The Goon Show

The Goon Show Audio Books

Goon Again
Goon Show and Guests, The
Goon Show, The - Volume 1 - Moriarty, Where Are You?
Goon Show, The - Volume 2 - Enter Bluebottle
Goon Show, The - Volume 3 - I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas
Goon Show, The - Volume 4 - My Knees Have Fallen Off!
Goon Show, The - Volume 5 - And There's More Where That Came From!
Goon Show, The - Volume 6 - Have a Gorilla
Goon Show, The - Volume 7 - Ying Tong Iddle-i Po!
Goon Show, The - Volume 8 - You Have Deaded Me Again!
Goon Show, The - Volume 9 - What Time Is It, Eccles?
Goon Show, The - Volume 10 - You Can't Get The Wood, You Know!
Goon Show, The - Volume 11 - He's Fallen in the Water!
Goon Show, The - Volume 12 - Shut Up, Eccles!
Goon Show, The - Volume 17 - The Silent Bugler
Goon Show, The - Volume 18 - African Incident
Goon Show, The - Volume 19 - Ned's Atomic Dustbin
Goon Show, The - Volume 20 - The Fear of Wages
Goon Show, The - Volume 21 - The Missing Battleship
Goon Show, The: The Case of the Missing Heir
Goon Show: The Last Goon Show of All, The
Last Goon Show of All, The 

The Goon Show 

The Goon Show was a popular and influential British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC from 1951 to 1960 on the BBC Home Service.

It was heard in the United States as early as the mid-1950s when it was carried on NBC.

The scripts mixed ludicrous plots with surreal humour, puns, catchphrases and an array of silly and bizarre sound effects. Some of the later episodes feature electronic effects devised by the fledgling BBC Radiophonic Workshop, many of which were reused by other shows for decades afterward.

Many elements of the show satirised contemporary life in Britain, parodying aspects of show business, commerce, industry, art, politics, diplomacy, the police, the military, education, class structure, literature and film.

The show was enormously popular in Britain in its heyday; tickets for the recording sessions at the BBC's Aeolian Hall studio in London were constantly over-subscribed and the various character voices and catchphrases from the show quickly became part of the vernacular.
 
The series was devised and written by Spike Milligan with the regular collaboration of other writers including (singly) Larry Stephens, Eric Sykes, Maurice Wiltshire and John Antrobus, under the watchful eye of Jimmy Grafton (KOGVOS - Keeper of the Goons and Voice of Sanity). However, on one occasion during the 9th series in 1958, one of Milligan's bouts of illness meant he was unable to come up with a script, so Stevens and Wiltshire wrote The Seagoon Memoirs in very convincing Milligan-esque style.

Milligan and Harry Secombe became friends while serving in the Royal Artillery during World War II; they met up with Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine back in England after the war and got together in Grafton's pub performing and experimenting with tape recorders.

Milligan first encountered Secombe after Gunner Milligan's artillery unit accidentally allowed a large howitzer to roll off a cliff - under which Secombe was sitting in a small wireless truck : "Suddenly there was a terrible noise as some monstrous object fell from the sky quite close to us. There was considerable confusion, and in the middle of it all the flap of the truck was pushed open and a young, helmeted idiot asked 'Anybody see a gun?' It was Milligan..."

The principal parts of the Goon Show were performed by Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, with Sellers and Milligan performing literally dozens of different characters. The first two seasons also featured Michael Bentine in the role of Professor Osric Pureheart and musical interludes from singing group The Stargazers, but both they and Bentine left during the second series.

The Goon Show paved the way for the surreal and alternative humour that is becoming increasingly popular today. Many of the sequences have been cited as being visionary in the way that they challenged the traditional conventions of comedy

The strain of writing and performing took a heavy toll on Milligan, who was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He suffered a nervous breakdown during the run of the show, requiring hospitalisation,and the intense pressure also contributed to the failure of his marriage.

Milligan was absent from the show for twelve episodes in the third series after an attempt to murder Peter Sellers with a knife. The story was that he left his house and made for the Sellers household, but Milligan's wife managed to telephone Sellers before Milligan arrived at the door.

The Goon Show was sometimes cited as very entertaining without having to resort to sexual innuendo like a lot of modern comedy... but it's all in the mind of the listener:

Reputedly due to his dislike of rules imposed by the establishment, Milligan spent a lot of time working allusions to rude and/or sexual barrack room jokes into his scripts. These were instantly recognised by his peers and went completely over the heads of the BBC and other innocent listeners.

For instance "The Good Ship Venus" (rhymes with P..., - interested readers should look for a bawdy poem by that name) was mentioned either directly by name or allusion (eg HMS Venus) in at least four shows (Stolen Postman, Call of the West, Giant Bombardon, Treasure in the Tower).

Often innocent but quirky things are no such thing at all eg, in The Spy, or Who is Pink Oboe?, Seagoon has to remember a list of secret agents: "Black Rabbit, the Blue Pelican and the Yellow Alligator, Octaroon Monkey, the Pink Oboe, and the Purple Mosquito, Vermillion Sock, the Vermillion Ponk, the Chocolate Speedway and the White Bint" - the Pink, Brown and White bits allude to a male organ, and two possible destinations.

In one episode, the boys had Wallace Greenslade issue good wishes to their friend Hugh Jampton ("huge hampton" - Hampton Wick) at the beginning of the show. Those without knowledge of rhyming slang may find this incomprehensible, as the BBC managers presumably did.

From time to time the two Hindu characters Lalkaka (Sellers) and Banerjee (Milligan, although occasionally vice versa) would appear, and converse in broken English salted with bits of Hindi, including sexual references which the producers, of course, did not catch. However when interviewed later by Michael Parkinson, Sellers told how old ladies who had been to India would send in letters complaining about these conversations.

Peter Sellers was the first Goon to be "deaded", as his character Bluebottle would put it, at the young age of 54 in 1980. Michael Bentine died in 1996. Harry Secombe died in 2001, much to Milligan's relief, as he didn't want Secombe to sing at his, Milligan's, funeral (though he did anyway, through a recording); and Milligan himself in 2002.

The Legend and recordings of the Goon Show live on and their "close to the bone" humour can now be heard in its original form on audio books available from the audio book store.

The Goon Show information supplied courtesy of wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License