My master is away on American sharks.
He sent, he walks the battlements and the time is 2:30
who are close there but wants to and be very nice.
Blow your finger, sentry. Tis I, Sir.
Water rally. Sir, water rally, not any fags.
Listen now, good Spearm and Echols.
We're about to embark upon a plot You see on Treasure chest.
I'm holding. Get hold of the other end.
Now grab hold of this end right now.
You've got both ends. Ive only got dish end nonsense.
Whos got the other end? Its me.
Oh it is me. Im holding both ends.
There you are folks. Lets see him do that on
television. Hello and welcome to Goom Pot.
Keeping the spirit of Sellers seeking Milligan and Ben Teen
alive. Ben Teen himself told me so last
week, joining me this week. Returning guest previously
turned up to talk about Parkinson meeting Peter Sellers
and the Goons. A show that went down extremely
well, Very, very popular show. So I asked him back again, and
it is John Williams. Hello, John.
It's good to be back. Great to have you back.
And when we yeah, last time when we were speaking, I did ask you
to commit to coming back on and talking about an actual goon
show. I know that you yourself, you've
not listened to every goon show and you're not self confessed,
you're not an expert as such, particularly the more that the
the later period. The Goon Show.
Is that right? Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Yeah, and so I thought it would
be a good idea to get you back to talk about one of the shows.
I thought, again, it's it's a series that is kind of
underrepresented on this podcast because it is considered to be
the probably the weakest of the weakest series of the sort.
Of. Post 54 Goon Show if you like.
Series 8. So I thought it'd be good to get
you want to talk about a really strong show from that series and
just to talk about the series itself a bit more and and and
and I'd like to talk a little bit about the producers as well.
But I think you were talking to Andrew Pixley weren't you?
And he he threw a few suggestions to you as to what
shows to. Yeah, that's that's right.
I was after we did the last show, I was in touch with Andrew
and we were thinking about Series 8 and I think.
One of the things actually that Andrew Pixley always says when
he does research, it's always more interesting to research the
unsuccessful series or the unsuccessful program or one with
problems behind the scenes because they're generally much
more interesting than the really successful ones.
So when I mentioned series eight, yeah, I had a quick chat
with Andrew because Andrew obviously kind of fun to all
knowledge for these kind of things.
He suggested a couple, but one of them was Treasure in the
Tower. Which I had heard before a long
time ago, and when I had a quick refresh looking at me Wilmettes
and me Encyclopedia Goonicus, I'd forgotten about.
Just the kind of the thing you said this before.
Didn't know how high concept this episode is and how
fascinating it is and also how funny it is.
And I think it's one of those things.
It's so fantastical. I guess you could say this about
a lot of good shows. It's really kind of fantastical
episode with split time frames and all of those kind of things
running some of in parallel, but then you've also interacting
with each other in different times.
But it's also quite heavily rooted in the contemporary world
of 1957 with numerous references to things that were going on in
the in in the news at that time and in politics.
So yeah, I thought it looks like a really kind of rich as as a
lot of good shows are on in now really they're kind of.
It's that they're that. It's sometimes that shows in
search of footnotes all the way through.
Yeah, yeah, well that's right. Spike was keeping putting
together or Spike kept dossier of interesting newspaper
cuttings and articles from which he would borrow ideas for Goon
shows fairly regularly. The one that springs to mind
most notably is the jet propelled guided NAFI.
The well, the the the idea sprang from an article he read
in a newspaper and again with this, with this show.
Yeah, he was just reading the Manchester Guardian in October
1957 and and his eye alighted upon a a short article which I'm
sure we will discuss shortly. And that gave him somehow I gave
him the idea for this, this rather high concept.
The Goon Show episode in which the the action flits between
1957 and 1600. So before we start talking about
the show in detail, I want to talk about what was going on
Again, I always do this. I try to do this whenever
talking about particularly talking about Goon Show
episodes. I like to talk about what's
happening in the world. Yeah, we like a bit of context,
don't we? We do.
And did you have a look? Were you looking into what was
happening on the 28th of October 1957?
Yeah, I I I looked at some kind of specific things.
The I mean there was some kind of before and after.
One of the things that was quite interesting this Holly was that
Stephen Morris, the drummer of Joy Division and New Order was
born on transmission date of this episode.
Which, yeah, what? Was the band he was in after
just was it called The Other? Two, yeah.
The other two, yeah, With his wife, Jillian, yeah.
And Glenn Hoddle, no less, was born on a recording date for
this episode. So we've got some interesting
stuff going on there. What did you have, Tyler?
Well, hang on, Glenn Hoddle. Yeah, I'm not.
I'm really not a football fan. Yeah, right.
But I know him. Chiefly, wasn't he?
And didn't he have a hit with Hodwin model or something like?
That yes, it was. He had.
It was Diamond lights. That's it.
With the with the tragic mullets which is probably what the band
should have been called. Yeah, it was.
It was yeah that was an idea of pop stars becoming kind of
moving over into that. But yes, Glen Glen checkered.
I mean amazing football but checkered career because the
reincarnation got the only person to get.
To get sacked as England manager for talking about reincarnation,
it's. So far.
Now there wasn't a lot again, so
often happens there wasn't a huge amount of interesting stuff
that I could find that that happened on the 20th of October
1957, however. However, are you aware of the
Elvis and Nipper incident? Elvis and Nipper.
The only nipper I know is the sort of his master's voice dog.
That's right. Yeah, that's right.
OK, So now I had to ask. I'd seen this alluded to, you
know, when you Google and stuff like that.
And I saw people mentioning the Elvis and Nipper.
And I was thinking, what the hell, what the Hell's all this
about? Because I don't know anything
about Elvis Presley particularly.
All right. But I know someone who does.
Andrew Hickey. So I asked Andrew, what's this
about Elvis and Nipper? And he said.
There's not a lot to say, he said.
