OK, instead of reading me bedtime stories, when I was a
kid my mother used to read the scripts from The Goon Show.
It was a favorite comedy show on the radio.
It was Spike Milligan, Harry Secon, and the other guy who was
the best, Peter Sellers, Michael Benton.
You know, early Monty Python would exist without the goons,
so on and so forth. Anyway, she'd read the scripts
to me and do the voices because it was all about silly voices.
And she gave me the script because I really liked them.
And we were looking for a name. We got our first gig and we we
haven't even thought about names.
We got the first gig coming up. We thought, but all that's
important is that it's something that no one else would think of.
She's got to be original. And I got this script book out
in One of the episodes in in the script was Ned's Atomic Dusty.
And we thought, well, you know, I think it'll work because it's
only the 1st gig, whatever. In all seriousness, now we're
never going to be talking properly, serious, wherever,
long term with the name like that.
And it would become. I suppose it would become a
problem. Here's the rather rambling
preamble. When I was a teen in the early
90s, my group of friends were into comedy and music, mostly of
the Wanda stuff and Vic Reeves variety, and you'd really see
any of them without a copy of The Enemy sticking out of their
school blazer pocket. But at this point in my life, I
wasn't as into music as I later became.
But I was obsessed with comedy. And it was because of this, or
maybe despite it, that as far as I was concerned, the stunk by
Helen Pace was just as valid musically as, say, Kinky Afro by
the Happy Mondays. I know, right?
I kept my interest in The Goon Show to myself.
I figured that explaining why I love to read a comedy show.
Which was then celebrating its 40th anniversary, might fail to
register with a group of 17 year olds preoccupied with doing
Graham Lister and Judge Nutmeg impressions or trading Trevor
and Simon catchphrases. And remember them, they didn't
do duvets. So when one day one of my mates
mentioned he bought the latest Ned Stomach Dustbin single, I
almost choked on a Viscount the The Minty Biscuit, I realized
this band had lifted their name directly.
From an episode of The Goon Show, and I blurted this out to
my friend who stared blankly at me and probably said something
like yeah. Anyway, and that was the end of
the matter. Fast forward 32 years and I am
now the proud father of a podcast, and the day has finally
come to talk about Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
The Goon Show episode. I mean, not, not, not, not the
band, although I do want to talk about them a bit.
So I decided to invite back to the show, somebody suitably
qualified to talk about both. Ex Enemy Scribe, comedy writer,
screenwriter, novelist, David Quantic.
Welcome to Goon Pod. I mean, last time you were on
you talked in general about, you know, the goons and Spike and
whatnot, and me asking if you'd like to return to talk about an
actual or around an actual goon show.
It's not a very well known one, and I wasn't sure.
I mean, had you heard this show before or?
Red Script, you know, I can't remember.
I was aware of it at the time because I belonged to the Goose
Show Preservation Society and somebody, one of the
subscribers, used to make covers, imaginary covers for
albums. And I remember there was an Ed
Atomic Dustbin one. Yes, I was aware of it.
And yeah, when the band started, obviously I became more aware of
it, but I can't remember if I've heard it before.
I mean, having heard it now, perhaps for the first time,
would you rather be talking about the actual band?
And it's a tight dust because it's quite a fast-paced,
frenetic show this episode, isn't it?
Yeah, it's an unusual episode, while at the same time it's kind
of bog standard. It's my easy way of describing
it. But yes, it's a classic goon
show plot involving. Dodgy dealings, a little bit of
political satire, tail torn from the headlines.
A lot of the structure is just, you know, Milligan, like, oh, we
need to get this character in, we get this character in.
It is notable, though, for the extremely long time it takes to
get started because it starts off with this massively
irrelevant but quite funny thing about censorship.
And there's a committee reporting on whether Wallace
Greenslake can wear some holly. And then that ends.
And then you get a bit of music and it still hasn't started.
It's something like 10 minutes in before the story starts.
I call that the the what do you call it the Goon Show law where
the the first act bears no relation to the story And that
that's happened in the third series quite a bit and which we
don't hear anymore because there's barely any of them that
survive. But by this point in the goon,
show that there were a handful of shows with.
I've done that before where there's just spikes obviously
got. 2/3 of a story or 2/3 of a plot, and he just decides to
tack on something at the beginning just to make up the
time. But I wanted to ask you before
we get onto that, Last year I was very taken by the
documentary about Spike Milligan's archive.
Oh yeah. And obviously you you
participated in that. Yeah.
I mean, it was clearly his base for a very long time and it was
kind of. A bit alarming.
I mean, I opened the folder and it was just family photos and it
was just personal stuff and it's like I shouldn't really be
looking. So I put it back, you know, it
was he was surprisingly for a man who he would strike.
She was somewhat chaotic. He was clearly an archivist and
this was his archive. It wasn't done by a secretary.
He'd done all this himself. So obviously he was quite keen
on recording things. And yeah, I pretty much, if you
were doing a biography of Spike Milligan.
You would have all the resources you needed in that room.
It was quite overwhelming and you didn't differentiate, so
they'd be, you know, famous scripts next to obscure
Australian shows. I was given some stuff that he
had done to send to George Martin, little demos and things
like that. The the song for Jane.
Yeah, that was extraordinary. That's right.
You took forwarded intro and yeah, two of my.
