The. Hello and welcome to Goon Pod
and a very Merry Christmas to you all.
As this is going out on the day itself, I imagine most of you
won't be listening to it until all the excitement is over and
the the the Turkey's dispatched, the relatives have gone home and
the washing up is a looming prospect.
But let's face it, there's nothing worth watching on the
telly. Think of this as an agreeable
alternative to The Chase and Misses Brown's Boys.
Now today I am incredibly privileged to be joined for a
second time by by the man who more than anybody else I would
say, has kept the memory of The Goon Show alive through his
outstanding audio restoration work which stretches back nearly
40 years and the results of which we can all enjoy through
the commercial releases, notably the The Goon Show Companions and
of course, BBC Sounds. And it still astonishes me when
I listen to a Goon show which has been returned to its
original broadcast length with previously removed material put
back in and you can't hear the joint at all.
And especially when it's a show which I'm I'm used to hearing in
a somewhat muddy form that now's sharp and crisp and fresh.
And for all that, we must thank my guest today, Ted Kendall.
Hello Tyler, nice to be back. Thank you for coming back.
And yes Ted, your last chat with me was so favourably received
that it was felt imperative that you come back.
People were crying out for it. And so very kindly you have.
And you've agreed to answer some listeners questions.
They're not all about the Goon Show, but the majority are,
perhaps unsurprisingly, about the Goon Show.
So I'm just going to go through with no particular order.
And 1st question from Graham Lindsay Foote.
Yeah, friend of the show. He says your work on the Green
Shirt Compendium was, as most agree, definitive with all
projects like this. Was there a time after the shows
had been completed and issued when something new turned up
that made you think Rats. I wish I'd have had that when I
was restoring this show. Of course.
It's an occupational hazard when you're doing this sort of thing.
The most glaring example, which isn't strictly goons but it did
turn up in the compendium, was Omar Khayyam Show.
Oh yes. From memory, I think it was
episode 3 was really not terribly good.
And shortly after that came out, some kind fellow got in touch
and said, look, look, I've got this box of tapes that my dad
recorded. Would you hang on to them for
safekeeping and that sort of thing?
So I said, yeah, do that. And there, if you please, were
six Omer Kayems in as good of air quality as you could
reasonably want. So the short answer is yes, it
does happen. OK, so then begs a follow up
question from Richard Moore. And I suppose this this talking
about your entire career, really, but what was your most
exciting find of previously lost material, goons or otherwise?
This silence come to you, cursed of where the hell do I start?
A few things have turned up. I mean, if we're talking about
goons actually stumbling across the dreaded batter, putting her
on the Mark 2, which we talked about before, that was pretty
seismic. It was the first piece of
material that Wilmot hadn't recorded and didn't know about.
If it weren't for Roger and his work, I I wouldn't have gone
into this line of work at all. But actually, to be able to go
beyond what he'd done was quite a nice feeling.
Then I knew this guy Peter Bold, jazz buff and broadcasting
engineer, and he had various odd tapes about him.
I was doing some work for Hep was a jazz label worked out of
Edinburgh. And so was he.
And we got chatting over time and he said got a couple of
tapes with goons on, I think. I think they're, they're more
your your field than mine. Take them away, see what you can
do with them. And it turned out that one of
those tapes was largely unedited line tape of the Call of the
West, which forms a large part of the of the issued version.
It had been played on the magnetized head at at some time,
so it rumbled a bit. So some work needed doing on it.
But that that was a pretty interesting find.
Fortunately for us folks, a bear 10 miles away, the US Cavalry
were in the area and I'm going to I start off it again.
It's murder. It's all what?
Fortunately for us folks, a bear 10 miles away, the US 6th
Cavalry were in the area. In the infamous T3 wall that I
think we've talked about before spooled back a bit.
Bit of context. Coventry Cathedral was flattened
during the war in in the infamous raid in 1941.
It it was partially rebuilt. When I say partially rebuilt,
yes, it was completely rebuilt, but the rebuild incorporated
part of the ruins more or less untouched.
This was a big civic event and it needed to be marked by a big
work of some kind. And Benjamin Britten was
commissioned to write a work and he came up with the War Requiem.
Now the original performance, the the premier performance of
of the Mall Requiem didn't go too well, and the recording of
it was, some say, conveniently lost.
And I found copies in duplicate of that performance in the T3
wall. To my eternal chagrin, I didn't
actually take a copy of it. I sent both copies off to sound
archives and whether they put them in the bin subsequently, I
don't know. When I was at transcription, I,
I worked peripherally on a, on a program actually around the war
Requiem called. The idea was good.
And that was partly built on the premise that nobody now knew
what the original performance sounded like.
So I suppose the the emergence of that would have been a little
bit embarrassing. Actually, can I just throw one
in myself? Question.
Yes, just occurred to me because I recorded an episode of Goon
Pod last week about the Goon show A Christmas Carol from
series 10. Body is dead I.
Love. That yes.
And through doing research for the show, I understand, and this
is the first time I'd heard about this, that on the same
night they recorded that, they also recorded a very short
segment for the Falklands, for forces in the Falklands.
Are you aware of that or did you know about that?
There is one thing which I was played and when I went back to
the bloke who played it to me he denied all knowledge and this
may have been it. It was 3 goons introducing
record requests for some forces outfit and and this was done
under partly under the auspice of of BFBS, but it was done at
the goon show session and this guy had hundreds of tapes.
What? What has happened to them, I
don't know. Yeah.
OK. Here's a question which is a bit
more about the the technology that you use, Jeff Walker says.
What did Ted start off with when he started making early forays
into audio? What equipment did he use and
what is the most recent equipment he has introduced?
If you'll forgive me, that contains a barely concealed
assumption that audio is about the kit you use.
The myth has grown up with the rise of home studios that
solutions to problems are equipment based, and by and
large they're not. They're knowledge based,
knowledge and experience. And the original restorations
done in the 80s, I mean, I was done very largely with
conventional studio equipment, which was basically I was doing
the stuff in the BBC. So we're talking about student
tape machines. They had their own assembly
desks made by Tweed Audio in Kelso with some very nice
equalization, very natural sounding, very smooth.
Anything else was done with an external clock technique. 3rd
octave equalizer. That was where we started and
and the initial stuff was was done with block and blade on
that. I suppose the next advance was
to use in digital audio tape for capture.
Editing was still on quarter inch with block and blade for
some time until I bought my first Sadie.
And once I could do digital editing, there was more scope
for the trickier stuff. As time went on, I started using
Cedar kit for the restoration. I'm pleased to say I'm still on
speaking terms with the people from Cedar.
I've been, I've been criticizing the kit in private and I hope
constructively for some time. And the first few years was was,
you know, they were producing stuff and I was trying it and
breaking it and saying no, no, no.
And then suddenly it all sort of came together and, and the stuff
was really useful and didn't muck about with the signal, but
took a lot of the muck out. And at that point I felt really
confident in using it and I've used it ever since.
