Hello and welcome to Goon Pod. This is the show that examines
classic comedy through the prism of Sellers, Milligan, Secum and
so on and such like. Now last week we were talking
about the Mighty Wurlitzer and sticking with piano type things.
Well, what is a Wurlitzer? All good if not a piano with
pretensions. This week I'm joined by
composer, performer and broadcaster Neil Brand who has
become the go to guy for piano accompaniment to silent films
and is something of an expert on the on the genre.
If you want to call silent films a genre in in in and of
themselves, silent cinema or early cinema shall we say.
Neil's a big fan of the Goons and he was happy to join me to
talk about the show with particular focus on the music.
So Ray Allington Mix Galdre, Angela Morley, George Chisholm
and and so on. And Neil proved very
knowledgeable about the show and also shared some insights into
his career. Plus, there's a lovely story
about him accidentally meeting someone who listens to this show
should be quite familiar with. Yes, stick around for that.
And after our conversation right at the end of this show, I'll be
sharing some list of feedback and comments.
Anyway, here's Neil. Radio comedy has been central to
me most of my life. I was listening to The Goons
when I was 7 and I love all of that kind of retro stuff, but
The Goons particularly fascinated me and I was really
interested. I am really interested in Max
Geldray and Ray Ellington too, and the way that music informs
so much of the shows. And looking into it a bit for
this podcast too. I've been finding out
fascinating things that I really didn't know, like that Angela
Morley ended up doing a whole load of arrangement stuff for
John Williams. I think that Star Wars.
Brilliant. Yeah, Schindler's List.
And yeah, you know, I mean, like, wow.
One of the first ATV idents as well.
I I really think she is up there with the greatest of The MGM
arrangers because particularly working on a kind of week by
week basis, I think that's extraordinary that what she was
able to produce for the band breaks, particularly with Max
Gildray, are full of that kind of playfulness that they managed
to get into films like Singing in the Rain and American in
Paris, where the accompaniment is playing Footsie with the main
instrument. You hear this with Max Gildray's
stuff a lot that he's playing, obviously, you know, a fairly
kind of rococo version of the melody.
He's doing lots of interesting twiddles and stuff like that.
But the music behind the way that Angela Morley has written
the arrangement is that it's moving in and out of different
chords. It's going all over the place.
It's sometimes it's there and then it suddenly comes in out of
nowhere. I love it.
I just think it's such an incredible ability there.
And also that the actual composed music for the Goon
shows, even Spike said the music was really, really good.
You know, Spike couldn't praise an awful lot, but he didn't
really praise that and really got Angela, I think.
Yeah, he he said a lot of it was like epic Hollywood film music.
A. Lot of it.
Totally, totally. The other thing about Spike, of
course, was that, you know, when, when he was on form or in
the, in the right place, shall we say, that he would deliver
scripts ahead of time, give Angela a week's warning or at
least the week's preparation to, to prepare arrangements and
whatnot. But sometimes it will be.
The script would be coming in on the day of recording and it
would have to be like rapid fire arrangements put together in
musical cues, you know? Yeah, totally.
And one assumes these were cues that she was re reusing and they
were cues that already existed. But I remember him going into
some detail about he wanted a really rubbish national anthem
for some country or other. And that what she produced was
this fantastic, sort of gorgeous piece of work which he then set
about dismantling as much as possible.
So that what we ended up with was a distressed version of it
where the tune was handed from one instrument to the next
almost on a change of a bar. And you know, the the the result
of that is just hilarious. That that's such a memorable
national anthem. And it's, it's it's for the
country of Yakubaku, actually. There you go.
And that almost, OK, the all the effort and and blood and sweat
and tears that went into preparing that anthem.
It almost didn't get broadcast because.
Yeah. Because it was for a goon shake
called the The Sleeping Prince. Oh, from the 7th series and it
was due to go out sometime in 1956, but the broadcast
coincided or the the expected broadcast coincided with the
Hungarian uprising? Oh my, good.
God and the BBC in the wisdom thought, well, it's a bit
because of the, the content of the which is the, the, the
show's basically about an uprising, political uprising in
South America, though. But anyway, the BBC in their
wisdom, they decided to shelve the show.
So it was replaced with a repeat of the Greenslade story, I
think. But it did, it did eventually go
out, I think maybe six months later or something like that.
Wow. I love you.
If I remember rightly, the gag at the end of it is what a
beautiful tune. Has anybody tried to set it to
music? And I think grip pipe says
nobody's dead. Nobody's had the courage.
That was it.
So spot on. You can hear the musicians keep
killing themselves laughing through so much of the shows as
well. Oh yeah.
It's, it's, it's a real pleasure because you know when a band's
having a good time, you're home safe, you know, because bands
can turn on a sixpence if they're in a situation they
don't like much. Well, if you listen to the play
outs of the Goon show, you'd have Bottas Greenstate reading
the credits and then there'd be sort of play out music which was
basically useful for. So the BBC could fade that out
or keep it playing depending on if they needed the time or not,
you know. But very often you could hear
the band, what's the word, cheering or laughing or jeering
or or making encouraging noises, and you think what's going on on
the stage, you know, Spike doing something is Peter on the bongos
or whatever, you know? Yeah, I think it's obviously
there's a lot of solo stuff goes on during that as well.
I can and you can start to hear individual members being
referred to in the program. There's a point where Spike says
something about Pogson, Poggy, Pogson, Poggy Pogson, who I
think was a sax player. Yeah.