Comedic hero is George Martin, the great producer of Spike
Milligan. Exchanging materials now it's
extra. It was extraordinary to be in
that room. The connection between Spike
Milligan and George Martin is incredibly close.
They worked together in the 1950s in the goon era.
They were very good friends and there's a very prevalent theory
amongst Beatles fans that without the goons, without Spike
Milligan Beatles wouldn't have sounded.
The same. They wouldn't have been as good,
but George Martin was like, yes, let's cut up all the tapes and
throw them in the air. Let's have an audience cheering.
Let's have chicken noises on this record, because he'd done
it all with Spike Milligan. It's gorgeous.
It has another worldly quality to it, and it has that.
Childish, Childlike quality, which is good for a waltz
written for a child, but also very typical of Spike Milligan.
That's all on this tape, George. The band Ned's Atomic dustbin.
I was never really into them. I kind of they sort of passed me
by. But obviously you being an enemy
scribe around that time that they were big.
Did you actually meet them? Did you interview them?
Did you have any encounters with them?
Yeah, I mean, because The Enemy was covering a lot of bands from
Stourbridge in the Black Country and the Midlands area, the
Wonderstaff, Pop, the league itself, Crazy had.
There were probably some others. And Ned's Atomic Dustbin were
kind of the second wave. I mean, they were, they were the
next wave. There weren't any others.
And they were young and they were obviously influenced by all
these Griebo bands and they were good.
They were interested. You know, they had two bass
players. Charismatic singer, so all them
supporting the wonder stuff and they were.
I really liked him. I remember once being at some
Phoenix Festival and Rat, one of the band was called Rat For no
other reason that he looked like Rat.
Scabies from the damned. Having some fun with him.
But my most memorable experience is that when they started off, I
went to a party, a friend of mine's house and PR and a
photographer called Jane Houghton and stayed over in the
spare bed. And Edosomic dustbin slept on
the floor in the same room. So yeah, I have slept with Ned
Atomic Dustbin. And they were fascinated because
they were young and they were a band and like all bands had
their own private language. They basically spent all night
farting on the floor and making incomprehensible comments about
it. And in a kind of convoluted way.
What struck me today thinking about this is the only real
connection between them and the goons other than the name.
It's one of the great things about the goons.
This is a massive leap, but it is true is that the goons had a
secret language which they shared with the world, which was
the post war comedy was a new generation about.
This new generation had come out of the war and there was a
shared humor of conscription, of knowing what it was like to
sleep in a tent in Algeria, knowing what it's like to be
shot at, you know, in Sicily. And, you know, the goons were
three regular soldiers and many of their audience, they were
young, but they had that irreverence.
Everyone's talked about, you know, the lack of respect for
authority that came out of being in a war where all the classes
met for the first time. And, you know, the upper
classes, the officer class, did not come very well, come out
very well from that war. So it was interesting because
they were radical. This is the Goons, not atomic
dustbin. They were radical.
They were changing things. But at the same time, their
attitude was something familiar and welcomed, You know, a few
years before they voted in the Labour government to the
surprise of Winston Churchill, and now they were voting in
probably the most radical mainstream comedy of all time.
Absolutely. The story is that that what
Who's the lead singer? My mango is John.
John Penny, Yeah. He said that his mum used to
read him. From read to him bedtime stories
but it was just you know the Goon show scripts that's where
he and that's where he just was randomly flicking through the
more Goon Show scripts book for a band name and then Stomach
dustbin jumped out My friend tilt said if he'd flicked a few
pages on it would have been the band would have been called The
Spy or Who Is Pink Oboe. It tells you something about
about the band, about John Penny, that.
They thought that was a good name for a band because what it
is, it's an old name in an era of, you know, the Wander stuff,
Crazy Head and put release itself just to name those.
It's a kind of it's a but it's a comedy name, you know, You
couldn't imagine you too. Or Bob or Bruce Springsteen
calling their bands Neds. Atomic Dustbin.
It kind of suggests that it didn't have huge ambitions to be
playing huge arenas, shall we say, with the.
Kind of thing that you could see.
A cool person wearing their T-shirt.
It's one of those, I think a lot of bands by the by where they
pick a name. They think that's a good name
for a band, even though it actually isn't.
It just sounds like a good name for a band.
You know the wonder stuff. It's a good name for a band.
Populate itself is a good name for band.
Metatomic Dustbin. You're kind of like, you know,
they're going to be third support and they're going to be
quite funny, which is fine, but. Yeah, I think it's kind of a
bold statement. What about Toad the Wet
Sprocket? God alone knows what's going on
there. I mean, there was a surprisingly
good heavy metal band called Ethel the Frog, and their name
was a massive Monty Python reference, but their name was a
massive hindrance if you ask me. I know that he's the drummer
from Pink Floyd, Nick Mason. One of his early bands was
called something ridiculous and we are talking obviously mid
60s, something like Commander Henderson and his mouth full of
bees or something like that. That was, that was the name of
the man. That is bizarre.
The Neds, are they still are they still are going concern?
I think they come back from time to time.
I think John Penny does his own stuff from time to time.
Yeah. And looking on the Internet,
they released five years ago, now called Ned's Acoustic
Dustbin. Desire or when?
You're it, desire. It has been found.
You'll be running far away or when you're.
It is a higher. It has been found.