And that must be getting on 30 years now, ideally, if you've
got the space for it. The Quad electrostatic I think
is still unrivalled as a loudspeaker in a lot of
respects. It has its weaknesses.
They can't get very loud, doesn't have an awful lot of
bass, and it's very fussy about the rooms that you put it in.
I was originally using electrostatics for one reason,
not they didn't work in the room.
And again, for the last 30 years I've been using PMC speakers.
There's a personal connection there, and Pete Thomas and I go
back a long way. We first bonded over the
problems of dubbing 78 and I've had two or three pairs of his
speakers and and for me they they tell me what I need
domestically. I have the pair of the little
BBC bookshelf speakers, LS35A for the Conyuchanti.
I bought those in 1978. The dealer was having a summer
sale. Cost me all of £150.
What 1978? Yeah, and 40 years later, they
are still doing the biz. Brilliant.
So I'm very pleased about that. And and domestically for
amplification, it's nearly always been quad because it just
sits there and it works, it's reliable and it sounds better
than some of the high end people will ever believe.
My next question was calmatic. With shows where even your best
efforts there's a clear audible distinction between cut
material, drop back in and the rest of the episode.
Has technology now made it possible to totally standardise
the sound? Up to a point up to a point and
and one can do better in some respects.
The the latest versions of CD hiss, for instance, you can push
a bit harder before it becomes obviously over processed or you
get odd noises coming in for all actually is an episode that
comes to mind where there is the transcripts an issue 93 I think,
or whatever it was. And there is the John RTE estate
and those are the sources and as far as I'm aware, there are no
others. Now the John RTE acetate was
done obviously on first or second transmission.
It was done in period, which would be what early 55 I think.
And that was off AM. And you have a very obvious step
in quality between insert and and and and main recording.
And there is a point at which the information simply isn't
there to dig out. You can to a very large degree
disguise that and, and, and I suppose disguising that is a lot
of the art of what I do. But there are still things where
where where it's a fudge too far.
And you see, I had a similar situation with scratch.
Oh yeah, I think some material has actually turned up since
which may allow one to do a better job.
But at the time, again, it was John RT and it was had very
heavy Hector lines on it and there was no way it was going to
cut in obtrusively. Now with for Ogg, I just ran the
thing as a complete show and left the changing quality across
the edit as it was. With scratch, I jumped the other
way and I put the extra material in the bonus disc.
So which approach is right? I'm not terribly sure, but the
the aim always was to have the quality consistent enough that
the comic flow wasn't disturbed by anything extraneous.
While Ned Seagoon is analyzing the fog, may I take this
opportunity of wishing all Green Staters a very Merry Christmas.
Get your friends to join in the refrain.
Diggity Ditch and 2468. Who do we appreciate?
Greenslade and now Fordog Chapter 8.
Graham Lindsay, footfall enough, thinks he's He might have a copy
of Ford in his loft on open reel from 1970.
Yeah, unfortunately. By that point, that will be the
transcription service version. I'm almost certain of it for all
I don't think was ever repeated in period.
At least I don't think there's any record of it now.
You know, if if it's a tape from the 1950s that was entirely
different complexion on things, but the goons were virtually
absent from BBC Radio during the 60s.
There might have been half a dozen shows up to like 1969 when
there was a a repeat season. Yeah.
If by any chance it is from the 50s, then yes.
OK, get him to go up until the loft and ascertain.
Speaking of recordings and discs and tapes and things, you know,
just Stevenson asks, does Ted have access to Spikes recordings
that his daughters ever seen in that documentary, which is the
Spike Milligan's unseen archive documentary from 2002, where
there was these fascinating glimpses of all these tapes from
the Goon Show period? I've never actually been in
touch with the family. That's partly inhibition on my
part. After all, I'm only an engineer
only. Well, no, no, but I mean, you
know, I might be a good one, but I am.
I mean, that's stratum, right?
You know, it would certainly be nice to, you know, have a look
and see what's there. On the other hand, I believe and
say this is only a belief. I believe that a lot of them are
dubs of John R TS acetates. Oh, right.
OK. Some of them obviously aren't
the the you know the the second series tapes that the second
series episodes obviously aren't, but for archival
purposes it would be nice to dot the IS and cross the T's.
OK. OK, Next question, getting away
from the goons. Yes, Walter Dunlop.
I've often wondered about Ted's discovery of the Journey into
Space TS discs. I'd love to know more about it,
where they were, how he discovered them, what sort of
state they were in, etcetera. OK, well when you talk about
Journey Into Space, I suppose I have to say something about the
late Barry Hill who was one of the pioneer fanatical radio show
collectors in this country. And when I started looking
further afield than the BBC for Goon material, I fairly soon
stumbled across Barry. And of course, you know, I got
fairly mercilessly pumped because he was a contact inside
the BBC and this was, you know, he regarded me as as a means to
an end, I suppose, which is fair enough.
I mean, it's what fanatics do all the time.
And basically he wouldn't belt up about Journey into Space.
And this convinced me that there was there was probably some
mileage in going looking for it. And initially I was without a
clue. And then at some point when I
was at transcription service, I discovered that the program
archive went back quite a long way.
It didn't go back nearly as far as it did up to about 1975 when
Malcolm Frost, who was the original head of transcription
service, retired. At that point they'd kept the
metal and sample pressings of just about everything, as far as
I understand it. But then new head came in and
costs had to be cut. And of course metal matrices are
very valuable in terms of scrap metal.
So an awful lot of stuff went and there was very, very little
before about 1954, and a lot of the disk archive was in this
rather dingy industrial unit in Acton, not E Acton N Acton.
OK, Yeah. So Blue Bottle had nothing to do
with it anyway. Occasionally I would because it
was becoming fairly obvious. I got an archival bent and and
and occasionally 11 would go over and try and retrieve a tape
from there. And I was opening boxes and
thinking, well, some interesting stuff here.
Nobody seems to have catalogued it.
A lot of the paperwork had been destroyed.
So the long and the short of that was that Sound Archives
paid my salary for six months while I went through and
catalogued N Acton and there were 129 boxes I seem to
remember of 16 inch pressings and it was somewhere halfway
through, I can't exactly remember when I saw the first
disc of The Red Planet. So great insight, excitement
ensued. I was went, tore through the
boxes, found all 20 episodes of The Red Planet head back and
made safety copies as quickly as I could.
Shortly after that I found the world in peril.
You know, that was excitement enough to start with.
And then of course, the question of Operation Luna arose, which
was not in North Acton, which we found a bit curious because the
Operation Luna, the transcription held was the
remake, the 13 episode remake. By his own admission, Charles
Chilton reckoned that the original Operation Luna does not
warrant 20 episodes. I think he took mate episodes
actually to leave Earth. Right.
But in any case, neither version seemed to be extent and it was
only a year or so later when I was actually looking through the
library as opposed to archive discs actually in Kensington
House that I came across a set of operation lunar on on on 10
inch micro groove. The difference between library
and archive is that basically library discs were stamped with
red library on the on the label and all and sundry on the start
could pull those out and play them for whatever purpose they
they they could contrive. Whereas the archive discs were
kept to ensure the retention of the program.