And he was always the one who had to kind of lead with, you
know, a sort of an up tempo March of blood, not was marching
off somewhere or something like that, some of that sort of
thing. And George Chisholm.
I actually ended up seeing George Chisholm in a a, a sort
of, not exactly a big band, but in a band line up with Humphrey
Littleton. Oh, wow, He was still farting
around. Very, very funny.
And he'd do it, you know, he'd do a huge trombone solo and then
work up to just the final, a couple of notes.
And then he'd the slide would come away from the trombone
altogether that he'd be standing holding the two bits.
And I just think, I remember thinking, oh, I bet he did that
on the Goon show. You know, it's a great visual
gag that his solo is so huge he's actually broken his
trombone. He had a few speaking roles in
the actual Goon Show. Indeed, usually as a Scotsman
with the most enormous accent. See, think with him, yeah, he
was always playing a Scotsman because I think he only had the
one voice he could do, but yeah. Absolutely.
But the the they didn't what they would do generally with
Scottish characters who were generally voiced by Peter.
Yeah, I don't know if you remember this.
Whenever the Peter was doing a Scotsman, almost always there'd
be the sound of bagpipes accompanying his his dial.
Varying speeds, Yeah, absolutely.
Oh. Doctor.
You're lucky to be alive man. Why?
That's right. That kill you 3 times.
You're just saying that to cheer me up.
It's only what happened to bloodlock.
An echo and absolutely nothing. And Poggy Pogson, he kind of had
a role, an actual role in a goon show in the sense that he he
played a sound effect in a in a show called for OG, which
basically Poggy was was playing the part of the fog in an
episode, if that, if that makes sense.
But you, you, I mean you must have been far too young to have
heard the goons really. Original transmission.
I was I did hear the last goon show of all as it went out all.
Right. And I don't know how I managed
to hear the goons, unless they were being repeated a lot on the
radio, which they might have been in the late 60s, early 70s.
That's when I would have heard what I did hear of the Goons and
I think there might have been a couple of records that ended up
on our record player. I might have heard them on there
as well. Well, there's a there's a series
that there was a series of repeats in 75 which were
promoted quite heavily because it hadn't.
There wasn't really that many repeats of the gun show in the
60s at all. No, and I don't know what it I
don't know how it was. I was so keen to hear the last
Gun show of all except I, I must have come across it somewhere.
And the other thing was around that sort of time, maybe mid to
late 70s, they then started publishing the Goong Sheung Show
scripts and I snapped them all up.
I remember I got all of those books when they came out and I,
I was just fascinated by it. I I think Milligan was my kind
of spirit animal through my school time and that may it
certainly started with the goons, but the real big thing at
the time, which was sort of huge when I was at grammar school 71
to 76 kind of thing was the Army memoirs.
Oh yeah. I was reading those and really
sort of, you know, I, I was, I just wanted to anything, that
anything he'd done, anything that that Meningen had done, I
wanted to hear it, wanted to see it, wanted to be involved.
And so somewhere along the line, the goon started all that off.
And then it just turned into, you know, a kind of a massive
fire really, which informed all of my youth.
It was just lovely to escape into it.
Aside from anything else, I just.
Really, really enjoyed it. The people have said about the
Goon Show that it's like jazz comedy.
Yeah. And.
And all three, if you if you exclude benting because he
wasn't, he was there at the beginning, but, you know.
Yeah, Yeah. But all three of them were
musical in their own way. Of the Spike obviously played
the trumpet. Yeah.
And the guitar. Yeah.
Salas had been a drummer.
Yep. And.
He was absolutely the world's worst pianist as.
Well, oh, he was. Lest we forget.
And, and Seek, of course, had had the pipes, if you know what
I mean. Yeah, I I guess the fact that
they were musical in, in and of themselves helped them to
identify with and and relate to the band and, and to Ray
Ellington and. Absolutely.
And I, I remember, I mean Secombe saying that the lovely
thing about the music that was played was all toe tapping
stuff. So it was very kind of exciting.
You sort of between the shut, between the sort of the script
moments, it was still all that energy was still being kind of
kept up in the air by the the music being so sort of foot
tapping and enjoyable and all classics as well, all stuff that
people knew. And I can see that absolutely.
It makes total sense. And I used to do this.
I don't know. You wouldn't have, I'm sure, but
I was, I was about 14 in 1988 and by by pure happenstance, I
heard it a goon show being played on the radio and was
hooked. Just, it's never happened to me
again with just exposure to one single television program or
radio program or whatever. Just had me absolutely hooked
and I just wanted to immerse myself on that world.
OK, and but so I, so I used to luckily because I grew up in in
New Zealand, luckily they played goon shows every week back back
then and and I every week would would tape the goons.
But heresy, Neil, I would generally back in those days, I
would Fast forward through Max and Ray's numbers.
Well, a lot of people said that. I think it's because I think
bottom line, Max and Ray weren't mad enough for your average Goon
fan. They would be playing music
pretty much straight and it was great music and it was lovely
stuff. But it's the one bit of the
shows that has curiously aged worse than the scripts, simply
because people don't listen to that kind of music much anymore.
I think it's a real shame. I mean, Max Gildray was an
absolute bloody artist. My God, what he could do with
the harmonica and the stuff he could get out of it.
The speed of it, the way that he could make it fly above an
orchestra, you know, it was just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,
wonderful stuff. None.
And I think ultimately the whole show would have failed without
those pieces because the play fact is, and I bet if Milligan
had been left to try and find something musical to go in
there, it would all have turned into AQ5 or Q6 or Q7 where there
wouldn't have been a chance for a kind of breather.