Elvis was performing on stage on the 28th of October 1957, and he
had a giant nipper dog, Prop Okay, kind of like those, you
know, the the dog, the plastic dogs that you see outside post
offices that you put coins. With the slots in their heads,
yeah, yeah, shots in there. Yeah, kind of a bit like that.
So, right, so. Elvis is performing on stage and
for some reason he's got this giant nipper, right.
So when he gets to singing Hound Dog, he that's when he, you
know, reasonably enough, that's when he picks up nipper and sort
of starts dancing around the stage and wrestling with it.
But at the time he was at the center of a bit of a moral
panic. Of course, yeah.
Elvis, the pelvis. Yeah, and one of the more
excitable columnists in one of the newspapers covering this
show implied that Elvis that it was a sex show and that Elvis
had pretended to Make Love to it as if it were a girl.
Okay. But apparently everyone else who
was there said that was a load of rubbish.
Basically including other newspaper, you know, journalists
and whatnot, but it. But you know what these things
are like a story like that, you know, it spreads like wildfire.
Yeah. Hard to hard to get rid of it.
Like kind of Fatty Arbuckle. Kind of.
That was a bit more extreme, actually, thinking about it.
I. Was going to say my friend Gary
as well when he was listening to us talking about this, he said
he was reminded of. I'm sure you remember the.
TV show #73. Yep.
Oh, yes, I know what you got. Go on.
God, I know where you're going with this.
He was reminded to the extent that he actually looked it up
and found it on YouTube. He said that he remembered
seeing Iggy Pop doing suggestible things with a giant
teddy bear when he's performing on #73.
Well, that's definitely happened.
That's incontroversible. Saw it, yeah.
And of course it's. What she called the redhead in
#73, of course, was Andrea Arnold, who's gone on to become
an incredibly brilliant and prestigious director.
Yeah, she was. That's where she got her start
on #73. But maybe she was there When?
Maybe when Iggy was mating. Maybe that's when she decided
right, watching television. I'm gonna.
Yeah, in and nothing's going to top this sort of way, I guess,
she thought. And after that he found it very
difficult to get bookings on British TV.
I don't think I can. Compete with that.
But yeah, the thing I've forgotten about was the front
page of October the 28th 1950 Seven's Daily Mirror, which I
don't think it's such a weird front page.
I don't think it could get more 1957 if it tried.
The main headline. It's not funny this bit, but
it's kind of the contrast is Kosh Bandits, Torture Woman.
Now that is very 57 kind of the Kosh Boys.
There's even a film called Kosh Boys, Isn't There?
And it was. Kosh Boys were just like the big
threat at the time. And this is on a page where next
to that headline, they've got a scantily clad woman with that
thing above her head saying dance for Joy.
It doesn't really go well with that headline, but next to her
is she will be his fairy queen. And sure enough.
This woman has got a date with rock and roller Tommy Steele.
Tommy Steele. Yes, cuz it's she it's she's
gonna be in it. The pantomime playing
Goldilocks. Cuz Tommy of course, was already
hitting pantomime even at that high point of his pop career.
So there you go 1957 in one front page, Kosh boys and Tommy
Steele. When did Tommy Steele do singing
in the Rain? I was living in London at that
point actually, so we must have been.
Early 90s, cuz it ran for ages, but it was definitely there in
the early 90s, yeah, yeah. Is that story true?
The story of, yeah, the water tank and what the technicians
did in it. So it ended up on Tommy.
I mean, I don't think anybody knows, but apparently Tommy's
not famous for being well, loved.
By the people he works with. So I can I can well believe it
happening. I think that's so weird about
Tommy Steele is after the first two hit singles he had and in
the Mania, they made The Tommy Steele Story which is that film
about. And it's almost like it's one of
those weird kind of experiments because by the end of the film
it's almost catching up with the exact moment that he's making.
It's very peculiar thing to to witness.
It's a very odd film to watch. We should watch that.
You should. You should.
It's insane because it's like you you think in this guy's
career, two months old or something like that and they've
made a film of his, his life. It's very peculiar.
So there was that there was that not very 1957 thing.
And the only other thing I I saw was the incredibly, again, a
contrast of headlines in the Daily Mail about Wilfred Hyde
White quitting a stage show due to the after effects of flu.
And that's on the front page, which is a bit odd.
Which, which? Vice for page space, with
speculation about Khrushchev's dismissal of Zhukov, is a very
powerful general, so a lot of Kremlinology going on there at
the time during the Cold War. So yeah, they were the main
things that I could find on that specific day, though of course
it was in the month that Sputnik launched and obviously that went
on to have quite a few. Goon references.
Goon show references. After this that show after this
space age. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So there was a rich brew of things going on.
Yeah, so this is the 5th episode of series 8 and it's and it is
called Treasure in the Tower. There's no definite article,
although in the actual show it is announced as the Treasure in
the tower, but. The on the front page of the
script, it is treasure in the town.
It's like Doctor Who naming of the early heart and all stories
all over again this. I don't know what does that
mean. There's big controversy about
what the first few adventures were called.
Let's not go there. Sorry for mentioning it.
Is it an unearthly child or a or the?
No, it's just that. No.
They were completely different names that some people use and
some people don't. It causes lots of strife.
Let's move on from that pretty swiftly.
Written by Spike and Larry Stevens.
In fact, Larry's responsible for something in this show which is
is is to prove to become quite enduring, which we'll come to
later and it's right. So Series 8 is is a real mixed
bag. There's that.
There are quite a number of really standout shows like.
The man who never Was. String robberies, both of which
were covered. This show that we're going to
talk about. I'm very fond of the evils of
bushy spawn, although I know that that's can be quite
divisive. I think the the burning embassy
is not bad either. I see, I I I see there's a lot
of what I would call filler type shows which have got good bits
in them, but they just kind of. I feel I can almost see them as
sort of assembly line like I would I would personally put the
burning embassy in that category, but there's you know
that that that there are quite a number of of highlights.
