Afleveringen
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"All trams have been melted down and made intomelted-down trams."
In 1952 London's last tram rolled into the depot. Two years later the Goons decided to mark the occasion with a show - better late than never!
At the London Pleasure Transport Board, Redundant Tram Department, Inspector Ned Seagoon receives a phone call informing him that there’s still a tram at large on the Highgate-Kingsway route, and, indeed, the tram map still has one flag pin stuck in it, for a number 33.
Driver Henry Crun refuses to move the tram unless he is afforded a proper last tram ceremony. Seagoon has to negotiate with the corrupt Chairman of the Country & Town Planning Society who agrees to the ceremony, but on the cheap.
Writing was credited to Spike Milligan & Eric Sykes but it seems fairly certain Eric took the lion's share of work that week.
The Last Tram (from Clapham) is a real gem of a Goon Show - well structured, well-paced, with some interesting one-off characters, a nice pay-off and the odd unusual choice of sound effect (such as the otherworldly harp).
Joining Tyler to talk about it is our Welsh-language correspondent from Down Under, Andy Bell!
As well as chatting about the show they discuss Britain's Rudest Man, the length of Alan Ladd, the Telegoons version of the show, Spike in Australia, the history of London's tram network and... Menace Strain Bullshine?
Andy can be found on Twitter/X: @obelloz
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"In ye year of Grace, Mary and Uncle Fred, 1190, WallaceGreenslade, an itinerant announcer, was bounde for Nottingham when ye coach was stoppd inne Sherwood Forest by Robin Hood who did persuade himme to join hysbande as second sackbuttist and part-time dustman. Greenslade did don Lincoln Green and did assiste ye outlaws in their recklesse adventures."
(Radio Times listing for 'Ye Bandit of Sherwood Forest', December 1954)
This week Tyler and guest Chas Early look at the Robin Hood-themed episodes of The Goon Show - Ye Bandit of Sherwood Forest from Series 5 and the special from 1956, Robin Hood, as well as some brief chat about the earlier Christmas Pantomime of Robin Hood from Series 3 which only exists now in script form.
All three shows share some similar dialogues and scenes and each featured special guests: Charlotte Mitchell in Ye Bandit; Dennis Price and Valentine Dyall in the 1956 Robin Hood; and Dick Emery & Carole Carr back in 1952.
There's a lot to unpick so splug yourself on a gillikin spike and tune in!
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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"One small brown pot containing... another small brown pot."
With its memorable cover, photographed by Angus McBean and voted Number 25 in the NME's list of Genuinely Disturbing Record Sleeves, Milligan Preserved was released in late 1961 and featured a series of songs and sketches written and performed by Spike Milligan, with assistance from the likes of Valentine Dyall and Graham Stark.
It was produced by George Martin and as such our guest this week is Jason Kruppa, host of Producing The Beatles podcast. Jason is a big fan of the record and shares a lot of interesting background information.
The LP includes three tunes which were originally featured in Goon Show episodes – interestingly, all were shows from Series 8 and all were broadcast between January & February 1958.
There's also some joyful flights of nonsense such as Another Lot, Word Power and Underneath It All (coming to you live from a nudist colony) and aside from the occasional jarring note (we're looking at YOU, Hit Parade!) the album stands the test of time.
All together now! "Sideways, through the sewers of the Strand..."
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This week's guest is a man more used to asking the questions - the writer and broadcaster Clive Anderson.
A former barrister, Clive turned to comedy and wrote for the likes of Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones before gaining radio & television fame as the host of top improvisational comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway?
He then went on to present a series of chat shows and interviewed some of the biggest stars on the planet, including Spike Milligan, and it's this that we take as our starting point.
Clive talks about his career and many of the shows and people he's been involved with, including WLIIA, Loose Ends, If I Ruled The World, Peter Cook, Tony Slattery, John Sessions, Graeme Garden and Keith Allen.
He also talks about his reaction to the Brass Eye segment claiming he'd been shot dead by Noel Edmonds, remembers seeing Harry Secombe miming on stage and shudders as he recalls *that* interview with the Bee Gees.
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"Excuse me, what is the price of sliced ham per portion?"
And so this enigmatic enquiry opens the first episode of Series 7 of The Goon Show - and to launch the new series of Goon Pod Graeme Lindsay-Foot returns to talk about it!