And that's what those pieces do. And I think 2 Breathers is good
as well. It means they have to do a three
act structure for the script because they know there's going
to be two breaks. Makes things a lot easier to
kind of just fill in that time. I mean, I know it nearly killed
Milligan doing these scripts, but it was it, you know, for 1/2
hour comedy show, he was only really having to produce about
15 minutes of script at the end of the day because of these
extras that they were throwing in.
And I think that does make a big difference that he's he's
basically going, OK, here's the start of the story.
Here's the middle of the story, here's the end of the story.
And usually the end of the story is, is up there alongside his
later sort of Q version of what do we do now?
What do we do now? What do we do now?
Well, he just runs out of ideas. Another another trick he had was
to usually with the characters of Minnie and Henry, he'd have
an endless flights of stairs being descended or ascended.
Yeah. So footsteps for about 90
seconds. And then Min saying, But we live
in a bungalow. Yeah, or on one occasion, she
said to Henry. A scriptwriter named Spike
Milligan paid me £5 to take my time take my time walking down
these stairs. That's.
Fantastic. John Lennon, right?
So John Lennon was a huge Goons fan.
Well, they all were in that band, but John, John
particularly so. I think he's gone on record it,
but you know how contrary and contradictory he could be.
I mean, he wrote a review for the New York, was it The New
Yorker or New York Times? He wrote a book review of the
first Goon show scripts. Didn't know that, good old.
But he's he's gone on record, I think, saying that he he kind of
drifted away from the Goon show around 56, which kind of makes
sense, I suppose, if he was focusing on the music around,
you know, after that. But but he if if that's the
case, if he was an avid list that prior to that up to that
point, he would have probably heard shake, rattle and roll for
the first time. On.
The Goon Show. Ray Ellington did it.
I want to say there'll be people shouting at this because they
know better than me, but I want to say within weeks of it being
released, maybe in the States, I'm not sure.
I don't even have been officially released in the in
the UK by the time Ray did it. I'm not sure.
That's I'm saying that's all too possible.
What I'm sort of gleaning from Ray Ellington, you listen to him
through the whole kind of period, the nine years or So.
What you hear is him, for a start, bringing an electric
guitarist. Which was pretty unusual for a
jazz band at the time. There was a slight sense with
jazz that, you know, if you didn't have a proper nylon
guitar doing jazz riffs, you weren't a proper jazz band.
Whereas he basically goes right, we're electric.
And then after that he's blurring the line between jazz
and rock'n'roll time and time and time again.
And there's several of his numbers which are absolutely
rock'n'roll. Couple of them.
He's basically either written himself or was commissioned for
for his band, so to hear something like Shake, Rattle and
Roll come along, he would want to be part of that.
He'd want to see that as his possible USP to move into a
whole new area. I like this. 3rd program stuff
is nice. I'm like a one eyed cat peeping
in a seafood store. I'm like a one eyed cat beeping
in the seafood store. Yes, I can look at you tell you
don't love me anymore. I believe you're doing me wrong
and I know yes, I. Believe you're doing me wrong
and. I know well, the more I work and
the faster my money goes. And of course, the other
brilliant link with with all of this to do with John Lennon and
to do with the goons is George Martin, because George Martin
was the producer of the Peter Sellers albums.
And I'm told that Emily, what it was was that The Beatles were
offered a series of names of producers at EMI when they first
signed with them. And they were going through the
list and John Lennon went, oh, George Martin.
He did Peter Sellers, and that's why they ended up with George
Martin. So there was without doubt there
was a real link there between the fact that Lennon did like
the goose but particularly like Peter Sellers and the Peter
Sellers albums, and the fact that George Martin ended up as
their producer. Yeah, well, I said I spoke to
Mike McCartney a few years ago. He and his brother don't know
who his brother was. He and his brother had two
copies or a copy each of songs for Swinging Sellers when they
were living in Falkland Rd. And I'm sure he said they would
read everything they could on the back of the album, album
covers that they owned. And he said this name, George
Martin, was very clearly credited.
It's funny, though. It's because, yeah, you've got
this, this lightning in a bottle or whatever you want to call it,
the the amazing luck that they had to get George Martin as a
producer. And he, as I'm sure you know, he
was rather reluctant at first, too, to be deployed to work with
The Beatles, but it was kind of almost like punishment for him.
But such luck. And then and then, of course,
the other thing is that, well, two years later, they're they're
going to make their first feature film and they get
Richard Lester, who of course had worked with the goons on
running, jumping and standing still film.
And earlier, the son of Fred. The Fred shows on TV.
I'm sure that was a link that they were aware of.
I know it was a link that Lester was aware of 'cause they
interviewed him for my TV series and he said I knew that they had
this wonderfully surreal humour that was exactly the same thing
that I discovered with with with Spike and Pete and Down Among
the Z Men and stuff like that. So it does, it makes total sense
that that's how they ended up sort of linked together.
And I think the goon humour, and it's interesting because this is
where it sort of becomes Marmite in a way.
The goon humour invited a kind of freewheeling, like you say,
jazz comedy approach. And the thing with George Martin
that links him to both the Sellers albums and The Beatles
is this willingness or ability to basically sink himself into
whatever somebody else thought they wanted and then find a way
of producing that. So if somebody if, you know,
obviously in the case of Sellers, if he says I want to
travelogue that makes Balham sound like the most gorgeous
place in the world, then we'll find a way to do that.
And on the. And, you know, in comes.
Yeah, the whole thing is, is makes is makes total sense.