But the problem with the Series 8 is people will know who are
listening to this is that every other week they the Goons, were
recording a new show and having to record a new version of an
old show for the vintage Goons series.
For overseas sales, which meant that a certain amount of
tiredness was creeping in, Spike wasn't happy.
And on those shows, on those weeks where there were double
shows that you can sometimes hear, there's an element of
wariness and an element of phoning it in.
Going on you. Know and it's it's the case
isn't it that the when they were double banking it for this
series it was always the series 8 episode that came second
wasn't it? Yes.
So again that sort of means that you'd have thought and it was
ended running quite late at that point wasn't it as well because
they had to do 2. So I think that that you could
you could imagine the energy was starting to drop the thing that
I thought was interesting and I really I knew about all that bit
but it was the when I was reading the compendium notes.
And I saw that what I hadn't realized appreciated that there
was some double recording like that in Series 7 as well, mainly
to accommodate Sellers and Cecum to an extent.
And Milligan hated that cuz he obviously had to write 2
episodes for that particular recording session.
And so he protested and protested what I thought was.
Quite not funny for Milligan, but sort of like it just looks
like they're they're almost trying to goad him.
He wanted a shorter run of episodes and no double banking
and they just said to him, well actually we want a 26 episode
run and we want you to re record, record 14 old episodes
and double up. So it's like the express thing
he didn't want he got and I can't imagine that improved his
mood much. Now I suppose he didn't have a
huge amount of work to do. Revising.
That's true. The old script, and I think he
lent a lot on Larry to help him on those as well.
But one of the key issues with Series 8 of course is that they
they just went through producers.
They had three producers in Series 8 at different times.
So for this, so the first five shows of Series 8, they had
Charles Chilton and he was, he was only meant to be there.
Well he wasn't even meant to be the producer.
It was, it was it was going to be it was going to be Roy Spear
from the beginning and of course Roy Spear famous for giving
Peter Sellers his big break. But there was a late because Roy
Spear was also producing Educating Archie and some that
sort of the last few episodes of Educating Archie had been
delayed. So it meant that.
Roy wasn't available for the first handful of Goon shows.
Charles Chilton stepped in. Pat Dixon had been the producer
up to the end of Series 7, but because they now needed somebody
who could edit the shows in double quick time because they
were being broadcast the day after recording and Pat Dixon
was was well, terminally ill as well and working on a.
On Ben teen series Round the Bend.
So he just didn't have, he just couldn't do it.
So Charles Chilton stood in for Roy.
Roy did join the show from the 6th episode, which was the space
age. I think it is a space age, isn't
it? Yeah, I think so.
But then he fell ill, so he only ended up supervising 9 Series 8
original recordings and five. Vintage Goons Recordings.
Then you had Tom Ronald, who did too.
Tom. Ronald didn't run to do the Goon
Show and then Charles Chilton came back for the rest of Series
8 and you can imagine how Milligan was feeling about this
Spike, wrote Roy Spear. A rather angry letter.
You know he only just taken over and he already gets a, you know,
an angry letter from Spike Milligan.
And Spike says, I find at the end of the show that the great
hurried delivery of the credits is a farce.
Nobody quite hears what the man is saying.
It is all done over the orchestra, blowing its brains
out. And it's also anticlimactic.
After all, the show is over and done with.
Everyone knows who it was. If they don't buy, then they
aren't interested. If they must be credit given,
let it be done by the continuity announcer from his little
cubicle somewhere in Portland Place.
Now that is it. That's really fascinating isn't
it? Because it's the spike to say
that that it's anti climactic at the end of the Goon Show.
Given some of the endings of the Goon Show, that seems a bit rich
if they did just end and go to a guy in a continuity booth.
A part of the part of what saves sometimes the end.
Is the frenetic kind of rousing music and the sort of chatter
rather than just a silence and a continuity announcer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's.
Because they really do die sometimes they just die away,
don't they, at the end? Yeah, and again, there's also
erratic, there's this erratic sort of theme tune thing going
on in Series 8. So you've got Lucky Strike, I
think up until, well up until this episode we're talking about
today. So we get the debut of.
What is it called? Ding Dong?
The witch is dead. That was The Goon Show, a BBC
recorded program featuring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike
Milligan with the raid into quartet Max Gildrey and the
Orchestra conducted by Wally Stott, script by Spike Milligan
and Nari Stevens and answer Wally Greenslade.
The program produced by Charles Chilton.
And it's an odd choice. I don't know who cannot look
back, but that replaced Lucky Strike.
But then later on the series you've got old comrades March
and there's a couple of other sort of variations as well as
the Goon Show sort of nears its end.
So again. It's very odd.
Yeah. Quite sure.
I just don't know what to make of the change of the things.
Presumably it must be deliberate and it must be a reason for it,
but it just seems it just seems most peculiar, doesn't it?
Just sort of reflects the chaos in the background, doesn't it
really? It would be like your favorite
sitcom, you know? I don't know what's your
favorite sitcom from the 80s? I.
Don't know filthy rich and cat flap.
No, that's no good. No.
Hello, Hello. Hello.
The first five series have the
usual theme at the end and then it just sort of varies it every
now and then for the last couple of series.
Yeah, it has the Ace of Spades or something like that.
At the end, it would just be. It wouldn't quite work, would
it? That would be quite the.
It would give you a shock, definitely.
Yeah, I think. Or a chicken man.
The grain chill thing. Or to give us a clue, thing
Chin, of course. Or to give you a clue,
absolutely. That's the lest we forget.
Yes, okay. So this is a difficult I think
this is gonna be a bit of a challenge to talk about this
show just because of the way it the action flits back and forth.
So what I thought I would do if you don't mind is.