And therefore they were basically intended to be played
only by engineering staff for the purposes of copying and and
archiving. So so this set of disks was was
a little bit battered. Nevertheless, it was all there
and that's where they came from. Now, the original journey into
space, which was actually called Operation Lunar at the time that
was subsequently applied, all that remains of that is I think
5 minutes from the final episode, which was in sound
archives and which came out on one of the box sets.
But that's that's essentially it.
And you know, it took a long time to find this stuff.
And then of course you know George Riggs who was this ex
Navy man who who ran tape library, you know, he
subsequently said well well of course they were there all the
time. I knew they were there.
So he was a nice bloke George, so I didn't argue with him.
Yeah. You know success has many
fathers. Failure is an orphan.
So OK, the next question I think I know the answer to, but I'll
ask you obviously. Just for the hell of it, why
not? Ian Porter, Which show was which
goon show was the most difficult to restore to Ted's own personal
satisfaction? And at what point did he have to
say sod it? It's as good as I'm going to get
it now I'm going to say the repeat of 1985 or the the the
remake of 1985, am I right? That, that that's certainly in
the in the most difficult handful.
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, I you know, we mentioned
the scratch if. I was Prince Renania.
Do you know what I would do? I would put on my best marriage
shorts, sweep her into my strong thin arm, and carry her back to
my palace of darken mystery. Where's that the?
Cow shed at the butter market boom.
Call of the West, actually, I had to wrestle pretty damned
hard to get that rumble out of it.
Oh yes, but you know, we we managed that incidentally in,
in, in in Call of the West. There was quite a was quite an
interesting, but as you as you may recall, it's one of the few
shows that doesn't have one of the usual play outs.
It's a thing called Bohemia After dark.
The line tape had various droppings on it.
So I had the last sort of I think 45 seconds of the play out
which actually went to an end and I was editing between that
and the transcription service master which faded out.
OK. And it was quite an interesting
exercise to undo that fade and then attach it to the remaining
full level tail that I had. And in the end I was boosting
the the outgoing fade 2025 DB, something like that.
Fortunately, there was quite a lot going on.
So, so, so you can't actually hear the hiss is coming up, but
that was a tricky one. But but that came off and and
that wasn't a case of sort it. That was a case of fine, done
that ticked off move to the next one.
I think. Yes, obviously there were some
of the early stuff where I had kind of like second generation
stuff off off, off wire. I mean, there's one infamous bit
which sloughs to a stop in one of the compendia.
But there you are. That's all there is of that show
and that's as good as that's ever going to be because the,
the, the route to that original I think is closed off now.
So, so there was a bit of that in in very early stuff.
There was another show where again, early material where
whether it was a piece of muck on the head or something, but
the thing was very muffled for the 1st 10 minutes and then got
a lot clearer and one had to sort of equalize that so that
the thing would run at least reasonably well.
So apart from those few shows we've mentioned, most of the
compromising happened in the in in the later volumes with the
with the sort of prehistoric shows.
Just on that question from Holly Anger, is there a missing goon
show that would be #1 on your wish list?
Like Archie and Goonland for example.
I'm not really not any longer really losing sleep over the
very early stuff because it seems to me that at that point
it was still a show in development.
I mean, I mean, the fourth series was nearly there, yes.
And it would be nice to have some fourth series, some more
4th series stuff. Come to think of it, it would be
nice to have some more Benteen material.
Yes. Whether it was tell us much more
than we already know. I, I, I, I'm not I'm not too
sure. I, I know for a fact because I,
I delved into all the memos that were left at transcription with
regard to the goons. The goons took off when they
took off, they took off quite suddenly in in initially
transcription didn't know how they were going to be received.
They mounted a promotional series called Variety Parade,
which ran the gamut of the variety output they they they
were offering. And two of these shows were goon
shows. And they had spoken
introductions from the head of variety transcription.
And it was rather intriguing that the first one said, well,
you know, this is a new and unconventional form of humor.
Give it a try. And the second one was saying,
well, you know, you might have liked the first one, please give
it another try. OK.
Yeah. And and and then it, it took off
like the proverbial rocket to the extent that CBC wanted more
goon shows and the word went out to, to, to BH, what have you
got? The 4th series?
And the answer was practically nothing.
This inquiry was about 1956 I think, so it would have been 2-3
years before. And the answer was no.
They've all been wiped long since and it and it and it was
that fact that eventually led to the vintage Goon series with
with the full series shows being being reworked.
Sorry I got off the point. What was the?
Point, well, no, we've kind of covered it.
What was is there a missing goon show that that you particularly
holding out for? Just on the same tack, Richard
Moore asks what is your non goons Holy Grail, IE what audio
material would you most like to see recovered?
It's a big question, isn't? It Oh yeah, only slightly
incidentally, going back to Archie and Goonland for a
moment. Oh yeah, the reason I don't
really lose any sleep over. I mean, it would be nice, right,
to be have have a nice copy of the goons hit whales.
Yes, right. It would be it would be nice to
have a better copy of radio show China story.
Yeah, mind you actually, come to think of it, come to think of
the problems I had with the radio show version of China
story, I could probably do better now because I seem to
remember one of the major problems with the end of China
story. The the one of the that was a
companion of two or three recordings.
But I, I think, I think the best one tended to wow a bit over the
last few minutes. And of course, the last bit of
major Cedar kit I did buy was something for dealing with wow
speed variations. The thing about Archie and
Goonland is that it was a construct that you've got two
different characters and all right, they're fantasy.
Each of them one's firmly rooted in reality and one's fantasy,
and it would be nice to hear with curiosity.
But as I say, I'm not losing sleep over it.
Non goons, non goons, non goons. Well, well, everybody would like
to hear the all the Secam Hancocks.
Of course. That's that's a given.
No, there are some, I mean I've got interests over quite a quite
an area. There's there's quite a lot of
Kathleen Ferrier material which is completely extinct.
I've done something to bring back what there is.
I mean, yes, I've been involved in, in bringing back a fair
amount of stuff which was thought lost.
I mean, I mean, what of course is missing completely is
anything of George Orwell. He broadcast extensively during
the war, external services, but there appears to be no recording
of him at all. That would be intriguing.
Yes, I've obviously been doing this too well.
Listen, let me ask you this question, then let me ask you
this, because this might trigger, not trigger you, but it
might make you. Think it's absolutely.
Yeah, Graham, Lindsey Foot again.
Yeah, really. The early Django Reinhardt
restorations using Cedar. Yes.
More difficult than going share restorations?
Or was it made easier that quintet of the Hot Club of
France songs are only a few minutes long rather than 30
minutes or so? Am I comparing apples to oranges
here? Yes.
OK, next. Question No, no, no, no, no, no.
I, I yeah. It, it, it is a different, it's
a slightly different discipline. It's a different set of
reflexes. The attraction about working off
a 78 generally, you know, pre war 78, is that it's a very
direct connection to the actual event that a 78, which isn't a
dub and dubs aren't very common. So we'll leave those aside, but
a 78 is really a slice of time, not much about with not
adulterated. That is actually what happened
in those 3 1/2 minutes in front of that microphone.