Same thing with The Beatles. When The Beatles say, OK, we
want a sound here that's a little bit like an orchestra,
but it's an orchestra that disappears up in the air.
So he will then find a way to make that happen.
And I think that's in a way, the unsung greatness of of, of
George, of George Martin is that he had that ability to make
concrete stuff that was only in people's heads, but in the heads
of people who had an incredibly surreal imagination and knew
that this thing could exist and they just needed someone who
could make it exist. And that's what he did, both
with Sellers and with The Beatles.
Well, he also, I don't know if you know, he produced an LP for
Spike Milligan in 62, which really tested his mettle in term
of in terms of what Spike was asking for really.
He he did you know that George Martin was Spike's best man as
well? Doesn't surprise me, right?
Spike got married for the second time in 19 in end of April 1962.
George Martin was his best man. The wedding was up in Leeds and
George had driven up to Leeds, driven Spike up to Leeds in his
rickety old mini. I think they only just made it
in time for the for the for the wedding, but I think it was
literally something like 5 weeks after that that Martin met The
Beatles. There you go.
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, that was a hell of a
time. You know, I mean, it's I think I
can understand that Spike felt a bit kind of left behind when the
60s really started to swing because he had seen it all
coming. And the all of them, all three
of them, the fact that they were still D mob happy at the
beginning of the 1950s, you can really tell, Benteen said.
You know, we only had to hear a sort of officer class voice and
we'd start to take the piss. And that's really what they were
doing with the programmes. So by the time the 60s come
along, really Spike and the others had already established
this wonderful anti establishment chaos in which
this whole idea that something could be organised or in some
way or other overseen authorized, forget it.
You know, it was like, no, no, no, it's life does not work that
way particularly. You know, the whole point about
Echols is that he really doesn't conform in any way whatsoever.
He doesn't understand what's supposed to be normal.
You know, he's just got his own take on the world the whole
time. And I think, you know, Spike
was, Spike was a hell of a thing.
He really was. I mean, I met him once.
I was, I was lucky because he was right at the top of the
spectrum at the time, very happy.
He was at a jazz gig in Eastbourne that I happened to be
at and it happened to be a trio again of guitar bass and well,
wasn't he a guitar bass? But it was the same as the Bill
Hall trio basically. And so he was on the staircase
just going up to the thing and he he waved me ahead of him and
I said, Mr. Bennigan, just want to say, how do you rate these
two against the Bill Hall trio? And I got 5 minutes out of.
Him how? Wonderful it was.
It was really lovely and he was very generous and very funny, He
said, you know, it's not really a jazz.
I can't do his accent, he said. It's not really a jazz night
unless there's a fight breaks out on the dance floor and
nobody notices. Which which he would detail, he
detailed regularly in his warming was.
That's absolutely he did, yeah. But we were in the, we were in
the, the, the then art gallery space in Eastbourne, which was
very posh and very polite. And the last place one of one of
Spike's style jazz things would have happened.
But that was lovely. I mean, I, I, I was delighted
and I walked away perfectly happy.
I thought, great. I've met my hero.
He was really nice and you know, that's it sort of thing because
I know plenty of people who met him when he was not in quite
such a happy place and didn't like anything like a very
pleasant connection. I saw we did a show last year
about Spike's two appearances on This Is Your Life as, Oh yeah,
as the subject of and, and he, you know, you can tell the
second, the first was in 73 when he was top of his game.
The first Adolf Hitler, my partner's downfall had come out
and he was, he was full of energy.
He was in the right mental space and all was good.
In fact, it was a little bit too, too much really, you know.
And then the second edition was from 95.
So he's, and he's aged quite a lot.
I mean, obviously he's age, but he's, he's slowed down very
visibly And, and he, you kind of get the feeling throughout that
he's kind of going through that. He's doing it more for his
family. His family are there and he's,
you know, he's doing it going through the motions.
But the one of the the few times that you see him energized, I
suppose there's, there's one when members of his old army
band come out OK, And there's also when they show footage of
the of the Bill Hall trio from 40467, something like that.
Gosh, yeah, he wouldn't. He would have been delighted
with that, wouldn't? He he was delighted him with a
false beard. Of course, of course.
None. None.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the, you know, the that side of
Spike's life never went away. He would produce his trumpet out
of nowhere. He obviously loved it.
He took it with him when he went on his trips and that sort of
thing. And it was part of his therapy,
I think, playing trumpet, playing it at home, playing it
when he was out. And he was a good trumpet player
without any doubt whatsoever. I the, I have a, a very good and
I think unique story, which I was thinking through what I was
going to say to you today. And I suddenly thought, oh,
Blimey, good chance to tell this one, which was that probably
about the 1980s. I had a biggish birthday.
I can't remember which one it was.
It must have been either mid 30th or mid 25th or something
like that. I would imagine probably more
likely my 30th. And so I went to the burger
place, the really well known burger place in Soho, whose name
now I can't remember, but it's still there.
It's been going for years and years and years, and it's quite
large. It's got a sort of a big
upstairs dining area. And I always have a piano
player, and the piano player is there just to do sort of
background stuff and people don't particularly listen
anyway. I was and I was just like that.
I was with a bunch of mates. There were eight or nine of us.
We were sitting around a table and suddenly this piano player
played a piece of music which I knew because as you, as you may
or may not know, the way I learned to play the piano was
that I heard stuff I liked and I sat down at the piano and I'd
pick it out and I'd pick it out to find out what they were doing
and how the chords were, particularly chord sequences.
That's how I learnt chord sequences.
And this was a piece of piano music called John O'Groats.