Just run through a summary of the actual what happens in this
show. So it begins in 1600.
So Walter Raleigh, played by Segun and Eccles, are in
America. They load a chest of treasure,
which Raleigh intends to smuggle home and bury in the Tower of
London. They set sail for England.
Meanwhile, in 1957, Ned Segun, Minister for Works.
Reveals that the excavations at the tower sadly have failed to
find any treasure. He hires treasure experts grit
Piper Moriarty to dig for the treasure at the price of 1
Guinea per shovel full of dirt. Okay.
So before we go further, do you want to talk about because?
I said before that this show was based or inspired.
Spike was inspired to write this show based on a small article he
saw in the Manchester Guardian. Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah, sure. I mean the the, the article in
question was October the as they say October the 7th, 1957, it's
called no treasure in the tower and I think presumably what
tickled mitigant about it apart from the pointlessness of a lot
of. Politics in the way that the
government works, was the first sentences.
Excavations which began in May at the Tower of London have now
been completed without the discovery of any buried
treasure. So it's immediately sort of a
negative way. Expect a story to be kind of
like leading to something. It's leading to, it's leading to
an absence of something, which is exactly I think what what
Milligan runs with throughout the rest of the.
Particularly when you get to the bits where he's talking about
the the treasures in the wrong place.
Well, why don't we dig there? It's that kind of stuff comes
out. Yeah.
It says the and this is announced by the ministry of
work. So maybe we'll come back to the
ministry of Works in a second. The excavations were at the
boiler house and the governor's residence in the 12th century
bell tower. But he does say the ministry
states that these areas were said to be the most likely
hiding places of the box to treasure and the the treasure
which is reputed to have been hidden.
I say he was the 17th century Lieutenant of the Lieutenant of
the tower, where obviously 17th century and the setting is 1600.
In America, as you said, the value of the treasure was
estimated at between 3000 to 250,000.
And then it says the excavations in the boiler room come back to
that later, I'm sure. And in Mint St. we're undertaken
to provide information about the curtain wall.
This was shown to be of great thickness with its foundation
some 24 feet wide at its base. And that's the that's the
article. So I think you see there that
this episode is extracted from those particularly odd things.
But on the on the face of it, you could just read this and
think Ministry of Works doing some digging, but Milligan seems
straight through to the kind of ludicrousness of of part of that
and has run with it. Yes, so do we.
I didn't check. Did the this fabled box the
treasure, Did it actually ever turn up subsequently?
Didn't as far as I can tell anyway, unless someone's keeping
very quiet about it. But there are.
It periodically resurfaces as a news story comparatively
recently, and inflation has worked its magic and it's now
repeated to be worth 20 million. So it keeps cropping up.
But no, sadly, sadly, it's not been found.
Maybe. Maybe.
Somebody will be inspired by this podcast to seek it out and
go digging around, digging, digging up near the Tower of
London. I'm sure that can't lead you
into any trouble at all, no? Ahead.
Well, you wouldn't. You wouldn't have far to travel
if you're being arrested on guard in the tower.
Major Bloodnot receives reports of strange noises under the
Crown Jewels room Grip Pipe and Moriarty digging upward under
the tower, break into the Crown Jewels room and thinking they
found the fable treasure. Take it back to Seagun,
meanwhile, in 1600 rallies men and the good ship Venus.
Of course they approached. They're seen by Blood Knock in
1957, who fires on them. Raleigh discovers they've left
the treasure back in America and sends Echols back to get it.
Grip pipe hands over the treasure, actually the crown
jewels to Nettie and receives his fee of 10,000 pounds.
Net is then arrested for stealing them and does 10 years
hard labor. Meanwhile, Blood Knock
encounters Echols returning with Riley's treasure.
He swung too far and ended up in 1957.
Seagun hires Minnie and Henry, treasure diviners who set off in
pursuit of the treasure on a pipe organ.
Back in 1600, Raleigh sees the pipe organ beef eater Blue
Bottle meets Eccles and discovers he's in 1600, meaning
he hasn't even been born yet. In 1957, Henry and Minnie
excavate in the tower and discover no treasure, but they
do hit a water main 30 feet down.
Back in 1600, Raleigh discovers this hole and buries his
treasure in there, and that is why in 1957 they failed to
discover the treasure buried back in 1600.
We'll be asking questions later. Yes, yeah, I remember when I
first heard the show. I just.
I just kind of abandoned trying to follow it.
I just just enjoyed the jokes and the gags.
Of which there are many good ones as well, but it's the as a
concept. It's interesting, isn't it?
Because I was trying to think where Milligan might have got
this from and I didn't have as much time.
The the kind of the obvious things I can think of where I've
never kind of come across something where they're
communicating with each other directly from one time zone to
another and having dialogue. It's a bit towards the end where
Blue Bottle and Echols are talking, and actually it's
Echols trying to explain to Blue Bottle.
Why? Because he's in 1600.
He can't help him. And that that is particularly as
echoes. He's almost trying to
conceptualize what's going on and just ends up doing sort of
incredible grunts as he's trying to sort of work his way through
it and try and make Blue Bottle understand.
And there's a big way he's saying something like, you know,
and I'm in, I'm in 1600, you're in 1957.
Then nobody, they're slightly kind of improvising at this
point and Milligan or Echo suddenly says say yes.
I'm not really. I'm really on.
I'm really not here. What do?
You mean? Man if if this is 9057.
You said I said 1957. Say yes, well up.
This is 1957. I'm dead.
Well, I'm not and oh, oh, tell you I'm known enough because I'm
in 1600 on you. You're not born yet.
It's really excellent. But at that kind of conceptually
I was trying to think of scifi things where you've had that and
one of the ones it's not quite scifi.
One of the things that leads to mine that was quite popular in
the sort of 40s fifties were JB Priestley's time plays.