And that to me is, you know, quite a, quite a thrill in some
ways, especially when you've got, you know, creative genius
like like Reinhardt on, on the end of your microphone.
Because I mean, I've, I've spoken about this before, but I
mean, to me, the guy's miraculous, you know, even if he
played a bum note, he, he made it sound as if he meant it.
And and and, you know, it's, it's, it's wonderful stuff.
The disciplines from disk and tape are are different.
Obviously the aim is the same, but the techniques are different
and and and the duration is not a particularly limiting factor.
You know, there are obviously geometrical differences like a a
disc, the linear speed of the medium as opposed to rotational
speed. The the groove going past the
stylus is going past at something like over double the
speed at the outside of the disc that is at the inside of the
disc. Hence end of side distortion,
which used to be a bugbear of playing records in general.
Refinements in pickups and stylus profiles have largely
eliminated that now. But but you have that also you
have with with a 78, you have the filler in the material which
was made to make it stand up to the steel needles in use at the
time. The idea, incidentally, was that
the needle would would actually be ground to fit the groove by
the first few turns of the record and then would remain
reasonably OK until the end of the side and then you changed
it. But you know this, this abrasive
filler causes crackle over time. It tends to get damp because
part of the filler, besides the shale which provided the
abrasion was certainly from 1930 or so, was cotton flock, which
provided bulk and was cheap. The problem with cotton flock,
of course, is it absorbs moisture and if the pressing's
got a tall damp, that tends to exacerbate the crackle because
it just makes little pork holes through through the surface.
On the few occasions I've been able to play 78 S out of Emis
own archive, which has been temperature controlled since
birth, the surface can be remarkably quiet because the
cotton flock hasn't hasn't had the chance to expand and disturb
the surface. But as your linear speed drops
towards the center of the disk, the pitch of the crackle lowers.
There's more energy at the lower frequencies.
And this was one of the things I was very hot on with cedar to
start with. The same look, you know, your
stuff's fine at the fine at the outside of the disk, but it gets
worse towards the center and fairly short.
All they sorted that out to be fair, but that's one of the
things to look out for. And and the the other major
thing with a with a disk is that there's a vast variety of actual
groove profiles. The shape of the groove, not
just the the size of tip, which is optimum for it, but the shape
of the tip. See modern LP's modern LP
modern. Well, never mind, we'll let that
go. But but the modern LP's cut with
AV shaped bottom to the groove 78, it's more AU shaped cross
section. So you don't use a standard tip
because it just ends up skating around on the bottom.
You have to truncate the tip so that the tip is held by the
walls of the groove and that is where most of the well, that is
where all the information actually is.
Now to get past wearing things, you sometimes have to use
different sizes of tip just to crawl up and down the groove one
and find the bit that hasn't been ground out before.
That is that is vital the proper fit of the stylus in the groove.
And that's something that you have to get right and you can't
subsequently correct for. There's a question here, Adam.
It's quite a lengthy question. By the way.
Adam Yates, in the last conversation, I was very
interested when Ted mentioned how sometimes restoration can
ruin the original broadcast. For example, noise gates are
overused. So you have a kind of baffled
tinny puppy effect. He mentioned he likes to keep
his natural sound as possible in the restoration, so if there's a
touch of hiss, so be it. It all makes sense.
Sounds more organic, like keeping grain in film
restorations. I'd like Ted to expand more on
the natural restoration process versus overuse of restoration.
OK, I'll quietly skirt the question of film restoration,
because that's not really my field.
Of course, I do prefer a film to look like a film.
And lots of video. I mean, that's a sort of an
enculturation thing, I suppose. But if I know something's been
shot on film, I'd like it to look like film.
Yes. I think a lot, some put it like
that, some video that I see is over restored to the point where
you can see the artifice. I think that is probably the
key. You see, to me, the best audio
restoration is very self effacing, that my ideal is for
the customer not to have any notion that the audio was
damaged in the first place. And yeah, that probably
contributes to people not appreciating what goes into it,
at least the people who sign the cheques.
Yeah. Oh, little social comment there.
Yeah. I, I, I think the guide is that
if the restoration draws attention to itself, then you've
gone too far. Sometimes you have to tread a
little on that side. I'm put in mind of the end of
the spectre of Tintagel, where Segan is being carried off by
the men in white coats and he's babbling away about the way the
country should be. And Prince Philip will have to
go, you know. And that was in transmission,
but it wasn't in either of the transcription issues.
I can't imagine why and, and what I had available at the
time, I couldn't just have a dirty great block of hiss
appearing in the middle of that rant.
That would have upset the flow too much.
So I had to go slightly over there.
And that that phrase certainly in in the restoration I did at
the time. You'll probably do a bit better
now because Steve has moved on. That was slightly artifacty and,
you know, break my own rule. What did you say your name was?
King Arthur. King Arthur.
That's right. Yes.
Well, you better come with me, Your Majesty.
There's a plane van outside that all our King Arthur's and three
Napoleons have ridden in it. It's good enough for me.
Yeah, of course. This means the end of the House
of Windsor of God. Yes.
Prince Philip will have to go in.
You come with me, Your Majesty. It'll all be all right in a
moment. You just come out.
You Prime Minister. You've got the right bill.
You know, that's very kind of Your Majesty.
You fancy Island Wales is doing that at the moment.
I've said somewhere else that I work on this sort of basis of a
thing called music to muck ratio, which is completely
unscientific, subjective thing, but I know what I mean by it,
which is that you want to clear away.
I'm here over there in the plane of my speakers, is this
performance. I want to clear out as much of
the rubbish between me and that performance as I can without
actually doing it harm. And it takes skill, experience,
judgement, talent, whatever you want to call it.
A lot of it is down to flying hours and just being able to
having trained yourself to hear these things.
Yeah. And I know I keep coming back to
this. I, I, I, I I mean, the number of
times my son looked at the heavens when I said to him
experiences like gold. Grab it wherever you can.
That is the main thing. You just learn to judge these
things. A useful way of doing it.
I, I, I tended to do a lot of the sort of de clicking, de
hissing equalization more, more or less in one pass because
equalization and noise reduction kind of work together.
Depending on the equalization you're using, you can use more
or less noise reduction and noise reduction generally works
best when you're not driving it too hard.
So, so the easy thing to do is to flick back briefly to the
original sound and try and concentrate on the sound you're
trying to get out and then back to your process. 1 you say, are
you, am I, am I changing the sound I want?
It's a little bit difficult because, because obviously the,
the presence of hiss and other things affect your perception of
the sound that you want, but, but with practice it becomes
possible to do it. So yeah, it's a slightly
unsatisfactory answer. It's, it's, it's about skill and
judgement and practice. But the dangers of of, of over
restoration are real. You know, if restoration can't
be really well done, don't attempt it.
I, I think I, I think is the answer that that is it.
