ("A pint?
"The Blood Donor" starred Paul Merton, with Suzy Aitchison as the nurse, the role played by her mother 48 years earlier.