And I remembered it really well because I'd only ever heard it
on the Spike, Q6 or Q7. What?
It was played by Alan Clare. Oh, OK, yeah.
And this guy was playing this and he was pretty large.
He's a short guy, but very, very fat.
And obviously he got a pair of crutches leaning against the
piano. And I heard this go through and
I was, wow, that's amazing. So in his, I went up, I said,
I've got, I said to the guys, look, I've got to go and tell
this guy. And I went over to the piano and
he was just between pieces. And I said, do you know, I
haven't heard that piece except played by Alan Clare and on the
Q series. And he sort of smiled at me and
carried on playing. So then I went and sat down
again. And when he took his break, the
pianist climbed laboriously onto these crutches and hauled his
way over to me. And he sort of.
Yeah. I said.
I said, oh, welcome. Welcome.
What's your name? He said, I'm Alan Clare.
Oh, my God. So I had said to everybody
around, look, this is my chance to fanboy this guy because, you
know, brilliant. And also that particular piece I
loved, but he was so good with with Milligan and Milligan took
the piss out of him. And there was that whole thing
about him being such a bad actor, he has to bring his
script on with him and all that stuff.
And he talked about all of that. And I said, so you know how long
you been here? He said, oh, well, there's not a
lot of work around now. I make a bit here, but none of
the buggers listened to me. And I said, right, we're going
to do something about that. So me and my table.
So that was nine of us, picked up our chairs from the table,
went and set the chairs up in front of the piano, on the floor
in front of the piano. And I said to Alan, would you
play me John O Groats again? He said, yeah, yeah, of course,
Of course. I said, all right, give us a
minute, give us a minute, wouldn't he?
So we all trooped over there, sat down, and he went to the
piano and we all immediately applauded as he went to the
piano. He sat down and he started
playing. And you could hear the silence
slowly grow over the whole of the burger joint.
And he played it in pretty much total silence and finished.
And at the end, there was huge applause from us and everybody
else around the tables because I thought if, God forbid, that
might easily be me when I'm, you know, I might be earning what
amounted to, by comparison, pennies sitting in this place
playing the piano for people who aren't listening.
And you know, I just, and he was obviously pleased about that.
He just went on playing after that, doing the rest of his, of
his, of his stint. And it wasn't very long after
that he died, only about two or three years.
After that's, that'd be right, yeah, yeah.
But I just thought that's the sort of thing that, you know,
this is jobbing musician stuff. If you really do have to turn
out and play, you know, give it your best shot for two hours in
an area where there's people eating, the least you hope is
that people are listening. And on that one particular time,
at least, they were. Let's be, I mean, I've, I've,
I've heard a similar story, not about Alan Clare, but I can
share a similar story if you don't mind.
Sure. Who was it?
Now I had a guest on. I've got a feeling.
And if it, if it wasn't, I apologise.
And I think I've got a feeling it may be Gavin Sutherland.
Gavin, Yeah. I don't know him though, but I
know of it of. Course you know of him.
Yeah, I think it was him. He told me he was in Sydney,
maybe, I don't know, 30 years ago or something like that, and
he went to this cafe or nothing as elaborate as a restaurant.
I think it was more like not, not a greasy spoon, but sort of
in between the a greasy spoon and a restaurant sort of thing,
you know, And there was an old guy at the piano very, you know,
accomplished piano player, but he was just, it was just
background music for the, for the diners, you know, no one was
really listening. And he said he was playing this
tune, which was sort of like a medley of different tunes.
And then suddenly he started playing this tune that was
instantly recognisable to Gavin, but probably not to anyone else
in that establishment. And it was, and it was the theme
music from the sitcom Man about the house.
Oh, Oh yeah. Can you bring that to mind?
I can't, but I I know, I know where this is going now.
That's yeah, that's And so Gavin, if it was Gavin, he went
up to him after and said sort of introduced himself and it turned
out this guy was Johnny Hawksworth.
Yeah, there we go. Of of library music fame.
Yeah, probably even better now known now thanks to Johnny Drunk
than Oh yes, he was at the time. Oh, yes, absolutely.
Yeah. But I, you know, I guess it's
if, if you still, if you're of advanced age and you're, you're
still working, it's better than wandering somewhere.
Yeah, I mean, I might have got it completely wrong.
It going out and playing in that burger joint may have been the
highlight of Alan's week for all I know.
But I do know he was pretty Hacked Off and it was a fairly
Yahoo crowd as well. So, you know, he was pretty
Hacked Off that night. I was pleased we were able to do
something about it. But I've, I've got a question
for you. Was the reason why the goons
were sort of wall to wall jazz? Was it Pat Dixon?
Was he the jazz fanatic who really wanted to put this stuff
in or Dennis Mae Wilson? Who?
Who was it who decided that that was the sound it was going to
happen between the script? I, I can't handle heart say for
certain. I think it was Pat Dixon because
he he pretty much got them all together, right.
He he was the, he was kind of like the Barry took of, of the
pythons, if you know what I mean.
You know, the Barry took put them together.
He was kind of like they're about the goons Barry took in
that sense. But he couldn't, but he
couldn't, he was busy or whatever committed.
He couldn't produce the first few few series.
So that was Dennis Mayne Wilson and then Peter Eaton took over
and then Pat Dixon came along and, and took over as producer
sort of mid 50s. But yeah, I mean, he was a huge
jazzer, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And obviously he's also using people who are either in the the
public eye or about to be in the public eye.