It's a bit like those there were those paintings weren't there in
that church in Spain. Oh God, yes.
Yes. I know what you mean.
Some, some, some some well meaning parishioner got to work
with the acrylic paint and absolutely ruined it, right.
Yeah. And, and, and sometimes it's a
question of self restraint, you know, you know, I have, I have
stuff right? Or I think, right.
Well, all I can do with this is preserve it.
And if the time and the opportunity and the technology
comes along, either me or somebody else will fix it.
But there's very little I can do with that except fix it in
digits which will survive better and and wait for somebody else
to do it. OK, here's a question sort of
outside of, you know, your job, It's it's more on a personal
level. What?
Sandy Mason What's Ted's favorite goon show?
Favorite or least favorite? Or both?
Yeah, I, I, I'm a little reluctant to talk about least
favorite show because one's always aware of the strain that
Spike was under producing these things Apropos.
I, I do occasionally look at the Facebook groups and somebody
said something about, oh, in the 50s, it was absolutely
marvellous just waiting for next Sunday to see what wonderful
things would, would, would, would come over the radio.
Yes. And I said I, I sort of put in a
comment to the effect that I think Harry and Peter felt the
same way while Spike was there in the engine room digging away
producing this stuff. And, and, and they were sort of
I, I think I've seen something to the effect that, you know,
that it, it was for them. It was a time for wishing for
every day of the week to be a Sunday because they would be let
out from the variety stuff into this playground that really good
strikes for them. And, you know, I was just trying
to sort of, you know, draw the thing and then some somebody
came back and said, well, many people contributed to the goon
show. You know, I'm sorry, I saw the
red rag. I just snapped back and said, Oh
yes, absolutely. See my 14 volumes of the Gunshow
compendium for chapter and verse, which was mean of me.
But you know, yes, as as as far I mean, there are some shows
which are a bit weak. The eighth series shows still
have enough in them for me to like them.
I think the one that stands out to me as weak is second of the
sixth series, The Secret Escritoire.
OK, yeah, to me that's just a bit forced.
Now I don't want to be overly critical because if you look at
the context, OK, dreaded pattern pulling herder Mark 2 was a last
minute replacement for summaries of coming in, which was a
special which never happened. It didn't happen because Merlin
couldn't complete the script because he was ill.
Yeah. OK.
Now, six series followed not very long after that.
After having thrown the typewriter, Eric Sykes
roundabout sinking of Westminster Pier, Eric Sykes
comes back for the first few shows to help spike out.
You see, I don't particularly mind the man who won the ball or
I love that. Yeah, you know, Yes, I am the,
you know, the, the like, you know, the man who won the ball's
got the running gag, you know, sea goon number.
Yeah. And and of course, the lost
emperor, I mean, I mean, that that turned up in the 1975
repeat series. So.
So that's fine. But no, I, I I I didn't say that
just strikes me as a bit false. But then, you know, Napoleon's
piano comes along the following week and always forgiven, of
course. Yes, It's magnificent.
Yeah. Favorite I I mean, it's awfully
dull, but I mean, I mean, coral of the West is a towering thing,
isn't it? See.
OK, I'm not that keen on it. Interesting.
Well, you see what what appeals to me about it is the pace and
and the assurance of it all. Granted, I suppose it's near
incomprehensible to somebody not absolutely steeped in the goons.
Perhaps his appeal isn't very wide.
But then you know, you know, if you close that off.
Of course, a lot of them are are are the ones that came out on
disc because they were reckoned as some of the best of the time.
And by and large, I can't fault George Martin's choice if you've
got dishonoured again. Yes.
Which is wonderful. Tell us about Dartmoor.
Yeah. Driving down the King's Highway
in one of his, one of His Majesty's prisons.
And you know, the thing that always makes me laugh in in in
Old Dartmoor is the sea battle. Oh yeah.
When, when, when, you know, when they when they put Eccles Ball
into the cannon and he's just sort of burbling away and the
chain is running just like, oh, brilliant, brilliant stuff.
Which rather begs the question, you know, if the peaks were
already out on Nehemiah, what the hell were you doing
restoring the rest of them? But I'll skirt that question
gently and just leave it as a trivial exercise for the
listener. For for what it's worth, my
favorite It's one that no one ever talks about.
It's the white box of Great Bardfield.
Oh, absolutely. Well, you see, it has that very
neat plot. Yes.
Does it not? And yes, it also has the most
infamous remark in the Goon show, which I won't repeat.
Oh, yes, yeah, twice, I think. Indeed, indeed.
But but it's, it's, no, it's, it's it's, I was going to say
it's one of the first plots which is really tight, but then
Lurgy strikes. Britain was pretty damn good
too, from that point of view. Yeah, so many of those Series 5
shows though, like Spanish Suitcase, they're quite tightly
plotted. Well, I think standards, I, I
think a lot of that is the site's influence.
Yeah. It gets argued back and forth,
doesn't it? Whether they did alternate weeks
or whether they collaborated on each script.
I'm not sure That could be teased out now.
I mean, if somebody can, it'd be interesting to see, but
certainly no, no, a lot of those, a lot of those shows are
very fine. Here's here's a question.
I don't quite, I'm not quite. It's not really.
It's kind of a question sort of. OK, OK.
Adrian Gregg, I'd like to hear the pick of the Goon series CN
1546 and 1645 as they are in simulated stereo.
I have a 15 minute bit I got from the GSPS 35 years ago.
Would be interesting to hear more.
Oh, and in restoring the shows with some of the missing bits at
the end of each reel of tape. I spoke to a guy who restored.
I'm Sorry, I'll read that again. And the TS copies he worked on
had all the cut materials spliced together at the end.
All right, let's, let's take the the pendant first because that's
got a shortage answer. In fact, the shortest answer to
that is maybe a lot of that depended on who the particular
engineer was doing the editing. Some were very cavalier and it
ended up on the floor and got swept up and that was the end of
that. Some were equally conscientious
and joined all the cuts together and put them behind the red, as
we say, the the red leader being the end of The Wanted program.
So for instance, the Hancock's half hours, which were the 26th
or 27 which were done for the reissues, nearly all of those
had the cuts after the red. So it was at least you had all
the material. I'm not going to say it was easy
and I'm not going to say it was straightforward because it was
neither. But but at least the material
was there. Sorry, what just cut?
Sorry to interrupt you. What was the thinking behind
keeping that cut material back in the 1950s?
Did they Were they thinking that far ahead about?
Having it all put in in the 1950s, there was practically no
material behind the red. Oh, right.
OK. In the 1960s, Pick of the goons,
the reissues of Hancock's Half Hour.
Right, right, right. OK.
There was more awareness that these were going to be something
for the ages and it would be a good idea to collect his stuff.
It may also have been the influence of the guy who by then
was looking after that material. Stan Stancliffe was originally
an engineer and then became a production assistant on Variety,
and it was he who drove Pick of the Goons and Hancock's Half
Hour reissues and early Hancock and the simulated stereo stuff.