Broadcast in October 1956 as the situation in Suez was worsening, it was a busy period for the Goons - The Ying Tong Song was riding high in the Hit Parade, Son Of Fred was showing on ITV and Harry had a song in the charts. Producer Pat Dixon was too busy to helm the first couple of episodes of the new series so former producer Peter Eton agreed to briefly return. There were also tensions between co-writer Larry Stephens and the BBC.
As well as discussing this and the show itself, Graeme & Tyler touch on Morecambe & Wise, Bob Dylan, Little & Large, George Harrison, Anita West and others!
Plus: Goons in rehearsal, Bentine vs Dawson and the best Goons theme tune!
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Comedian Rory McGrath is this week's guest and he freely admits that it was the Goons that got him into comedy.
The conversation ranges hither and yon and among other topics we talk about:
The creation of Chelmsford 123
Peter Cook
The genius of Phil Pope
Rory's falling out and eventual reconciliation with Jimmy Mulville
Who Dares Wins and Tony Robinson letting it all hang out
Barry Cryer - aka 'Lord Crap'
They Think It's All Over and Lee Hurst's departure
Three Men In A Boat with a reluctant Griff Rhys Jones
Frankie Howerd being inappropriate
Clive Anderson in a kilt
... plus much more!
(Caution: contains some content which some listeners may find offensive)
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Mark Cousins, Mike Haskins & Sean Gaffney join Tyler for a very special New Years Eve bonus episode!
Earlier this year listeners to Goon Pod were asked to nominate their favourite Peter Sellers films and they didn't disappoint - hundreds of people responded and thus a Top Twenty list emerged.
The chaps count down the list and although most of Sellers' more notable movies appear there are a few surprises! The maddening suspense as our guests await Ghost In The Noonday Sun is palpable!
They also consider those that just failed to make the Top 20, any notable omissions and find out which actors appeared alongside Sellers the most.
Tune in to see if your favourite made the chart!
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As it's Christmas this week we wanted to shake things up and try something a little different... so we decided to talk about a British comedy film which doesn't feature a Goon!
A change is as good as a rest and anyway, the film is a cracker.
In 1986 John Cleese starred in a Michael Frayn-scripted comic farce called Clockwise, in which he plays headmaster Brian Stimpson who needs to get to far-flung Norwich in order to deliver a speech.
Having missed the train, Stimpson enlists the help of one of his pupils to drive him and what follows is a series of hilarious mishaps and misunderstandings with countless laws being broken along the way.
It was the film that inspired Cleese to embark upon A Fish Called Wanda and is one of the greatest - if sometimes overlooked - British comedy films of the eighties.
Chris Diamond of TV Cream returns for a fourth time and finally gets the key to the executive washroom. Having not seen the film since it was released he had a lot to say and props are given to the supporting cast including Stephen Moore, Joan Hickson, Tony Haygarth and Penelope Wilton. As for Stimpson: is he, as Tyler suggests, a 'less Tory' Basil Fawlty? This and many more questions are asked, and some of them are even answered!
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This week our very special guest is John Lloyd, much admir'd comedy producer and writer, whose credits range from The News Quiz and Quote Unquote on the radio, to Not The Nine O'Clock News, Blackadder, Spitting Image and much much more.
At the height of his career he could boast of more BAFTAs than Dame Judi Dench yet so much success took its toll and John freely admits to having suffered a form of mid-life crisis in his forties. Having spent most of the nineties directing highly-acclaimed commercials (such as the Barclaycard series with Rowan Atkinson, later reimagined as Johnny English), John bounced back to mainstream television light entertainment with a show originally conceived as 'The Homework Helper' but which hit our screens in 2003 as QI, hosted by Stephen Fry.
John talks about his career and the few brief occasions he worked with Spike Milligan, plus the time he had a crush on Anna Ford, The Spitting Image Golden Brain hunt, writing Dr Snuggles with Douglas Adams, the problems with Blackadder, Mel Smith on Not the Nine O'Clock News, working with Genesis, an early collaboration with Barry Cryer and more!
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Emmy-winning screenwriter, author, cartoonist and performer Andy Riley is this week's guest - and rather appropriately, given the time of year, we're talking about the classic series six Goon Show episode The International Christmas Pudding.