So in picking on Max and Ray, he's finding 2 acts there that
will make good radio that are big enough that they're going to
be, you know, a, a real sort of asset to the program, but not so
big that they're either going to ask too much money or aren't
going to want to lower themselves to doing a weekly
radio show. But I was really, I was very
taken with that too, because it's, it's, it seems to suggest
a, a mind behind the goons, behind what Spike was trying to
do that understood that if there was a musical language for
Milligan, it was jazz. And it had to be both
accessible, but as hot as you could get and still be
accessible. And I think that's that's really
interesting that that's what they put in there and that's
what works. I always found it really
slightly off putting. And I'm sorry if he's still
around and hears this, because I don't mean it to be in any way
disrespectful. But with round the horn, I
always found the sort of the singers and the jazz band in
that incredibly twee by comparison with, you know, the
sheer parade of of filth and lustfulness that was.
Coming out of the comedy. And then, boy, did that need
something with a bit more edge to it.
But yeah, in the case of the goons, it was there all the way
through to my mind. Because obviously the Goons took
off really from performing it in Grafton's pub in the late 40s.
And it was kind of like a magnet.
That pub was a magnet for the up and coming comics and and people
people on their wavelength and musicians and and sellers seek
and Bentin Milligan. They would they would perform
impromptu comedy skits in the in the bar, a company they didn't.
You'd have people joining in like piece of Butterworth, you
know, from. The Oh, really?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
He was a he was a friend. Janet Brown, who who married
Peter Butterworth. She got involved, but, yeah, but
there'd also be music and jazz and Spike on the trumpet and and
and whatnot. And I'm sure, you know, Pat
Dixon would be among the throng of people that would that would
be there. So I guess it was obvious to him
that that sort of sound was was what the Goon Show needed.
Yeah. There, there was, what do you
call it, I don't know how you describe it, a group called the
Stargazers who were much more on the the round the horn level of
of talent. They were only in sort of 1 1/2
series of the Goon show right at the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. My Liberty Bell.
My Pretty Little bell you gives me once and you knew done well.
Or you knew done well. My Liberty Bell.
I love nobody but you. That's pretty girls in Singapore
and the Philippines. I I really like those numbers.
I probably, as I say, I was like others to begin with in that I
would quite happily Fast forward through when I was listening to
the tapes. But then when you listen to him
you realise how much sheer artistry there is going on
there. And I actually now I really like
it when you get to those moments because as I say, it's a
breather, but it's also you can enjoy some really good musicians
right at the top of their game. I remember there's a, there's a
every now and then there's a name check from Ray Ellington
and the one he particularly talks about is Don Fraser, who's
his electric guitarist who was Australian.
Yeah, that's right. And he is really fast.
He's really kind of accurate with what he's doing.
And quite a few times he and the pianist sort of share a joint
solo where there are sort of 1/3 apart and the pianist is doing
little, little, little and Don Fraser's doing doodle, doodle,
doodle, doodle, doodle, doodle a few a few notes lower and you
can hear the two of them working really, really well together.
I think they're sort of developing a way that electric
guitar within a jazz format can work really well with a pianist
who plays great jazz and particularly that kind of very
sort of fast moving, interesting right hand jazz stuff.
And that just to hear that coming together aside from, as I
say, Ray Ellington's sort of early rock'n'roll.
And I love it also when Ray Anderson's getting to the end of
his number, in comes Wally stop the orchestra.
And they're just all all really. Angela Moore he's been asked to
do is probably produce the last five chords of whatever it is
he's doing. But you can hear Ray getting to
the end of his piece and probably going up really high,
then incomes. The orchestra fires him through
the end of the number. That's right.
And then you can hear him go, yeah, hey.
And then probably. And then he'll say, Don Fraser,
you know, he introduces the bag and in the few seconds he's got
before Act three starts, it's good fun.
He did it, I think. His pianist certainly was
principal and was Dick Katz. Yes, that's right.
Very, very, very good. Piano player?
He doesn't. He certainly name checks him a
couple of times. Yep, Yep.
And Judd Proctor, of course, was in his band.
And Pete McGurk, all these people.
Above my head, above my head, music in the air, there's music
in the air. Above my head, there's music in
the air, music in the air. Above my head, there's music in
the air. I really do believe, I really do
believe there's a head somewhere I have somewhere above my head.
Up above my head. There's trouble in the air.
There's trouble in the air Above my head.
Above my head. Yeah.
There's trouble in the air. Up above my head.
There's trouble in the air.
I really do believe.
I really do believe in the heaven somewhere.
There's a heaven somewhere now. Music makes the world go round.
It's the way to be happy. The much I've found.
Sing a song. Be happy and free.
I come along, children, and follow me.
I have a soul that's weary and morn.
But I've heard, but I believe what the good Lord said, because
I've heard music and it's above my head, above my head.
There's music in the air above my head.
Above my head, there's music in the air.
There's music in the air above my head.
Music in the air above my head midweek with Angela Morley.
Yeah, at his flat in London to arrange the arrangements for his
his number. Yeah.
And the big thing they do there particularly is that they go to
double the speed. So he'd go in on something slow
and then suddenly it would go and then he'd be in and he'd be
doing it twice the speed and sort of soloing over the
orchestra doing the number. And I've used to love that too,
because that meant there was another.
He sort of re energized everything.
But I loved it when he was playing over the slow things,
you know, I mean, Max Gildre playing over a slow romantic
number. It's just beautiful.
It's reminds you of like Stephen Grappelli that he can do
beautiful things on the harmonica that are decorations
but never lose sight of the tune.