And I think he had a little bit of more sense of what this
product actually was and that there may be some mileage in
being able to reassemble it for domestic transmission.
Again. I think he had half an eye to
the future. Yeah, I never met him.
So I'm guessing and, and I'm going on, I'm going on what
colleagues at transcription told me about him.
The the other reason for all this was, for instance, things
like certainly around the horn Transcription edited up their
own edition from a tape which they they they recorded
simultaneously with the transmission tape.
Yeah, somebody. Do you know what?
Just last week when I was talking about A Christmas Carol.
Yes, my guest Andy Bell, he'd attended a recording of Round
the horn back in the day. And so just that they at the end
of the recording proper, they the the cast then recorded bits
for for TS and he said the the audience was kind of respects
was spent by then. So the reaction was lessened.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's, it's retakes in.
Retakes in, in, in, in. Comedy shows generally are quite
difficult. Yeah, it very much depends on
your well, in television it depends on your floor manager,
because if you're floor manager is enough of character to keep
people in this sort of stage content and amusement and kind
of make a joke out of it. Look, guys, just just wipe all
that from your memory and laugh at this joke like you haven't
heard it before and sort of get the audience on your side.
Then that's then that's quite an asset.
Like one of the shows we have retakes extent for in goons is
Robin Hood. Dennis.
Please. Yes, the TS special and some of
those retakes fall completely on their face.
Partly because I think the inflections are wrong.
You know the lines aren't delivered.
Well, no, but also because I think the audience are fed up by
that point. Robin, don't call your men off.
Call them off to hear me. Come on by.
Come back, please. I don't do no more jokes like
that. We give in your jokes, your bad
jokes. All right, Well, we haven't got
any louder than ours. It's like in classical
recording, you know, the conductor has to if he's going
to do a correction tag, he has to get his tempo exactly the
same as it was. Otherwise the thing would jar
over the edit. He's like, hello, he's shifted
gear. And there there was one case in
I think piano of a conductor who was basically should have been
on the Subs bench by then, but he had 11 goes at recording the
first movement as Schubert's unfinished in 11 different
Tempe, at which point they abandoned the sessions that
we're not going to get anything issuable out of that.
So yes, sometimes it was that domestic were taking a recording
in the studio transcription. We're taking a recording down
the line and they were each editing up their own edition of
the show. Certainly first series around
the horn. There was quite a lot of that.
There were sort of great amounts of, of material which were
basically pulling out the show to length to cover for taking
out domestic and topical references elsewhere.
So that you still end up with a show round about 2728 minutes.
And, and, and that would be a reason for keeping the keeping
the cuts because they would be sort of no other copy of that
version. And you know, it was thought a
sensible thing to keep the cuts at that point.
Stereo goons is big subject. So I'll try and give you the
salient points. Simulated stereo started in
transcription service mid 60s, largely because stereo radio was
introduced in the USA long before it was standardized over
here. We had to wait for the EBU to
agree on the standard, which funnily enough turned out to be
the standard which was used in the states before they approved.
It was called the Zenith GE System, and after they approved
it they called it the Pilot Tone System or the Multiplex system.
But BBC Domestic didn't start transmitting any stereo
officially on on on Multiplex until 1966.
They were. Experiments from roundabout 1962
I think, and some in more regulars from 64.
But the the the actual service plus the infrastructure to
provide the stereo programs only started to build up from 1966
and wasn't completely in place until the early 70s.
Meantime, there was transcription service exporting
programs to America, where the demand was for stereo.
They'd been recording in stereo since 1962 quite extensively.
But there was this huge library of serious music, particularly
going back into the 50s, and there was seen to be some light
in in stimulating, simulating stereo.
Yes, let's say transcription called it simulated stereo.
You know, in, in, in the commercial disc market it was
usually electronically repro for stereo effect.
And the Germans abandoned all presents.
They just called it bright clang, which is basically means
wide sound. So there you are.
And and yes, you, you give the thing an impression of width by
frequency division and you add some reverberation.
If you're clever, you add the reverberation to the difference
channel. And if you're further clever,
you do your frequency division by putting some lumps and bumps
in the frequency response of the mono signal and moving that to
the left. And then you subtract that from
the sum, you subtract them from your original, and you put that
result over on the right. So somebody doesn't like your
artificial stereo. All they've got to do is press
the mono button and you're back with the original mono.
Oh, OK, right, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can
understand that, yeah. Well some, well a lot of people
in the 60s didn't and they did various odd things like delays
and all sort of things which just screwed up the sound in
stereo or mono. Transcription services
artificial stereo was actually quite good, particularly on
serious music. Now this obviously proved to be
a good seller in 1972. As we know, transcription
service did a multi track recording of the last Goon show
of all yeah, mix that down into stereo came out of the records a
film and a lawsuit, you know, and Oh no, that was something
else, wasn't it? Anyway, this went down very well
with the customers. So Stan thought, right, what
should we do? Can we render some of our Goon
catalogue into simulated stereo? Now EMI tried this in their
commercial issue of the Red Fort and 10 Downing St. yes, not very
good, no little little bit of spreads like bathroom acoustic
and didn't work, didn't work. And and Stan was approaching
this from a completely different thing.
And essentially how it was done was that each speech was
separately copied to another tape.
It was panned across the stereo image, and once that had been
done, you you had to sort of take the script and plan it out
as to how you were going to do it, obviously, otherwise you'd
get hopelessly lost. You'd have to cut the thing
altogether. The music items and music links
would have to be sort of spread in the sort of frequency
reverberation way I've described, and then the whole
thing would have to be meticulously cut together.
The final touch was a little reverberation to simulate PA
coloration. If you have any radio show
recorded in the studio, you have to feed some of the mixed signal
into speakers for the audience to hear because people are
performing to the microphone that that sound isn't going to
carry to the audience. You have to give them stuff over
speakers. Obviously you arrange matters so
that you don't get feedback, but you sometimes get a little bit
of coloration. So that fact was used to
advantage and put a tiny bit of sort of stereo reverberation
around the whole just to give the thing a sort of a frame so
that it didn't sound contrived. The individual panned voices
were also put through a a spreader so that they weren't
actually sort of pinpoints. So the whole thing had a had a
had vaguely sort of plausible feel to it.
Some of those shows were done very well indeed.
Some some of them were just done by engineers that this was this
was a job. They had to do it and they did
it all right. But it didn't have that quite
touch of class to it. Not going to name names, but
there were some guys who did a really very nice job indeed, and
others where it was merely adequate.
Now the interesting thing of course is that certainly at the
time it was thought better that Milligan didn't know about this,
which is why when you look at the Goon Show Companion, you
will see that the third and fourth series have the catalogue
number and stroke s s after them, and that is the only
reference to simulated stereo. OK, OK.
So the 3rd and the fourth series, the pick of the goons
were done in simulated hysteria. Later on pick of the goons 1 to
26 were done in simulated hysteria.
They were only issued on tape. The the 3rd and 4th series ones
were were issued on disk and 1:00 to 1:00 to 26 were tape
only and the remaining whatever it is 27 to 58.