In a far-ranging conversation Andy and Tyler talk about his history with the show and some of the topics this specific episode raises - such as the old-fashioned notion of British prestige abroad. It was also the show in which Peter Sellers got into very hot water with producer Peter Eton for his behaviour. What triggered it?
They examine the moral, spiritual and physical malaise inherent in most of the Goon Show characters, especially Thynne & Moriarty - at this point in the show's history the first signs of their wretchedness become apparent. Harry Secombe's performance and aptitude for getting a laugh out of fluffs is rightly praised, while Bluebottle comes in for a bit of flak.
Having worked in radio, Andy brings his knowledge of tricks producers would employ to avoid under-running programmes, and we hear from audio engineer and famed Goon Show restorer Ted Kendall on how he managed to piece back together a shortened version of The International Christmas Pudding to its original length.
Oh, and what's the connection between the Goons and hit US political satire Veep? Tune in to find out!
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In 1963 a film was released which, had its original casting remained intact, would probably be barely remembered today - The Pink Panther, directed by Blake Edwards. With Peter Ustinov as a sure-footed and dependable French police inspector on the trail of a notorious jewel thief it would doubtless have made respectable money and garnered warm reviews but would hardly have spawned a slew of spin-offs - while in fact, the follow-up film, A Shot In The Dark, came out a mere three months after The Pink Panther opened in North American theatres.
All this was due to the last-minute casting of Peter Sellers as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, following Ustinov's departure from the project. Between them, Sellers and Edwards totally revised the character of the inspector, making him much more comedic, and what emerged was one of the most beloved and memorable characters in cinema history.
Although the film was a starring vehicle for David Niven as Sir Charles Lytton AKA The Phantom – described by Clouseau as “the surest, cleverest most ingenious criminal in all the world” - and very much in the style of one of those undemanding frothy sixties romps set in glamourous international locations, Sellers went into it a supporting actor and emerged as the standout star.
This week one half of The Sitcom Club and Jaffa Cakes For Proust Gary Rodger joins Tyler to talk about The Pink Panther. Some questions arise:
... How did Clouseau rise to prominence in the French Sûreté?
... What motive did Mme Clouseau have for marrying him in the first place?
... Would the film have benefitted from 100% less Wagner?
... What was an original Pink Panther?
... Who might have had a hand in the famous car chase sequence?
... How did the Princess change ethnicity?
... Who are the audience meant to root for?
... How is this a sex comedy if nobody gets any?
... Just who WERE in those gorilla suits?
... Why was Michael Trubshawe in this film?
... And wasn't Colin Gordon marvellous?
Plus much more!
The Sitcom Club: https://www.podnose.com/the-sitcom-club
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Writer and host of Comfort Blanket podcast Joel Morris joins Tyler this week to talk about Monty Python's Life Of Brian, released in 1979 to howls of impotent rage from those who refused to accept it for what it was but considered by everyone else as just a really funny film.
In some ways a satire on the nature of organised groups, be they politically or religiously motivated, the film centres around the character of Brian (Graham Chapman) in 33AD Judea, who although briefly seized by ideological zeal really just wants a quiet life and a girlfriend.
With every member of the Python team at the top of their game and a memorable cameo by Spike Milligan (who just happened to be holidaying in Tunisia when filming was taking place and agreed to stick on a robe for a morning) it has lost little of its impact despite being in its fifth decade.
As you'd expect from such a percipient observer of comedy (his book Be Funny Or Die: How Comedy Works And Why It Matters is published next year), Joel had a lot to say about Life of Brian, which he once described as 'The holy grail of Python films'.
Be Funny Or Die details: https://unbound.com/books/comedy-basic
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In 1973 Richard Lester's rollicking romp The Three Musketeers was released - subtitled 'The Queen's Diamonds' (The Four Musketeers was filmed at the same time and followed a year after) the movie starred Michael York as D'Artagnan, Oliver Reed as Athos, Frank Finlay as Porthos and Richard Chamberlain as Aramis.
Perhaps most memorable was the pairing of Raquel Welch with Spike Milligan, as Monsieur and Madame Bonacieux - she the close confidante to the Queen of France and he an easily-bought informant to the villainous Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston).