And it is just, I think it's, it's, it's really wonderful
artistry what he does. And he was also, he was under
appreciated, not by not by the goons, but by the BBC because as
always, even back then, we're trying to save money where they
could. And there was talk in the late
50s, fifty, 758, something like that.
Yep. That they might drop Max from
the show. Oh, this?
Is where Peter Sellers said if they did that, he'd be walk out.
He'd walk out, yes. Yeah.
Well, you know, like ABS,
Absolutely. You know, even if, as some have
suggested, the numbers were just there so the goons could go off
and have milk and Brandy. But, you know, it's there's,
there's a lot more to it than that.
Because I think that they really got off on those musicians and
they loved it. They loved hearing them, Yes.
And it was a bit of a family, even though, you know, Spike
takes the piss. There's a fair amount of, you
know, Max proper on Max gets it in the no in the neck for having
a big nose and being Jewish and all the rest of it.
Ray gets in the neck for being black and you know, everything,
everything eventually becomes a gag to to to to Milligan,
whether or not it might be in the least bit offensive.
But you can tell there's a real genuine love between them and
I'm pretty sure I've seen that Max went on tour with a couple
of them when they were going out doing the summer seasons and
stuff. Like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they had a sort of a sort of an airsax goon show show
that went down the Piers and things like that.
And they with Harry Secombe and possibly Billigan for all I
know. And I think Max Gildre as well.
Gildre toured a lot with Sellers as well, right?
And also, in fact, they they met before the Goon show began when
Sellers was still, you know, relatively unknown in the late
40s. He was doing the variety circuit
and, and whatnot. But there was certainly, I've
seen at least one show that he was on the bill with Max, with
Max Keldrew was on the same bill, if you know what.
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
And Sellers would. You know, Sellers was many
things in later life, but he always retained that quite close
contact. I'm sure he did.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, later Sellers
is an absolute bloody nightmare, but you can see there's so much
genuine appreciation there as well.
And it's I think that's one of the things they managed to pull
off with the the last gun show of all is that they all look
like they're delighted to be there.
And I I'm sure they were, you know, gives that impression.
What it's with hindsight, it's not a great show in itself.
As in the last Gun show, it's it's a bit of a mess and it's a
bit, it's cobbled together stuff, but it it the, the
enthusiasm powers through it. Out of.
Doubt appreciate, you know, you, you your time is limited, Neil.
So thank you very much for for being on the show.
Really enjoy your podcast as well.
Good. Thank you.
I know you obviously you've you've done a lot on radio over
the years and television. Yeah, but is is podcasting.
It's a it's a recent foray for you.
Is it? Yeah, it is totally.
I, I really only got into it because I was working with ATV
production company trying to make arts documentaries.
And we discovered fairly quickly that nobody's buying arts
documentaries because nobody much is making them anymore
except for really kind of, you know, straight down the line
career interviews with Elton John and stuff like that.
So they were the ones that said, you know what, we think we'd
quite like to do a podcast where you do something similar to what
you do on Add playlist. So I said, yeah, fine, great,
I'll enjoy that. So that's what we started last
September, which is called All About the Music.
And we're doing very well. I think we're something like 13
or 14 guests down the line now. And it's a pretty eclectic
bunch. They have lots of different
musical influences, which is great.
I mean, that was the other thing was I wanted to be as eclectic
as possible so we don't rule out anything.
So whatever anybody has kind of grown up loving, then we're
there. Excellent.
So you are the leader in your field in terms of, I think it's
fair to say in terms of accompanist for silent films.
Thank. You.
That's very kind. Have you ever seen the film The
Peter Sellers film The Smallest Show on Earth?
Oh, yeah, 'cause famously it's got a silent movie bit in it
that gets accompanied on the piano by by Brilliant.
The name's gone. Margaret Rutherford.
Margaret Rutherford, Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. And I've used that clip a few
times to sort of introduce, to introduce me in so far as it is
absolutely how silent movies were seen by that generation
growing up in the 1950s. It's a lovely film.
I think anyway, I think Sellers is brilliant.
You know, he's breathtakingly good in that.
And it's it's kind of fun. It's lovely that they do what
they do. They show a little bit actually
from a, a very creaky drama made by the Hepworth company, British
drama, but actually made in about 19/12/13.
I don't think it's, it might be a bit later than that, but not
by much. So it's, it really is the kind
of the world of, of sentimental piano and overacting on screen.
You know, onto that, onto that bit of film.
Mr. Quill? Mr. Quill, what's going on?
Old films, Mr. Spencer classics in my time, I've saved them for
years, bits of them. We used to run them like this in
the old days, but not for years. We haven't done.
Now it seems like old times once more.
Thank you very much to Neil. He was a pleasure to speak to
and really, really nice guy. And I do recommend his podcast.
So yeah, I just wanted to, since the show's been back 3-4 weeks,
we've had quite a bit of listener feedback, which is very
encouraging and very positive, largely.
A couple of weeks ago we did a show on the Michael Winter film
Climb Up the Wall from 1960. That actually I was surprised at
how well that was received and no disrespect to to well to
Adrian or myself. Adrian Smith, my guest on that
show. I thought it might have limited
appeal because it's it's a very obscure film, goon adjacent, I
suppose, or there's there's goon bits in it, but it's not really
a goon show film or anything. It's certainly not a goon show
film, although it's better than down among the Zed Men, I think.
But anyway, it, it got a lot of positive feedback and comments.
We, we, we got front for, for that.
So let me just run through some of the, some of the messages.
Damien Smith or Smythe well done.