You'll be running far away. You're telling me it's in the
trees and the trees It's not. It's inside me Now you're
telling me it's on the ground. It's.
On I say, what is all this joy? People in that night are trying
to sleep, you know. So this episode broadcast right
at the beginning of January 1959 Peter's literally just signed A5
year contract with the bolting brothers and he's got his eye on
he's already signed up to to do I'm all right Jack you know in
his head he's just thinking you know I want to be a movie star
and Ned's Atomic Dustbin is is the 10th episode of the night
series. So there's only, there's really
only about. Another 10-12 goon shows until
they call it a day. Wow, I didn't realize that.
Yeah, so it wasn't. I mean, all I can say is it's
not, with the exception of one section, which is Sellers at his
best. It's not what I call a classic
episode. It's very the section that I'm
referring to is when he's doing the William Mate voice talking
about a dog that he says can speak.
And then it goes on quite a while and it says, no, dog don't
speak and it's absolutely hilarious.
It's a brilliant setup and yeah, it's he's fantastic and it's a
beautiful piece of comic acting. When's the next train to London
Town? Divine.
Ask the airy doggy over there. Ask the dog.
He Does he speak? Does he what?
Does he speak? Yeah, listen.
Listen to this. Hello, Doug.
Hello, Dougie. Go and tell him Dog.
No, he don't speak. That William Mate voice has has
evolved over the course of 5-6 years of the Goon show.
It was very high pitched at the beginning and now it's got to
this. By this point it's very it's
it's like Brandy laced the voice almost.
I suppose. You know and you know the you
know the. The story that Johnny Spate
wanted originally wanted Sellers to play Elf Garner, and Sellers
obviously was by that point. He was, you know, too bound up
in the movies. But I could imagine if if
Sellers had played Elf Garner, I could that this, this period,
this era. William Mate, this series 9.
William mate. As we hear on this episode, I
could imagine him using that voice, that kind of that kind of
cadence, that kind of tombra. I think Mate is a little bit
older because when when service does use that voice in the Mario
Zampi movies and the Bolting Brothers movies, he's generally
playing someone like a night watchman or a fairly old bloke.
But take your point. Yeah, he he he just sounds a
little bit more. It's slightly more useful in
this in this episode. But anyway, I'm even thinking it
and this show, obviously it's very topical considering that
Oppenheimer still. Packing them into the cinemas, I
can't believe cuz I've never. I haven't seen Oppenheimer, but
it's something like 18 hours long.
Yeah, he's 18 hours long. Isn't it just people in rooms
talking about stuff? I don't know cuz I haven't seen
it either, but I'm sure there's lots of pretty things in it too.
Oh yes, but this idea for going show is clearly inspired by
atomic testing which which was going on at the time like in
places like Christmas Island. Places that were as far away
from Whitehall as possible And the whole atomic dustbin idea
though it's it's an atom proof dustbin as we come to learn, but
the whole atomic aspect seems to be quietly dropped and then it
just becomes a dustbin to prove if a man can go over the Niagara
Falls and somehow beat the Russians.
Yes, it goes into a sort of arms race, jokes the Russians about
something over the Vulgar Rapids, I believe.
The media and the population. At this time was kind of space
mad. The day that the show went out,
the front page of the Daily Mail led with this banner headline
saying leapfrog, moon man, Russians planned space town.
One of Moscow's leading scientists revealed fantastic
details of plans to conquer space.
And there's references to space imperialism and interplanetary
stations and factories to be built on the moon.
Tractor factories, probably. And unusually for the Goon show,
you do actually hear some Russian characters because
there's a scene set in the Kremlin.
Then it becomes rather confusing that Blue Bottle is a Russian
agent, but this isn't. He's just they just, again, it's
a sort of silly, you know, Cub Scout thing going on, but it's
like you keep going, Oh, that's right, he's meant to be a
communist. It doesn't quite.
But again, Spike Milika doesn't seem to be able to get up to
speed with that idea. He's like, Oh yeah, he's a
communist. And the most bizarre moment for
me is when there's a joke in the punchline, his apple saying
Stalin. And I had to look up Stalin,
who'd been dead for five years, so.
I think he was dead, but he was also persona non granted I think
by that point after. Crucial, right, So that my
speech, yeah, the joke, it was a bizarre reference at that point.
Yeah. Blue ball sort of bit of a spy
and then he sort of vaguely loses interest in it.
It's not what you call. I mean, I don't want to be down
on it because I enjoyed the episode, but it is very generic.
Oh, here's blood knock and there's some Oh my goodness, he
soiled himself in a comical way. Here's Moriarty grit pipe thin
with their own trying to sell something to Neddy.
And it could be a lot of the IT could be anything.
You know, is the tag of like, oh, atomic testing, but that's
kind of. But again, that's where they do
a joke about it at the start and they move away from it.
It's definitely smart, Milligan writing on autopilot, which is
basically better than most people's best efforts.
But I would say it's a filler episode.
Yeah, that's a great, you say about autopilot.
There's that gag with Echoes and Blue Bottle, which does get a
big round of applause, but it's Milligan phoning it in.
Tiger, Yeah. Blue bottle doesn't want to go
out. There's a spider in it and it's
a tiger, yeah. Yeah, the effects don't.