The movie also featured Lester regular Roy Kinnear, the (recently) late Joss Ackland, Faye Dunaway and Christopher Lee.
It's a joyous adaptation of the Dumas novel with a script that pops and fizzes courtesy of Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser. Featuring the stylistic flourishes that always mark out a good Richard Lester film, plus realistic depictions of early 17th Century Paris - the squalor as well as the wealth - edge-of-your-seat sword fights and shot through with bawdy humour, The Three Musketeers was a commercial and critical triumph upon release and it is the topic of this week's edition of Goon Pod. Joining Tyler once again are the hosts of Still Any Good podcast - Christopher Webb and Robert Johnson, live from a shed somewhere in the Antipodes during a noisy Guy Fawkes celebration - appropriate for discussing a film which culminates in a grand fireworks display!
Still Any Good can be found here: https://linktr.ee/stillanygood
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Comedy writer, novelist and playwright Jon Canter joins Tyler this week. He talks about Spike Milligan and some of the people he's had the pleasure of working with over the course of his career, including Miriam Margolyes, Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, Douglas Adams, Lenny Henry, Richard Wilson, Mel Smith & Griff Rhys-Jones and John Lloyd.
They also discuss Margaret Thatcher trying comedy and Prince Charles dancing to Hot Stuff.
It's a packed show folks!
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“Don’t you see? If I’d had a barrister who’d asked questions and made clever speeches then I’d be dead as mutton! Your artfulness paid off! The artful way you handled it, the dumb tactics, it saved me!"
Released in America as Trial & Error, The Dock Brief starred Peter Sellers as Wilfred Morganhall, a long-in-the-tooth barrister whose career has been blighted at every turn by a lack of opportunities.
One day, however, his hopes are answered when he is appointed Defence Counsel to Herbert Fowle, a meek, humourless uxoricide (Richard Attenborough). The two strike up an unusual friendship and find the only way to transcend their mutual hopelessness is through the power of imagination and whimsy, until real life puts an end to their daydreaming and they land back to earth with a resounding thump.
The Dock Brief was written by John Mortimer of Rumpole fame, based on his play, and features a solid score by Ron Grainer, plus David Lodge, fourth billed, as a cackling ex-copper called Frank Bateson whose relationship with Mrs Fowle (Beryl Reid) leaves budgie-fancier Herbert hopeful of an end to his problems. When events don't go as expected Herbert cracks and finds himself in a gaol cell.
Returning guest Roger Stevenson joins Tyler to talk about this rarely-examined Sellers film, made more or less before his international fame skyrocketed. Warning: contains spoilers! Well, it WAS made over sixty years ago!
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This week Tyler is joined by the delightful Katy Secombe, who talks warmly about her dad Harry and reveals what it was like growing up as the daughter of a Goon.
They discuss Harry's career and family life: how he met Katy's mum Myra under rather inauspicious circumstances; his alter-ego Neddie Seagoon; health issues in the 1980s; his relationship with the other Goons and various leading figures of British light entertainment; his general disapproval of boyfriends; female admirers; occasional 'darker' roles and much more!
What comes across is a portrait of a man blessed with an incredible talent but also given of tremendous warmth and generosity of spirit.
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Comedy writer Andrew Marshall is this week's special guest. Andrew, along with former writing partner (and Goon Pod guest) David Renwick, wrote for Spike Milligan in the eighties but is perhaps best known for the television programmes 2.4 Children, Alexei Sayle's Stuff, Whoops Apocalypse (and its film spinoff), Hot Metal and The Burkiss Way for radio. More recently he and Rob Grant have created the Quanderhorn series for Radio 4.
He talks about the relationship he and David developed with Spike and what influence Milligan has had on him. Having sold his first comedy idea at a very early age, Andrew has barely stopped working and we discuss many of the best-known (and some lesser-remembered) projects he's been attached to.
Andrew talks about the sheer joy he experienced making Alexei Sayle's Stuff, the relative freedom he was given to make 2.4 Children and the challenges he, cast and crew faced making Health & Efficiency in the early nineties.
He also acknowledges his own unwitting contribution to the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy universe, his friendships with both Douglas Adams and John Lloyd and speaks at length about his working relationship with David Renwick.
And fans of the film Wilt will be pleased to hear that we talk about that too!