Another excellent episode. Such a nice and relaxing
listening experience. Brilliant Tyler, fascinating
subject. Keep up the good work.
Nice to have you back on the air.
Thank you very much, Damien. It's not really the air, is it?
But you know, I, I appreciate the sentiment.
Apologies for the pronunciation here of the, of, of your name.
I think it's Daglan, Michael. Daglan, Michael, he says.
Another absolutely fantastic episode.
Fascinating. Sent me down a rabbit hole about
both George Calypso Brown and Cherry Wiener, and also prompted
me to listen again to Victor Louis Smith's Michael Wynner
phone call. I won't post it here because
it's naughty and I'm vaguely familiar with what you're
talking about there. John Auty.
The great John Auty, of course, he said.
Another wonderful episode about a movie directed by the
appalling Michael Wynner in reference to the movies of
winners that Tyler hasn't seen. Dirty Weekend is absolutely
ludicrous from start to finish. It sounds it.
Parting Shots is an award-winning feature in
comparison, and ironically that is even worse.
If anyone can create a a meme of Tyler exclaiming Chris Rea, I'd
be eternally grateful. Yeah, that's right, I was.
I was discombobulated momentarily by the mention of
Chris Rea. And also quite a lengthy message
by listener Len Kennington, or as I'm going to call him, Ken
Lennington because he's a little bit cheeky.
He says Oh my word chaps, you really don't get it at all.
This is a spin off from the Jack Jackson Show, which ran on ATV
from 1955 to 1959. All the guests and the gags
relate to this TV show, a musical and comedy weekly
collection which includes regulars like Cherry Wehner,
Neville Taylor and sometimes Craig Douglas, plus comedy
routines by Libby Morris and Glenn Mason.
At the time, this concoction would have made much more sense
to audiences. The European film clip, which
includes the Vienna Boys Choir, is from The Unfinished Symphony,
an Austrian movie lays faha minor ladder from 1933,
distributed in the UK by Fancy. That's EJ Fancy, who we talked
about on the show. The BBC Times is a gag because
the TV show was on ITV. Get it?
Charlie Kuhn's clip is from Clap Hands 1935 and the Francis Day
clip is from Temptation 1934. Thank you very much, Len, for
setting us right on that. Now on the Mighty Wurlitzer from
last week, Roger Stevenson. Hello, Roger.
He says. Thoroughly enjoyable episode.
I was informed, educated and entertained.
Very good. No idea what the sofa line is
about, but Anita Dobson was in Split Ends, a sitcom that is all
set and no com. That was it.
Yeah. I'd forgotten the name of that
Anita Dobson sitcom Misses Brian May.
Yeah, the sofa gag was to do with Blood Knock and Sabrina and
Sean Gaffney. Thank you, Sean.
He he may have cracked it, he says regarding the sofa line.
The encyclopaedia Sabrina Didn't Realize There Was Such Thing has
a 1955 article from People quoted that states she debuted
on British TV by sliding slowly off a sofa she had been lying
on, walked towards the cameras and then turned sideways.
I wonder why. Yeah.
So Sabrina and sofas and blood knock.
It all makes sense, kind of. I think.
I think we've put that one to bed.
So thank you. Thank you for that, Sean.
And just one other quick. Message I wanted to relate from
Jeremy Lim, the great Jeremy Lim of the Trap, he said.
And former guest, of course, he said.
I recently listened to your episode on the specter of
Tintagel. I know I'm hopelessly behind.
You know, that was about 3-4 years ago Jeremy, and I can't
remember if I mentioned this already.
The epic filmic music they intermittently use is a piece
called Tintagel by a composer called Arnold Bax BAX.
He was my great grandfather, my closest goon connection.
So there we go. Now Jeremy, as well as being a
musician in his own right as well as a comedian and actor.
He comes from a very musical family because his father is
Roger Lim, who's a very well known a person in the in the
Doctor Who world. He he, he composed a lot of
music for Doctor Who as well as box of delights and a whole lot
more of, of, of TV stuff, including the music used in
those protect and survive films from the 1970s.
So thank you for that, Jeremy. I haven't gone back to the
spectre of Tin Tanjou and listen, but I will do OK.
So that is it more or less for this week in a few days.
If you listen to this on the day it goes out, there'll be a new
episode of Goon Pod film club dropping and that is myself and
writer Andy Riley. And we are talking about the
Will Hay 1939 film Ask a Policeman, which was a lot of
fun. Actually.
I, I, I'm not a big Will Hay expert or, or, or necessarily
what I would call a fan or, or whatever, but I, I, I did enjoy
more or less ask a policeman. It's quite short as well.
So that's good. And, and Andy and I had a good
conversation about, about that film and will hey, in general
and look out for that. That'll be dropping.
And next week, all being well, we will be back on goon pod
talking about the case of the Malconese battle horn.
It's not recorded yet, so it's going to be right down to the
wire, but hopefully next week that will be what you will be
listening to. So anyway, I've been waffling
far, far, far, far too long now. Thanks for listening.
Until next time, as always, bye. I'm going out with the mountain
and I'm only 503. I wasn't alone with that
mountain. She was far too.
Tall for me. So I went around with a cold
hole instead, but I got covered in and grind so I'm going steady
with 3:30 because it's always there all the time.
I once knew a girl called and another little girl called, but
when in love with and. And in love with.
I'm going up with a mountain and I'm only 5 foot three.
I was in love with a mountain. She was far too tall for me so I
went around with the coho instead.
But I got come on in grind, so I'm going steady with 3:30
because it's always there on time, tick up, always there on
time, tick tock. Have some time.