I've moaned a lot. The effects don't quite work on
that got necessarily put down to Milligan.
But there isn't the sense that you get a great goon show that
you know, Echoes is somehow genuinely in in Threat and the
sound effects are mad enough to cover it up.
It's got a great punch line. There's a big spider out there.
I ain't frightening a big spiders.
I a fix. Yeah, where's all your clans?
Huddle Say after me. I must learn the difference
between a lion and a spider. You know my presumably it's an
original joke, but you're never entirely sure.
But it is beaten by the dog thing, which is just.
Which is interesting because that that joke could be in any
classic, could be much fun in the marsh, it could be in it.
It's not particularly surreal gag.
Generally, I don't laugh when people are enjoying themselves
in a radio show, so I don't care if you're having fun, you're
here to entertain me. But clearly sad as he's enjoying
himself at this point and it's beautifully delivered.
So that I'm not sure how Goon like it is, but it works really
well. This show is is notable in that
it it was the debut of what became known as blood Knocks
Stomach sound effect. Oh yes.
It's got really quite jarring as well.
Yeah, because it was. It was devised, but I think it
was Dick Mills from the BBC. Really fun at workshop.
It's like a series of electronic bubbles and burps and belches.
Major Blood Knock was a military gentleman and he was based or
had a ex Indian colonial military career.
During which he acquired a taste for very hot curries and very
Loose Women, not necessarily in that order, and they wanted a
sound sequence to announce his presence on stage.
They wanted something pretty violent, comic and short and
explosive because of the Curry effect.
A similar sound is used in the film The Man in the White Suit
for his lab scenes, and it's also on a BBC sound effects
record. That kind of bloop, bloop,
bloop, bloop. Whether it's exactly the same or
not, I don't know. If it's the Radiophonic
Workshop, it's probably not being nicked.
But yeah, that did become and it doesn't.
It doesn't work because if it's not rude, obviously the BBC
couldn't really have the sound of somebody's bowel shifting on
prime time, but. It's not a funny sound effect
but you you think because you know the last Goon show of all
and I'm no prude, don't get me wrong, you know I love Derek and
Clive and stuff like that. But the last Goon show of all
this, there's a there's more there's a this coarseness for
one of a better word that's crypt into the Goon show.
And you just think if it had gone on, maybe if it, you know,
if Sellers had lived and they'd been a another Goon Show
revival, say in the mid 80s, you could imagine that, you know,
blood Knock would be literally filling his trousers audibly.
Yes, that does make sense. It's interesting that, you know
the first couple of series of big raves are surprisingly clean
and then I think the smell of raves in Mortimer or the one
after that, suddenly they get quite vulgar, they start using
bad language and it doesn't work.
And similarly with the I was watching an old goodies episode
towards the end of the BBC period.
And they're talking about a woman and Bill says something
and blah blah blah. And then Graham Garden, Graham
Garden, the most prulliant character.
And it says, and best of all, she's a great lay and it's, it's
really quite shocking. Don't do, don't do that.
Goodies don't do. That no, it's just not that
thing. It would be like, I don't know,
Danger Mouse getting his Willy out.
It's gone. So yeah, with the, I mean, and
again, the great thing about the goons, we put it out.
You mentioned who is pink oboe character of Hugh Jampton.
Constantly through the goons there was there were jokes for
grownups or mostly jokes to get past sensors and that was kind
of fun. You were again in a secret, you
were not being having it, as they say, stuck down your
throat, but it was funnier. Whereas I think if the goons had
gone the way of the Carry on films, I don't.
Yeah, I like vulgarity in its right place.
It works in days. It works in the modern toss
cartoons. It doesn't work in that.
I think with childlike comedy. It's like Harry Hill, brilliant
comedian, but I think if he started doing knob gags it would
be horrific. Yeah, well, we did a show on
Spikes Q Series A little while back, which required a lot of
viewing of episodes of Q&A. Lot of it was great and a lot of
it was terrible. There's some stuff in between,
but a lot of it was just jokes about knockers and yeah, you
know, and like you say, the beginning of this show, the
first act is a dig at the BBC censorship department.
But you kind of you glad that they are there, that they exist,
I suppose, to keep Milligan from overreaching, shall we say.
Yeah, when Q really is a hard watch because of that sort of
thing. It's weird.
I mean, I could invent something and say that, you know, the
goons is like as if children made a radio show, but Q6 is
like as if teenagers made one. It's much too kind of, yeah, I
said here's some tits, yeah, I'm going to blackout.
It's kind of not really into shock.
It's kind of look how far we can go.
You like you sort of watch now. I think these are the wrong
extremes. These are not boundaries that we
should be testing. Don't go anywhere funny because
this is late period Goon show. There was a few lines, like a
reference to male hormones, for example, and Eroticism.
And you've got Ned painting Miss Fruit nude and she says it's
cold, he says. I've got the candle on, but he's
painting the plans of a new British dustbin.
Obviously in order to do that he needs a deposing you, but you
know stuff like that, your Echoes up Cruns night shirt and
everything's marked to touch because they're antiques.
That's. Yeah.
For the time, and also for the time and slot as well.
Getting back to that first act in this episode, you've got a
lot of Wallace acting, Wallace Greenslade, the announcement
acting, which is always troubling because he's no, he's
no, he's certainly no Lawrence Olivier.