I think from memory they were never done.
Yeah, I, I, I, I think Stan, Stan died at some point in this
process and I think that's more or less why it ran into the
sand. Nevertheless, those were quite
good. Now, I only worked out what was
going on here round about the time of the smash of the day
repeats in the early 80s. Oh yeah.
Because basically Radio 4 would go to transcription and say,
look, we want this, this and this show.
And the latest master would be pulled out and dubbed and sent
over to Radio 4. Sometimes a mono master was
used, sometimes a stereo master was combined to mono and the
mono tape was sent to Radio 4. And sometimes a stereo tape was
sent over and sometimes Radio 4 did not collapse it to mono.
And I was avidly taking these, the smash of the day goon shows
off air at the time because, you know, access was difficult.
That was that was shows like Queen, Queen Anne's reign.
Personal narrative, I think. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.
And, and, and some of those I remember I, you know, I've got
the Reebok setup and, and everything, FM stereo receiver
and, and I was playing this thing and, you know, I was
listening on the headphones and I'm thinking this thing has got
width. It's Nah, Nah, it can't be
anyway. So I, I, and then, then you sort
of start listening. I I string robberies, you see.
Oh yeah. And something alerted me in
string robberies, right? Because quite early on grip Pipe
says we must obtain a certain amount of cheap string.
Yes. Yeah, OK.
You listen to the stereo one, OK, we must is not grip pipe is
secum. Why I hear you say why?
Because at that point Moriarty is talking over grip pipe.
We. Must try and obtain a certain
amount of cheap string. So the two voices are together.
If you're doing this similar hysteria by cutting, you can't
have two voices together. So who did that show had to go
looking for? We must said by grid pipe.
In fact, it does appear it does appear further on, but it Sikkun
says it's only about two minutes later.
We must start investigations at once.
OK. And I think it's after Geldre
that Moriarty says there's a nationwide search for people
with two pieces of string. What?
We must leave England. So he'd gone a bit further.
He could actually have done that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With grip pipe.
Yeah, Oh God, that's almighty. Down a rabbit hole productions
present, but but that sort of struck me.
I mean, being the kind of analytical Eid being that I was
then and still am to an extent, I thought what is going on?
And gradually I sort of teased out what was going on.
And a couple of years later I joined transcription and then I
was able to talk to the guys who were involved in it, Tom and
Richard and people like that. And and then I might sort of
tease out the story. But but that's what it was.
It's fascinating. Well, yes, I, I, I mean, there
was some talk about putting them out commercially, but it was
deemed that it wasn't sort of unique enough to be commercially
viable. And in any case, I had to
confess, I mean, two minds about it.
It's a little bit like colorizing Laurel and Hardy.
And I'm not sure that adds much to be honest.
No, not, you know, the Goon show very large.
It was conceived as a mono thing and, and I think stereophonising
is a slightly questionable exercise.
It's, it's interesting to hear them and they, and they, some of
them, as I say, are beautifully crafted.
The question is whether it's misplaced ingenuity.
But then it was a product for a market at a given time, and it
worked. OK.
So one last question. I think we have time for Ted.
This again from Adam Yates. Adam says.
I'd like to know, was it hard work to get all the compendiums
released? Was there a lot of support
through what was a serious amount of content over probably
a 10 year period? Did momentum stalls all with the
BBC or could they see it was beneficial and well worth the
investment? The change in CD producers from
BBC Worldwide if I have this correct, maybe not to audio go
etcetera. Did the project have to be
presented as worthy again in order to continue production of
physical media? Yes, it did.
OK, When we talk about the Goon Show Compendium, there's one
name which I think has to be flagged up and that's Michael
Stevens, OK. He was the guy I worked to for
the vast majority of my time doing this, doing certainly
doing the compendium. And we, we were already into
doing the the two CD sets and Michael, as I remember it,
Michael floated it to me one day because there had been, you
know, the Hancock boxes, which I think preceded that.
And they gone down well. And, and the actual title, Goon
Show Compendium came out of his head.
And he said, well, what about it?
And of course, you know, I thought for all of a nanosecond
before I said, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
And we had sort of think of a marketing platform like, you
know, what we're going to do that was slightly different from
the original releases and things.
And by that point there was a bit more leeway in terms of
noise reduction techniques that I could like brighten up the
fifth series shows a bit without bringing the hiss up because
they were all done on the old AXB mics and didn't have quite
the crispness of the of the late 6th series and on.
So, so fine that that that was a platform to do it all.
It all began to happen and then it went quiet.
And as I remember it, a new guy had come in and he'd been
delegated doing the nuts and bolts of it and he'd done a mock
up of the cover and its predominant colour was purple.
And he took this to Norma Farnes and she went into orbit.
Sellers. Sellers would have been worse I
think. Well, yes, but of course, you
know sellers. Sellers hated the colour purple
and on that ground Norma wouldn't hear a word about it.
Oh, really? For nearly a year, as I remember
it. And it felt like an awful, awful
long time that she, she just wouldn't hear about it.
And, you know, Michael took me into his confidence over this
and said, look, you know, this thing is going to happen, but we
just have to bide our time and run it past again gently with
some better artwork and think it through better.
And the guy who's responsible, that's far as I remember,
curiously enough, he went to work for Norma Farms, but not
for long anyway. That that's, that's the sort of,
you know, thing. So there was Michael on the
inside of me, on the outside and, and between us we, we
steered this thing through many vicissitudes.
There was the, the takeover by audio go.
There was the collapse of audio go.
And I don't think it's any secret the collapse of audio go
was a fiasco on a par with British Leyland.
Well, the, the, the rather the Rover Group, when, when, when,
when Rover Group was taken over by basically a gang of four who
all did very well out of it. And the company just dribbled
away and was bought by the Chinese.
There were five people involved in audio go outsiders and they
did quite a good job of milking the company.
And it went down very suddenly and there was a lot of
bitterness around that. A lot of people felt very
betrayed. I mean, I was slightly insulated
because I weren't actually employed by them.
I could, you know, find out the work.
But a lot of these people very, you know, hardworking, dedicated
people in audio go BBC Worldwide, as was carried a lot.
A lot of the people carried over and and and and things.
Yeah, it it was a it was a bit of time, you know, you, you
could see how desperate people were because I mean, there were
there were like people's check copies of Goon show compendiums
and things being put up on eBay for hundreds of pounds.
I mean, these people had to find money from somewhere and they
were gambling, I think, on the fact that they wouldn't be any
more and that these things would have inflated market value.
And it was distressing times. And then one particularly
thoughtless goons, the enthusiast started badgering me
on the phone saying, well, is this going to come out?
You know, this particular thing I delivered a master, I think it
was for one of the four one, one of the two CD sets I think was
was in the works when audio go went down.
And in the end I lost patience and I just sort of I let him
have it. I'm afraid.
I said, look, there are people who don't know where their next
supermarket shop is coming from and you are winching about this
release, you know, away and scratch yourself.