So you got plays like Time in the Conway's where yeah, where
you see he does a lot. He did kind of about 5 or 6
literally they were known as his time plays.
Where he plays around with the idea of people in recurring time
events or or kind of meeting, leaping through time and playing
off scenes against each other from different time zones.
So I did wonder whether any of that might have been an
influence on Echoes. And looking at it the other way,
the other thing I thought about was what came after this that
did that kind of thing. One of the ones that left to
mine was Nigel Niels, The Road. TV play I've.
Heard of that? Yeah, which is sad, which is
sadly lost now. But the and it has been remade
as a radio play and that give it away because it's famously got a
really great twist in it. But that has a sort of setting a
time when leaking from another time zone.
They hear noises and activity and things that are happening in
another time zone. And they gradually kind of and
people think it's a haunting, but it's actually two time zones
crossing each other. And of course, Neil was.
This is a stretch, but Neil was a big fan of the Goons, wasn't
he? He was happy.
He was happy to. Let friend of Milligan's.
Yeah, exactly. And he was happy to let them
parody quite a mass. He wasn't.
He wasn't famously happy about lots of parodies of quite a
mass, but he was happy enough for Spike Milligan to do one
with the scarlet capsule. So I thought that was
interesting anyway, that maybe, just maybe, this concept fed
into that a little bit. Yeah, maybe.
What do we know? What he felt about the Hancock?
Parody of quite a mess. I think he was OK about that as
well because I think he quite like he was.
Basically Neil was a very crutchety guy and I think any
anybody he respected, he was sort of OK with them doing it as
long as they didn't make money out of his work.
But but others he was asking there was a faint well, I can't
remember what. There was one quite near the
time of kicking myself not remembering this one, which he
absolutely hated and complained to the BBC about, so he was
definitely not shy about. Going on the attack, if he
thought he wasn't, his work wasn't being treated with
respect. I was just interested.
You mentioned 1984 because 1985, because of course that was Nigel
Neal as well, wasn't it? Yeah.
And that that was when everything started.
Kind of the, the hilariously, kind of like the kind of
recursion on that. Because Orwell's original 1984,
a lot of it was influenced by his time at the BBC, working in
the propaganda unit, effectively at the BBC.
Which you then turn into 1984, which then Milligan parodied
Nigel Neal's version into a parody about the BBC.
So it kind of flipped its way around quite nicely there, which
is I think 1985 is an excellent episode, really good.
Yeah, I think if you're listening to this particular
episode of Goon Pod, I think you need to have a pen and a piece
of paper to sort of follow where we're going.
There's a lot of references in this show.
Or a couple of references, I should say, to television, as in
you couldn't do that on television.
Yeah, there's a bit at the beginning where Echoes is
mysteriously holding both ends of a very long box, isn't he?
And I think I don't know how they did it.
Did they have Echoes response played in maybe on the paper?
I assumed to do that. And then, yeah, Segan says you
can't do that on TV. Maybe it was just a kind of
comment on the growing popularity of television.
And people start to feel a bit threatened by it about what
radio was doing. That's how I read that.
You know, I think there was a quite a few references of that
type in comedies from this era because obviously it was
starting to become fairly obvious because I mean, I think
the actual day this went out, this episode, Hancock's half
hour had just finished on television.
And so of course Hancock had made the move into and was
running it for a while. It ran in parallel with the
radio show. But again, I think that's just
an indication, isn't it, that that was becoming hugely
popular. So things, not only things that
were on the radio, we're also on TV, but TV just generally
becoming starting to inexorably become dominant.
And I just saw those kind of little comments that we're kind
of reflecting that, look, this is something you can't do on TV,
we can do this on the radio. Yeah, I think the the standout
scene in this is Blue Bottle neckles, as so often is the
case. What?
Where are you? In the water in 1957.
I can't help you then. I mean 1600.
You can't be in there in the 1600 there I can see you quite
clearly. But in 1957 you got all them
good natural spectacles. I'll be the man who sees no one
touches them. Blue Bottle says that a number
of times in the Green show. And I love that line, and I
don't know why, but I've got, I've got the feeling, and
someone listening may be able to write in and tell me I've got
the feeling. That's a payoff to a dirty joke
or something. Well, there's not.
There's the famous blood note one, isn't there in this.
This to pay off as well the. Power of good.
Yeah, I don't know who you are or where you came from, but
you've done me the power of good and that gets.
I think it's only a couple of episodes before this, isn't it,
that it's first used that particular one and that gets a
massive laugh and it gets a pretty good good one in this as
well. But now it sounds like it sounds
like exactly. It could be one of those.
There must be more than more than one or two that they did, I
imagine, but. Finding them out cuz again.
The problem is that the jokes got lost to time a little bit,
don't they? So all we're left with is a
payoff. Yeah, cuz there's some
references. There's references to Jane
Mansfield. We all know Jane Mansfield.
There's reference to birded miles.
We know birded miles, but there's a reference to.
Is it fair to say that people don't know what eggs stand with
lions is all about these days? I suppose.
I suppose that's fair. Yeah, all eggs still stand with
lions. I don't think so.
I don't know. I don't really look at eggs very
often pop to see if they're cracked to be honest.
But the no, I think it was a fairly recent development,
wasn't it? At this point, I mean, I guess
they had a terrible problem with salmonella in eggs.
You couldn't trust your eggs. So having your lion's stamp of
authority meant your egg was a good one.
So, but I think it must have been.
I forgot to look that up. Actually, I think it must have
been a fairly recent introduction as a sort of
quality be a health and safety thing.
Yes, and there's also the reference.
Blood knock makes a reference to the merging of regiments as
these systems. Yeah.
So you've got Harry, for once, doing a different voice.
Playing Guardsman Tom Murals. Yeah, it's Tom Murals a joke.
It sounds like it is, but I can't find out.
I can't find out what it is so because it sounds like it has to
be, but I can't find any reference to it.