Oh, I don't know. I enjoy.
I mean it's this range is what it is.
He's put a great voice and it's worth it just to hear Harry
Seacombe call him Wall Boy. Listen, Wall Boy Seacombes, a
great actor. He really doesn't get the the
kudos for it. But no, I mean it's still funny
to hear what is great, to hear something naughty like a BBC in
there, to being silly. I think John Snag turns up,
doesn't he? Towards the end, yeah.
John Snag. He was always.
John Snag was always on hand if they needed, because John Snag
was the one that stopped them from being cancelled a number of
occasions, but he was always, always happy to record a few
lines for them. I just remembered, I don't know
where. I think the last time last
recording of John Snag is on the Sex Pistols album.
Great rock'n'roll swindle. At last, the film you thought
you'd never have to see. The Great Rock'n'roll Swindle,
the staggering story of the punk group that rung the neck of
rock'n'roll Sex Pistols, A Tamikaze gang of cat burglars
and child prostitutes. They peddled bondage, whips and
chains to the children of Britain.
Sex Pistols. They held the record business to
ransom and swindle the £1,000,000 in the process.
I just looked up and yes, he does appear on the soundtrack to
the Great Rock'n'roll Swindle is the tracks called Pistols
Propaganda, which is him reciting Sex Pistols lyrics over
orchestral tracks. And that's about 1979.
Wow, what made? He loved the anarchy of the
pistols, I suppose, because he loved the anarchy of the goons.
Well, he's the only person who's worked.
One of the probably the only person who's worked with the Sex
Pistols and the Goons. So that's pretty impressive.
Yeah, sticking, I said earlier. I was talking about the
references to Sputnik and the space race and whatnot.
There was a critic writing in the Listener that the week the
show went out, and he said he said, like the Foreign Office
spokesman commenting on the first Sputnik, I'm afraid that
the program is rather out of my sphere.
The vintage goon programs earlier in the year show that
the goons now have, in contrast, no feet on the ground at all.
They seem to be in free fall and their humor expanding into
realms of intergalactic space. At one time, Mr. Greenslade held
the guy ropes of the balloon, but he too now seems to be in
orbit. The program is still great, but
there are moments when it terrifies me.
And yeah, the pace of it. As I said, it's so much seems to
happen, but actually not a lot does.
You know I. Think that's a good description.
A lot of nothing happening with the usual 8 or 9 main characters
and gibberish and sound effects and general asking about and
then you've got this it's sort of climax with a with a real
anti climax because Spike just couldn't be bothered as we saw
with the Q series later on. Couldn't be bothered with the
proper ending. So I know we're getting to the
end already, but it sort of it sort of ends in a really sort of
damp squib where they say we need to save echoes and then
blood Knock says but we didn't. There we go.
The the end. Yeah, I mean I kind of like it.
It is. It is a bit of a let down, but I
kind of like the brutality of it all.
But yes, you can imagine just going, I'll stuff this and
writing, but but we didn't. And giving it to the Courier or
however it was transported to the studio.
But yeah, you can. I'm really interested in your
theory that it's all coming to an end and they're not quite
bored because they're all got pastures new.
But, you know, Salas is off. Seacombe's got loads of work
lined up with the King of Light entertainment, and Milligan just
wants to stop writing the goons. Well, Milligan will always say
that he was, you know, drove him mad.
And, you know, we, we know about that.
But I think if push came to shove, I think Spike would have
probably because he he'd actually written was it 5
scripts which were never actually recorded.
And I think he would have probably gone on and Harry
probably would have as well. But it just, it basically boiled
down to sellers. Sellers by 1960 was huge British
star. But but then again, you know he
still had enough affection for the Goons that he would come
back three years later to record the soundtracks for the for the
Telegoons series. Which have you seen The
Telegoons? I can't remember if we discussed
this when. You're seeing clips of the
telegoons. It does look like something
after a nuclear war. Well, we, the day that you and I
are talking is the 60th anniversary of the first episode
of the Telegoons. Good Lord.
But yeah, Sellers, obviously, you know, Sellers didn't need
to. By 63, he just filmed Doctor
Strangelove. He was about to film the Pink
Panther and he, you know, he was quite well.
I say happy he was. He was available to go and sit
in the studio in London, somewhere in Soho, and record a
bunch of telecoms, episodes that.
Is amazing. And you know the the last good
show? In fact, during the 60s there
was 323 Goon Show restagings. There was a Thames Television
Half Hour Tales of Men's Shirts special episode with John Cleese
standing in for Wallace Greenslode.
Don't know if you remember that or I've seen clips of.
That I've never heard of that. Yeah, they did.
Harry Secombe, you know, Harry Secombe had his special shows,
his variety shows in the 60s and 70s.
There was a restaging of a goon show, the Whistlingspired Nigma,
I think it's 66, something like that and Peter Sellers turned up
for that. So and the last good show of all
and they released some records in late 70s, so sellers never
gave up on it, you know he was always quite happy to to come
back. Oh, who knows?
I mean, it must have had. Obviously it's quite easy to do
comparatively, but sometimes people very much enjoy to say,
look at me, I'm going back. I'm not proud, but I mean, he
probably did enjoy a great deal. You know, it was a great place
to practice stuff and to be wild, and I imagine after being
on film sets, probably an easier life.
