Sloan was born in Hertfordshire, England, the son of a Scottish Free Church Minister, and educated at Dulwich College.
He added that nothing short of handing over entire "production control" to Hancock and paying him an unprecedented £150,000 – the equivalent of £2m today – for a further 13 episodes of his TV sitcom would be enough to persuade him to stay with the BBC.
[5] In the autumn of 1961 he approached Hancock's writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with the idea of a series called Comedy Playhouse.
[7] The fourth episode of the series, broadcast on 5 January 1962, was entitled The Offer and starred Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell as Harold and Albert Steptoe.
In his post as Head of Light Entertainment, Sloan provided viewers with a tougher and socially more critical view of comedy than was available before.
The polite, middle-class humour which had previously limited the BBC's vision of what television amusement should offer, was supplemented with the social realism of comedies such as Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part.
In a lecture given in December 1969, he said "If I drop dead tomorrow, I would not mind being remembered for having some responsibility at least for The Black and White Minstrel Show, Hancock, Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, Harry Worth, Not in Front of the Children, Dad's Army, Val Doonican and Rolf Harris shows, and Dixon of Dock Green".
Harry Secombe read the lesson and Huw Wheldon (managing director of BBC Television) gave the address.