Well, yours sounds a bit. Yeah, it might just be that or I
didn't know whether it was a specific reference, yeah.
But he's sharing his battle dress with Jim Spriggs, and
that's where Blood Knocks says this merging of the regiments is
going too far, I tell you. What was the merging of the
regiments? What was that about?
Well, yeah, that this was a huge thing in 1957.
And I mean you can tell the contemporary resident because he
gets probably the biggest laugh of the episode.
I think it's absolutely huge laugh.
And it was literally, well, what happened was it was basically
they from the start of the year, possibly towards the end of
1956, the government started seriously looking at how they
were going to effectively downsize the downsize the armed
forces. And they were going to be making
lots and lots of soldiers, officers redundant.
And at first they didn't know there were all sorts of
different plans about how they were going to do this, even down
to us. Or in one newspaper article,
they were even considering looking at the split between the
Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the and the Army and maybe
bring that into question. It was almost like all bets are
off about what we're going to do.
And lots of regiments are in danger of being disbanded.
And this was causing much uproar because obviously it's like it's
12 years after the war. There's still national service.
There's been, there's been Suez by this point, hadn't there?
Where there's been, there's been some kind of like, you know,
there's been some military input to that and people got sent out
there to Aiden or whatever. Yeah, and basically it was hot
kind of controversial topic. What they eventually decided to
do was say that instead of disbanding some regiments,
they'd merge them. But this really caused a real
kerfuffle as well because regiments, obviously people were
proud of being in their regiment, but not only that,
they hated other regiments and there was some massive rivalries
between some regiments where they basically would be emerged.
And there was a lot of resistance to this.
So it would been in the press all the time.
So if you look at sort of the Daily Mail through this first
period of 1957, up until this point, it was just a really
regular story and quite often on the front pages as well as as
people saying what does this mean for the, you know, are we
ruining our army? Are we ruining our own forces?
And there were things like even down to if they can't wear the
old cat badge anymore, can't which, which I think is a
deliberate joke, which also gets a big laugh.
If they can't wear the cat badge anymore, then some people from
the old regiment that doesn't exist anymore could wear their
old cat badge on their arm or lapel.
And with the Scottish ones they were arguing about whether they
should be wear kilts because one regiment wore kilts and the
other regiment wore trues, tartan trousers.
So it was this kind of level detail.
And in the end the final decision was made I think in
July 1957 and it was announced what was going to happen.
And as I say it's quite. Kind of ironic in the context of
the program that you after this, you get lots of sort of old
offices, some kernels and things like that, as well as kind of
like the ranks being kind of made redundant effectively and
given a reasonably generous period of time before they had
to leave. And certain payoffs were sort of
range. But that's where you get a lot
of these kind of ideas of old kernels put out to grass.
Before they would have wanted to be and immediately and of course
that's it's blood knock that's talking about this.
So I think that's kind of plays into it as well.
But now it was really, really hot topic, which I think
explains why it gets such a massive laugh because it's such
a current news story. Yeah, and then soon after he
gets a bit of a filthy laugh when he mentions the fact that
his old regiment was blood knocks.
Old regiment was the 3rd heavy. Yes, cuz it's when Ray Ellington
says I don't wear a uniform, I'm in the third heavy nudist
Bloodnot says My old regiment, what a cat badge they had.
And it's a great joke actually, that whole bloodnot sequence.
Because the thing that makes me laugh as well about all of this
is all of those bits were dropped for the transcription
services are either because of the fact that they're quite
specific topical references. Or possibly, I don't know,
because they were, they were seen as being a bit rude.
I don't know what the kind of thing was, but that's it's
quite, it's funny how a lot of that kind of really funny stuff
just gets dropped because of for one reason or another and yet
that's so that's the biggest laugh gets dropped.
That means that three men in one better.
No, me never wear uniform. And why not?
Me and the third heavy nudists. Heavy nudists.
Old regiment. Oh, what a cat badge they had.
The first big gag for me, first big love for me was right at the
beginning, when when what's the Eccles is?
Eccles is playing the sentry, walking the battlements.
And he hears somebody and he goes Holt who goes there and you
hear a clock chiming and Nickel says advance Dong and be
recognized. And there's a bit in the script
that they didn't either they recorded and and it wasn't kept
in or they just cut the cut it out.
There's a bit in the script where so Walter Raleigh.
So he says advance Dong and be recognized.
And Raleigh says lower your finger sentry in windy weather
they clash together. Right.
And I'm wondering, is that an allusion to testicles?
Yeah, I think it could well be. I did wonder.
Actually, I did. Just as a general, probably a
good time to mention it. You've already mentioned on the
good ship Venus. I know when you were talking to
Molly, when you talked about string robbery a while ago, you
were talking about how the producer that hated them.
Tom Ronald and just had enough of one of the scripts and was
cutting it to pieces. Obviously he thought it wasn't
suitable. I mean, do you think that they
were getting a bit ruder at this stage?
Because there are, you know, we just talked about the the Cat
badge and the good shit Venus and now we're talking about
references to testicles and Dong and it just seemed that they
were throwing quite a lot in there.
At this point I'm not sure, but but you know.
The other episodes better than I do to know whether or not you
think there's a higher incidence of filth.
There is definitely there's definitely creeping in and you
think of even even show titles. There's a show in Series 9
called Who is Pink Oboe? And as we know you know the
Indian characters speaking in Urdu and using some dubious
phrases in Urdu. Although I don't speak Urdu but
I believe that they there's some you know they they by stealth.
Spike was slipping in some stuff that would normally have got the
blue pencil through it. Yeah, no, they were definitely
pushing. He was definitely trying to push
the boundaries as much as he could.
I think. I think during the Peter Eaton
years, which was, which was pretty much the the golden
period sort of Series 5, Series six.
I think Peter Eaton was such a what's a taskmaster?