There's a lot of opportunities for him in this episode to do.
Because apart from the usual 789 main characters that you get in
the Goon Show, there's a whole bunch of secondary sort of
fringe voices that you hear. You've got Sellers doing as
Australian voice that he would do around this time and you've
got that what they call the Sydney Mincing voice, which he
pinched off Kenneth Connor. There's a bit where they do sort
of like a vox, but Dick Henry type vox pop.
And here in London we interview passes by.
Excuse me, Sir, do you believe in a white Christmas?
Are you kidding? Yes, and then you met him.
Do you believe in an old fashioned Christmas for the
fire? It's a very kind of racially
dubious gag with Ray Ellington, of course.
Which you get those. Oh, yes, I remember that.
Yeah. Yeah.
What do you think of those? I mean, obviously, you know,
they're not great, but. Well, they're sort of in that
weird hinterland of, I mean, with Milligan, it can go very
badly wrong. What I think in this case it's,
you know, it depends on context. It's a it's an innocuous joke.
It can work on lots of different ways.
You can tell by Secum's laughter afterwards.
He's sort of like a yes, well, that was a bit not sure if we
got away with that. It's just a naughty joke and.
Yeah, it's a bit dodge, I think, but it must have been hell on
that show in that respect. What for?
For Ray Ellington, you mean? I think so.
There was a lot. I mean, I'm sure it was the way
it was, all that across light entertainment.
But he got a lot of it. And it wasn't much about Max
Geldrey, the Canadian. If indeed he was Canadian, he
was. Dutch.
Well, there you go. There are very few jokes about
Holland. There were jokes.
There were jokes about his big nose and that's about it.
And his terrible acting, yeah. But yeah, that sort of thing was
then, and it certainly got worse with Spike later on.
But it always. Does go that way.
Have you ever seen the melting pot?
Now what's? Or any.
So it was a six part sitcom filmed in 197576 and it's Spike
and John Byrd playing 2 Indian gentlemen who have who have who
have moved to London to seek their fortune or something like
that. And Spike's character, although
he's Indian, he's called, I think he's called Mr. Rembrandt
or Mr. Van Gogh, something like that.
I'm not quite sure why, but it's it's him and John Byrd, and they
rent rooms in this terrible, terribly dilapidated boarding
house with, as you'd expect, a bosomy landlady.
And and then they've got a representative sample of of as
many racial stereotypes also staying in this boarding house.
So you've got, you've got a black man, you've got an
Irishman, you've got a Jew, John Bluthal, you've got playing, you
know, playing these stereotypes up to the hilt.
You know what I mean? Really sort of pushing it and
there's even a goat running around.
But they, they screened the pilots episode, I think on BBC2.
And the the response was, you know, even in 1976, the outraged
response meant that they just shelled.
They never showed the remaining episodes.
I've got them and I've watched them.
Most of them. There's little bits of genius
here and there. Little bits, if you dig, you can
you can extract a little bit of beauty of from anything, I
suppose. But most of it was just racial
gags and Boob gags. And I think that's a depressing
thing. It's like, I don't know, it's
like you get someone who's famous for making.
It's like a Salvador Darling just drew naked women with large
breasts. You know, Milligan's that
talent, which I know was worn down over the years there.
He was always being given the shows and he was always like, I
know I will tackle racism in a horrifically racist way.
It sort of became his go to thing.
I don't know what that was all about, but it was just he kept
going there. And as I may have said last
time, the only time I was ever in the room was by Milligan was
during the recording of the TV show.
And on the monitor were two actors, One dress is a brown
rabbit and one dress is a white rabbit.
And Milliken said nobody had asked for his opinion.
He said, oh, I suppose they have to have a brown wand.
In the interests of balance. It was like, oh, but mate, it's
two rabbits, you know, not everything is about racial.
It was just, I don't know, he had a bee in his bonnet about
it. Clearly that never really ended
like a like a few people thought he was entitled to do those
characters because he was born in India and knew the people.
Although as I think was pointed out in the documentary, the
people he knew were servants in his family house.
But yeah. There's a there's a reference in
this show getting back to Ned's Tom Mcduspin.
Sellers were very often around this time that, well, even
throughout the Goon Show they would be references to their
real selves so. Seek refers to Peter Sellers,
Playboy of old Finchley tube station and friend of West End
Management's and that gets gets a really warm round of applause
because at this time Sellers was was right at the fag end of his
time treating the boards doing play brouhaha.
It closed the following month and.
Sellers had been all up for it in the beginning and then he
just hated the repetitiveness of it because it's it's a play.
You have to, you know, follow the script, do the same lines
every night. And he hated that.
So he would start to improvise, as Milligan would later do in
the 60s with Son of Oblomov. But the problem was it was it
was causing the rest of the cars no end of frustration.
You had people like Lionel, let's say Lionel Blair, Lionel
Jeffries and think Leo Mccune. You know who would consummate
professionals and and sellers was every night.
Throwing them because he wasn't following the script.
He got pissed one one day and turned up.
He'd been to Alec Guinness's knighthood party or something
and turned up that evening to do the play drunk and fell off the
stage into the and actually said to the audience when he sort of
got back up on the stage, he said I'm, I think, he said.
I'm drunk. Do you want me to carry on?