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"Happens to all of us y'know... being born."
Between 1970 and 1975 Peter Sellers made films which mostly fell flat commercially, and some of which didn't even get released, but there was the odd little gem and The Optimists of Nine Elms, directed by Anthony Simmons and based on his novel, is perhaps one of Sellers' most personal films. The task of embodying Sam, a washed-up old music hall entertainer, prompted Sellers to channel both his father and his great hero Dan Leno and look back to his youth, trailing around theatre after theatre with his parents, soaking up the patter and the hoary old routines, the songs and the stagecraft.
Joining Tyler this week is writer and presenter Bob Fischer to talk about the film, released exactly 50 years ago. It centres around Sam, who is reluctantly befriended by two children seeking a distraction from boredom. With their parents both too busy working to give the children much in the way of attention, by contrast Sam has all the time in the world to keep the children occupied and entertained in his own slightly irascible fashion. The three, along with Sam's beloved dog Bella, form such an unusual bond that occasionally you are left wondering who are the children and who is the adult.
Shot through with some great songs and a terrific score by George Martin, plus really great performances by the young actors and Sellers, not to mention the ever reliable and slightly shifty David Daker, The Optimists of Nine Elms is well worth a watch - a sweetly melancholy tip of the hat to an entertainment tradition that had all but passed from memory, as well as showing the last knockings of London's slum culture and the general post-war malaise.
As well as talking about the film Bob & Tyler's chat includes a whole bunch of conversational diversions, taking in the Simon Park Orchestra; Behind the Fridge; Tucker's Luck; Bowie; Boon; Cheggers AKA 'Passion in Pants'; The Ladykillers; The Ballad of Sam Hall; Fulham FC; Coronation Street and much much more!
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This week writer and journalist David Quantick on Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
As someone who spent time with the band while writing for the NME and a former member of the GSPS, David was the ideal person to tackle NAD.
The band took their name from a Goon Show episode, with band member Jonn Penney suggesting it after flicking through the More Goon Show Scripts book.
The Goon Show itself was from the 9th Series in 1959 and contained vague Cold War themes as well as digs at BBC censorship and notably featured the debut of the Radiophonic Workshop-devised sound effect Bloodnok's Stomach.
The conversation veers from the indie music scene of the early nineties to a joke about a talking dog and John Snagge working with the Sex Pistols.
We also touch on 'terrible band names', Spike Milligan's complicated attitude to racial depictions in comedy, about Peter Sellers possibly inspiring Peter Cook with a thinly-veiled Harold Macmillan impression and consider whether the scripting of this particular episode was Spike 'on autopilot'.
You can listen to the Goon Show episode Ned's Atomic Dustbin here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6pGHhb9SLNeBoy20AMTg9L
More about the band here: http://www.nedsatomicdustbin.com/
David is on Twitter @quantick and follow the podcast @goonshowpod
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October 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of The Telegoons, a television spin-off of The Goon Show which ran for two series and 26 episodes between 1963 and 1964.
Each fifteen-minute show was adapted by Maurice Wiltshire from an earlier Goon Show episode, many of which were firm fan favourites such as Napoleon's Piano, The Canal and Lurgi Strikes Britain, with new soundtracks specially recorded by Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and, straight off Dr Strangelove, Peter Sellers.
This week's special guest is Alastair Roxburgh, and few know more about The Telegoons than him - having first viewed them via a grainy 1964 New Zealand television screen they became a lifelong passion and he has done a huge amount to keep the memory alive (see his website: http://roxburgh.org/telegoons/index2.htm)
Alastair talks about the origins of the series, the technical challenges, the people behind the puppets and much more.
The Telegoons have come in for a bit of stick due to many Goon Show fans complaining that trying to realise the characters and situations from a series which fully exploited the limitations - and possibilities - of radio was doomed to failure, sentiments reinforced by the pretty poor copies of the show which did the rounds for years.
However, as Alastair argues, The Telegoons should not be compared to the show whence loins it sprang but judged as a television programme in its own right - and if somehow it could emerge blinking into the sunlight from the bowels of Copyright Hell and warrant a decent HD restoration and DVD/blu ray release it would surely be time for a reappraisal and who knows? A Telegoons Renaissance perhaps!
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