But he, you know, no nonsense he was.
He was well respected by the goons but he would tear a strip
off them, I think, if he felt that they were crossing a line.
And they respected him enough to allow him to tear a strip off
them as well, didn't they? That they, they they they fall
into line. Maybe because it was still
relatively early as well. I suppose it's not, no, no, not
early. But when it's starting to become
successful, it's like kind of they knew where the because he
certainly told Sellers off a strip a couple of times, didn't
he? But he fired some.
Yeah, yeah. During a show, I think it was
the international Christmas pudding during a I think it was
Max's number or Ray's number. We're going to cover that show
later this year, so I'll come back to that.
But I know that Spike was was angling to get Peter Eaton back
as producer a number of times after Peter left.
Because I think he went off to work for Granada, didn't he?
Granada to Granada Television. Yeah, I think so.
So Spike had a lot of time for him.
And then obviously after Peter Eaton, they had Pat Dixon, who
was a, he was a fine producer, but I think he's, he was kind
of, he kind of just let them get on with it to a degree.
And then you have these, what do you call it, mishmash of
producers and lack of consistency.
In series 8, you've got John Browell.
In Series 9, who kind of worked on this show as one of those
sort of technical boys previously.
So he didn't have that. He didn't come on that level of
sort of respect, I suppose, that Peter Eaton did.
So I think, I think with the departure, Peter Eaton Spike
probably felt, well, I'll just, you know, I'll just see what I
can get away with every week. Yeah, it definitely.
Yeah. You've already referenced the
shiver, the braces and the lower the Jane Mansfield bit, haven't
you that that that's that's also I think quite topical because
The Girl can't help it, which is a big film came out in the UK in
57. So I think again that would sort
of explain the topical reference and also the bit about when
Peter Sellers is doing his sort of.
Extraordinary rustic accent. It's Swede isn't it?
But he's doing a kind of Cornish version of it.
And they say pizza seller is in his Bernard Miles set.
Bernard Miles was actually in Long John Silver when this was
on. It was on.
It was a repeat of the serial that they did on Sunday tea
time. So actually it would have been
on well just before they recorded this episode.
Him playing Long John Silver, which I think he's probably
influencing that. But of course Miles had kind of
loads of connections with the Goons, didn't he?
Because they. He was in the rent collectors
episode. Yeah, and I think Milligan went
on to play Ben Gunn in a version, state version of
Treasure Island as well. And didn't he put the bed
sitting room cuz he ran the mermaid theater?
Didn't he put the bed sitting room on as well?
So big. And he was in.
He was certainly in the smaller show on Earth with Peter
Sellers. Now there's a bit in this with
names in the script. Did you look at, did you get a
chance to look at the original script that's on the
encyclopedia Goonicus? I looked at it.
I kind of didn't. I looked at the transcript, and
I also looked at Goon at Milligan's own copy, which was
in there. But I didn't.
I what were the particular, what were the thing about names in
there? So you've got the bit where.
Segun is addressing the Ministry of Works.
About these excavations, we're cutting out in the tar do.
You find any treasure thing? But.
You know very well we're only digging down to see if the walls
of the tower are safe, but for the result of the failure, we
didn't find any treasure. You.
You couldn't have. You couldn't have been.
You couldn't have been digging. Couldn't have been digging in.
You couldn't have been digging in the.
You couldn't have been digging in the in the right place.
It was the right place, all right, but the treasure wasn't
there. The treasure buried in the wrong
fly. Precisely.
And we dig there. Now I think it's the character
of Lou, the Jewish character, that.
Yeah. Sellers plays.
But again, in the script, and this has happened, I can't
remember which episode it was that we covered previously.
In the script, the character is down as malfeasance.
Right. Right.
Okay. Which I don't understand.
And the character of the judge, you know, the judge that
sentences Netty to 10 years. Half.
Yeah. Now that voice is.
Commonly known, that voice is known as Sydney Mincing or
mincing. Yeah, OK, but in the script he's
down as Slyn SLINN. So I'm not sure whether that was
just shorthand that Spike put in the script and said to Sellers,
you know that voice. You do.
Interesting. And malfeasance is weird, isn't
it? It's kind of in brackets, isn't
it? I'm just looking at it now.
The yeah, yeah. So what?
What for you are the the strong points, scenes, jokes, lines?
Well, I think we've took, I love the the Blood knot stuff because
it's just lots of really nice things about, you know, you'll
wait the centuries that all these kind of, I think that
whole sequence works really well.
But the, you know, you've already mentioned the standout
bit I think is the echoes and Blue Bottle, but then they sort
of get tipped over the edge into hysteria.
When Sellers has to put on his crunch kit, as he calls it, and
suddenly they have this extraordinarily bizarre sequence
with Minnie and Henry and her brilliant divining, which only
can do with a sort of steam organ that kind of powers up.
And that tends to tip me over the edge slightly, particularly
because I just find out, you know, some things just you find
funny. I just find it when Min says
Buddy. Funny for some reason it's just,
it's just it's just kind of, you know, you can hear it in this
then say it again and then it just sort of starts to tip you
over the edge slightly because it's just so weirdly incongruous
and not I mean is it supposed to be a sort of being down and with
it but it's already sort of becoming dated by that point and
it's like a weird American but you nonetheless persists with
it. Modern men, Modern.
Men. Exactly, Yeah.
Miss Banister, Yes, Miss Banister here is a qualified
Treasure Diviner with honors in steam and banjo.
Good heavens to look at her. You'd never thought she'd ridden
a horse in her life. Get ready for my hairy divining.
I just put on these cardboard bicycle clips.
Now I'm ready, buddy. I get on the rhythm organ.
Yeah, there's. I thought the.
I just really thought there was a lot of the sudden cuts between
57 and 1600 and the use of. Greenslade Well, I thought all
of that worked really well in it.