And they all shouted yes, and he just just carried on in that
state. Anyway, it closed and and soon
after and he never, he was never on the stage again.
It's always fascinated with Sellers that he did make that
job from impersonating our air forces.
There was doing funny voices on the radio, but there was
something in him which made him a movie star, even though he
would. I mean, do you know about Leslie
Halliwell's The Film Guide guys? Deep hatred of Peter Sellers.
I don't know the reasons for it, but Halliwell was like, you
know, he had the Halliwells Movie Guide, which was really
influential in the days before the Internet.
And he was a very opinionated man.
He didn't like much Madoff in 1950, but he had a thing about
Sellers and he basically would be writing and all he would say
is that, you know, all he does is loads of different funny
voices. And while that's not quite fair,
it is bizarre that Santa's career as a massively famous
film star was basically doing funny boys playing two or three
roles in a movie, which was kind of stunt casting.
You'd often play different 3 characters in a movie, even in
Doctor Strange love, and it was fascinating for people to watch,
but there was no point to it if we were honest.
So why not get three actors in? It would be less weird.
It works brilliantly. And Dr. Strangelove, because
it's so disconcerting, you keep going.
They're all sellers. Yeah.
His mother famously turned up to Pinewood and didn't recognize
him when he was dressed as the president, I think.
Well, the version that I read was that he wouldn't talk to her
in his Peter Setters person. He had to talk to the president.
That's it, actually. She just went home.
Yeah, he was an impersonator rather than an actor.
Even his being there, his greatest moment he's doing, Stan
Laurel is fantastic. And yet a lot of his, the later
Clouseau films, a lot of it was slapstick.
A lot of it was pratful. Oh yeah, he was like that.
He had the Charles to say my nose in the movie.
I think that's probably his secret catch phrase.
He says my nose in The Naked Truth.
And he probably says it in a lot of clues as well.
Well, the naked truth. I know you're very fond of that.
Although he's playing one character, technically he's
playing a lot of characters, isn't it?
Cuz he's got that character playing characters.
It's interesting. I wonder if it's the first multi
sellers movie because they do it brilliantly, you know, the way
they introduce him as a comedian, there was also
completely phony. You know, he's this jolly
Scotsman, but he's actually a vile human being.
Don't fetch your nails. Shut up, Angel manners.
Well, you have got yourself into a proper pickle and you've been
listening at the door again. Well, I'm really trying to be
helpful, you know? Go on, say it.
Say it. I'm tired again.
Yes, strikes me you can best start looking for another
appointment. It's the end of we selling
McGregor, you know. Don't bite your nails.
Did you listen because I sent you the the whole original
recording of Ned's Atomic Dustbin?
Did you listen right to the end, which has got like the BBC duty
announcer, yes, the Goon Show? Which was recorded, was produced
by John Brown. Harry Seacombe is now appearing
in large as Life at the Opera House, Manchester and Peter
Sellers in Brouhaha at the Oldwich Theatre, London.
But Spike had written that for the duty announcer, and the duty
announcer didn't bother reading the last bit that Spike had
written, which was Spike. Milligan is appearing on The
Goon Show. That's a classically mildly
bitter Spike Milligan moment there.
I think he always felt that everybody else did well after
The Goon Show apart from him also because he was the writer
as well, doing everything with the goons.
It is that kind of, you know, everyone's off to have a party.
I'm still set here working at 4:00 in the morning.
But yes, to a certain extent it is easier to be an actor or a
singer like Harry Secombe. But they work flipping hard as
well. And he was not sure to work.
You know, he did pretty well. There's a lot of comics who did
not work until their dotage, but Spike did.
Yeah, yeah. His last one of his last
appearances on television was in a S Club 7TV special.
But it was It was shortly before he died and there was a there
was a year 2000 S Club 7. What was it?
Steps. I always get those two mixed up
steps or S Club 7A summer special TV show hour long
extravaganza. And they had them, you know,
performing songs and whatnot. And then they'd have these quite
humorous sketches in between the songs and you know, the members
of S Club 7 or Steps, you know, they weren't as good actors as
what a screens, and let's put it that way, but they did these
sketches. And one of them was set in a gym
and you had for no reason at all, we had Spike, very elderly,
very frail Spike, Milligan, and they called him Spine instead of
Spike. And then he sort of waved his
fist at them and said it's Spike, it's Spike, and then ran
out the door. It was terrible.
Let's track that down. Yeah, there's a.
There's a bit, there's quite a bit in this where Sellers plays
the Prime Minister in this in this episode, and it's
obviously, I'm guessing it's meant to be McMillan, but it's
not. It's not an impression of
McMillan, but is it an impression of McMillan?
I'm not sure. I think McMillan had quite a
sort of patrician Well, we're a few years away from the
establishment when don't forget, it was considered quite shocking
for Peter Koch to do an impression of Harold Harold
McMillan, although his impression was a bit more
negative. So it's hard to say at this
distance, but they did do Churchill sometimes.
But yeah, but he got slapped over the wrist for doing
Churchill. That's probably why they kind of
elided it a bit with not quite McMillan voice.
Yeah. Here's a CB on account now.
Would you like to Would you like to try for the night?
Star and Gata? It's OK with you, Sir.
It's all right with me. Good.
Welcome back tomorrow with Huey Green until the end of Sailors.