I was a little more emphatic than that, but that's that
that's doable. And then there's quite an
interregnum because I remember talking to Michael when the
whole thing went down and he was like, don't know what I'm going
to do. I think I'd better take up, take
up photography again and all that sort of thing because
that's, you know, hobby interest and you have to make some money
out of it and everything and it. And it was several months before
the BBC put some sort of rescue package together and managed to
gather together the remnants of. Fortunately, there'd been people
who'd realized what was happening and had gathered most
of the BBC stuff together. And I said to anybody who came
in the came in the office when you take these things away of my
dead body. So a fair amount of the stuff
was preserved. So we had something to start
from. But yeah, I mean, you know, we
went back to work. I mean, my, my fee was cut by
something over 40%. And, and, you know, the other
people were sort of, you know, but at least they were back in
work. We were all back in work and we
steered this thing through. And I think the only trimming
for budget was that I think the last one with the companion was
4 discs instead of five. But it wasn't an enormous loss.
And I managed to squeeze most of the material into 4 discs, which
would have otherwise gone on five.
And, and, and Michael deserves all credit for steering that
through because he, he, he dealt with an awful lot of the office
politics and the finance and the backbiting, which I'm sure
happened and, and he did it very well.
And we seldom had a disagreement about anything there.
There was a bit of Spike Milligan, which was thought to
be a little strong for contemporary tastes.
There was a bit of bonus material and it was an extract
of a television, something out of queue which taken out of
context would would not have done anybody any good.
Michael's judgement was sound on that.
In fact his judgement on just about everything was very sound.
And anyway, he, he, he managed to sort of get through to
retirement intact, but he, you know, he deserves, he deserves
all credit for, for actually making the nuts and bolts of it
happen. Absolutely.
Yes. I, I did the audio.
But but, but he, he saw that happen.
So yeah, it, it was a bit of a fight.
And as physical media became less profitable, it became more
of the fight to keep putting it out on CD.
Of course, you know, the market has changed more or less now
irretrievably. I don't like downloads as an
issue medium. I don't magically like them as a
collecting medium either. I prefer to have physical media.
But then me too, you know, perhaps I'm just a dinosaur now.
Oh no, me too, me too. But but but.
Well, it's not a popular thing to say, but streaming the
streaming company can take it off at any time.
Absolutely, yeah. And it may then never reappear.
Someone said to me, who was it? Someone told me recently that
just with regards to the goons, here's an example.
You can't. For some reason.
Lurgy strikes. Britain's been taken off BBC
Sounds. We don't know this.
Oh, there are some rather curious decisions to put it no
stronger than that going on at the moment about.
What comedy material can and can't be put before the delicate
years of the public if it's a streaming service?
I I mean, I mean, Dirk, Dirk made an argument about this,
which is if you dial up on a streaming service or you buy ACD
of a show, you are to an extent complicit in that.
You say, well, look, this is a comedy show.
This is an old comedy show and I should regard it in the context
in which it was made. If you're putting stuff out on
an ordinary radio schedule where people would just have the radio
on and they don't have any particular exercise, any
particular choice about what they're going to hear next, then
fine. You're sensitivities have to be
rather more finely tuned because you know, you don't want to
upset the audience unnecessarily if it's a general audience.
But if your audience is actually made itself a specific audience
as being to that extent self selecting because they want to
listen to a particular show, then I think the standard
warning which goes out on a lot of streaming services that you
know, this is of its time and reflects attitudes blah de blah,
that should be enough. Sorry, I've wandered off the.
Point no, but you're saying about physical media my friend
always says if you're buying it CD or a DVD of archive
television or archive radio, whatever it may be, you're
inviting it into your home. It's your choice, so you
shouldn't feel aggrieved as a result by.
Well, and and neither should you be spoon fed.
No, which, as I say, the the reason I'm sorry, I read that
again, never appeared as as ACD set.
I I mean there were complicated rights issues, but also a lot of
the a lot, a lot of humour was guying of stereotypes.
And it's a little bit like till death has depart.
You've got Alf Garnett spouting this awful stuff, but the point
is that he's to be laughed at, not laughed with.
Yes. Because Spate, I mean, Spate
fancied himself the reincarnation of George Bernard
Shaw. I'm sure he did.
But but you know, he did try to make very cogent points.
I mean, if you want, you know, another example of pure Spate, I
mean, you look at the Arthur Haines show, a lot of which I
find very uncomfortable listening personally.
But you can't dispute the craft of it.
And it's it's, it's taking social attitudes.
Well, the Arthur Haines show is sort of a different way in that
the Arthur Haines tramp character was attacking
comfortable, conventional people who held these attitudes,
whereas Garnett was actually spouting them.
He, he, he was the working class man who aspired to these things
or what he thought these things were.
And, and, and making comedy out of it that way and in space
himself was quite as saying, look, I would rather insult
people or make them miserable as long as I make them aware.
And some people would argue that that's comedy trying to get
above itself, but I don't think so.
I mean, a lot of stuff in the goons, you know, Africa is now
on sale to anybody who wants to make it a second India, right.
Yeah. Bit of social comment there as
as Elton would say. Yes, sit nearer to Africa.
It's warmer there, you know, There's nothing like Africa to
keep your nation, nothing like an Africa party.
I can. Yes folks, do away with dirty
coal. Keep yourselves warm with
Africa. Africa is now on sale to anyone
who wants to make it a second India you.
Hear that, Min? You hear that, Min?
They'll knock Africa down and build flats there.
Cocky you mark what I say. Where on earth did we start
this? The compendium, yes, OK.
Yeah, no, no, no. Look the the the compendium, I
certainly in the in in the comedy field, I suppose will be
thought of as my masterpiece. Yes, I mean, I mean that, that
that's the thing people will remember if they remember
anything. Not bad thing to be remembered
for. Well, it seems so good, a lot of
pleasure to a lot of people. And after all, that's the point.
Yes. I, I did love doing it.
There were a couple of times it felt like a bit of a life
sentence, but having got that far through, I was damned if I
wasn't going to see it through to the end, you know, at the
standards I set myself. And, you know, that applied to,
you know, doing the notes and everything too and, and, and,
and all that sort of thing. But I, I, I do think, I mean,
it's a take away. It's fair to say that without
Michael cheerleading for us in the various quarters it it
wouldn't have happened. Yes.
So thanks. A bundle, Michael.
I mean it. OK.
Well, Ted, it's been marvelous. The clock is against us and I
think, I think we did. We still got quite a number of
questions that we haven't managed to tackle, but that OK
may have to happen another day. If there's an look, if the
audience is still awake, fine, Yeah, we'll do it.
OK. But yes, thank you so much for
coming back and putting up with me and, and, and the audience
questions. And all I want to say is I hope
that you have a a marvellous Christmas.
Thank you. You too.
And and a happy New Year and I will definitely catch up with
you again next year and we'll see about 1/3 return visit or a
second return visit second. Oh, this could this one could
run and run. It could, perish the thought,
bet all the very best and and God bless you.
Thank you. You too, buddy.