Farewell. There's also a reference to Lord
Hailsham, and I always contend that Lord Hailsham was a was a
default or like a reliable comedy comedy name beloved of
comedians in the 60s and 70s like The Two Ronnies and Python.
Does that name, it was always, there was always references to
Lord Hailsham in 60s and 70s comedy shows.
Well, it was a good name, but let me just check something.
Also Quintin Hogg. Well, he was Quintin Hogg.
That was a fat man. So he was an easy cipher for
he's as fat as Lord Hailsham or, you know.
Right. Was that a tent?
No, it's Lord Hailsham's new jacket, that sort of thing.
And I think he was a fairly colorful character.
He may have been the man about whom somebody, a woman, said
that making love to Lord Hailsham was like having.
I was Lord Goodman, having a wardrobe fall on you with the
key still in the lock. No, that was Nicholas Soms,
wasn't it? That's next to the Soms.
It may have been before that, but yeah, the Lord Hailsham was
a big bloke called Quintin Hall. That's all I can really know.
But yeah, there were names in the goon shows that Lady Docker
who I had to look up. Yeah, and she was basically a
very extravagant woman who went through her husband, Lord
Docker's fortunely, great speed. And she was the kind of person
who had pink Rolls Royces and so forth, but Lord Hailsham
literally a bit more conservative.
Yeah, because there's there's a bit where the reasons Neddy's
got a three feet of wooden leg stuck to his head with a hat on
the top. And somebody, somebody says, oh,
that's this Lord out you doesn't mean anything but either surreal
in a proper way. So it's disappointing for me
when I watch things that are meant to be surreal and
discovered that the joke was in fact topical gag.
Which no longer makes any sense. I prefer it when they're
meaningless. Yeah, yeah, there's the
introduction of Moriarty. I always enjoy Grit Pipe and
Moriarty at this in this period of the Goon Show when they're
really on their uppers. They're really sort of poverty
stricken wretches. Moriarty's introduced as Count
Jim Wakey Wakey Mariati, which I'm guessing is a reference to
Billy Cotton. You're too young to remember
Billy Cotton I presume? No, but I'm aware of the slogan.
And grit pipes line, because they're they're all sharing
Henry Crun's night shirt and grit pipes line.
There's people in this night shirt trying to sleep.
It's very similar to his line. From a couple of shows earlier
where he says keep quiet. Do you want us both out of the
suit? It's yeah, I mean they are the
strangest couple. They're probably in a sexual
relationship. But I love, I love the it's the
classic thing about Sellers acting and Elegans that, you
know, Sellers voice is a small Valentine dial style.
Well, Daddy and grip and Moriarty is just a noise.
He hardly ever says a coherent sentence.
You talk about that. It's a complete Milligan
nonsense voice, and it's just a great control.
He's a scribble, you know, grit, pipe.
Thin is a is a photograph, and Moriarty is a scribble.
Stop that revolting scratching. If you go back to, yeah, five
years before this. Moriarty was suave in his own
way. It was a completely different
voice. It was Milligan doing a rather
sophisticated Continental type voice, if you like, for want of
a better word. Exactly, Blur, you said he had
money. Steady, Dear Moriarty, look what
he's written. His IOU on Sir Pristi.
Bombetto. A treasure map.
Yes, this is the map of Andre Shellot's mine.
So. Half for you, half for me.
Now we can't twist each other a partner.
But wait. As soon as we reach America, we
must make for the lost gold mine.
And then gold. Gold.
And then gradually as the show went on, very gradually.
He just kind of gave up, just started doing like you say this
verbal, but everything. It's like everything in the Goon
Show gradually would fall to bits or decay or become drab.
You know, there's a lot of color, but there's no, there's
not a lot of beauty in the Goon Show.
I would say, well, awkward things come to an end.
So so. Yeah.
So is, is there anything else you wanted to say about this
particular show or the goons in particular?
I think I pretty much said it. I think the only thing I will
say is the sort of elasticity of the Goons reputation that you
hear them, you love them, you go through sort of embarrassing
like I like the Goon show, it's this.
And then you meet people go oh God, the goons course completely
unlistable nowadays. And you think that's a bit true,
but then you go back to an average show like Meds Atomic
Dustbin and there's stuff in it that you just my God, nobody
could do this, you know, there's always a diamond in the Merc and
it's always worth persevering. There's always at least one
great sequence, like in this one, the doggy.
Like the doggy, which is the. Non talking doggy so.
David, what are you working on at the moment?
What's happening in the world? I've just been listening to
edits of a radio series I wrote, or Whatever Happened to Baby
Jane Austen with French and Saunders, which is on in
December this year. Okay.
And that is keeping me happy. Radio.
I think when you were on last time, was that in sort of
development? Maybe.
Probably there was a long gap between the two series and a
long gap before the first series went out.
So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
And are you writing any more books?
You had, Ricky Time. I was trying to write a novel at
the moment, helping other people with their, excuse me, film
scripts, just doing bits here and there.
It's a quiet, yet busy time. All right, David, we'll listen.
It's been brilliant. Thank you so much.
And thank you, Tyler. It's been great.
And all the best. We'll talk again.
Looking forward to it. Cheers then.
Have a good one. Thanks again to David.
Next week, something different. See you then.
Bye. I don't want me to think I'm so
strong. Some are still keeping my not
sleeping around.