And it just, I just, I didn't have.
I mean, if you listen, it's only a few episodes on from the
opening episode of this series, Spawn, which I know it's got
Dick Emery in it and I know it. It's, it is quite astonishing
how there's a kind of energy drop because Seacomm's not
there. It's quite startling actually,
because you know, it's very easy to take Harry Seekin for
granted, I think, but it's the way that so many of the lines
fall flat. That you know that Secum would
have rung every bit out of it kind of clobbered it to the
ground until it was begging for mercy, which is what you usually
did with lines and it just likes and it's like halfway through
that you say it's like the crowd have died.
You know it got this kind of like echoing kind of void.
And it's just some episodes that I've heard in series 8 where the
crowd get quite disengaged, the audience get quite disengaged
with it I think whereas some this one.
Because it's got some real Bond storming gags in it and also as
I say lots of the sort of topical references which are in
there. It grabs them in there I think
and and even through some of the more, not every joke lands
because it just gets so bizarre. But the the, the audience seem
to seem to be kind of like really with it and the energies
there again. And while there's sometimes all
the flights of fancy with the really great bits in series 5,
sometimes in series 6. Where you get some isolated
spots of fantastic stuff like you get in the later episodes,
the energy of series 5 and series six, I think, and the
kind of pace. I think that there's more of
that here than there is in some of the surrounding episodes,
which makes it, which makes it really good.
I like the fact that Blue Bottle is really the the only
character, the only regular character in the goons
constantly breaking the 4th wall.
Yeah. For example, in this he's he's
he realizes that he thinks that he's on television.
Yeah, I love that he's. Looking around for the cameras
and he says I can do my idiot waving to my friends at school.
Don't move Who has who? Who?
Are you? I am Sir Walter Raleigh.
He did the television for schools then.
Cameras. I can do my idiot waving to my
friends in school. Hello there, Harold Pratt.
Hello, Mary Quills, Peter Cabri and Vera Millington.
It's pivotal here. So the teacher we're being
tomorrow. I'm just turning my back.
Parliament. Well, I rally you, I said.
Never eat potatoes again. Thinks I'm drowning, so that's
why I never eat potatoes again. It's because the line that leads
into that is FAIN, Let us pass. I am so well to rally, which is
that really kind of hackneyed period speak, which is exactly
like the kind of kind of stuff I imagine even worse in those
days. It used to get a television
schools for television for schools adaptation of.
Walter Raleigh discovering the potato.
Or it would just be that kind of dreadful thing.
But he also says that thing about which, again, I thought
was really funny with it. My mom, You've got problems with
your chest. My mom rubs mine with hot agony
oil, and now I'm assuming that wasn't an actual thing.
No. Well, no, I remember.
I don't know what it was called exactly, but I do remember
reading about a very popular. What's the word uncion?
Well, there was Vicks Vapor Roach.
Yeah, no, back in, I'm talking Victorian.
Oh, right. Sort of something.
And it had a real sort of medicine show type name, so it
might have been American Ma Bradley's.
Mar Bradley Something along the lines of Mar Bradley's Agony
Oil. Really.
All right. Something like that, yeah.
So that might be a thing. I just thought it was some kind
of terrible torture for Blue Bottle that they would it's
yeah, that's yeah, that bit is great when it's just like I
come, you know, I'm not in 1600. I'm just in some terrible
television program is again, really great.
Well, he mentions his mum and then he does get Actually, I
think possibly the biggest laugh of the show is is baby when he
says When echo says I'm in 1600 and you're not born yet and Blue
Bottle says cool, wait till I tell my mum Dad, my dad won't
have a copy. Who you who?
Which characters in the Goon Show are you fondest of?
It's, I mean, I think it changes.
I mean, if you'd have asked me a while ago, I would have probably
said grip pipe thin because that there's just something
brilliantly restrained about the performance of it.
You know, it's obviously George Sanders and so on, but it's just
the way that he's doing these terrible, terrible things.
But also remaining, remaining, this kind of sedating debonair.
And even when I know you've talked about this before and and
Wilma I think probably was the first person to write about it,
even when they're going through that extraordinary evolution the
grit pipes in and Moriarty have through the series.
Well, yeah, sorry. Yeah, absolutely.
Evolution where basically at the end of it, Moriarty's this sort
of jabbering. Kind of creature like Caliban or
something from The Tempest kind of guys that far but then you've
got a grit pipe thin still even when wearing cardboard clothes
and whatever he's doing some of our mate retains and I find that
very very funny generally and and and it just works really
well. That kind of kind of contrast I
find as I've been listening. To Sorry, Carrie, Sorry, sorry.
That's Milligan's contempt for that sort of class of.
Yeah. English gentleman, if you like,
isn't it? Yeah, I think so.
I think so. And then you've got another one
that works again, it's and it's sort of slightly it's similar,
but it's it's just a sheer force of it and they don't get all
hung up on the sellers characters because I love the
others as well. But it's hard to resist blood
knock sometimes I think because you just get this kind of this,
but I don't kind of like the extraordinary entrance.
I know he's got his own theme tune and everything.
But by this point, when he's making his ridiculous noises as
he enters, everybody in the cast seems to be making the same
noises, don't they, as he comes in.
They're all sort of joining in all the time, and it's just kind
of like there's just something kind of inherently funny about
that. But as we've been talking about,
I think Min makes me laugh. And again, it's that I know that
terrible, often time fillers when Min and Henry are having
these rambling conversations with each other.
But if they sometimes they just really kick in to being
hysterically funny. And again, as I say, it's the
Buddy sends me over the edge sometimes because it's so odd
that I think they'd be the ones that, at the moment I
particularly like. Just just on hand in hand, I
just noticed and this sort of ties into what we were talking
about earlier, There's a bit in the script that isn't in the
show. When?
Well, when? When many.
And in the show, she says I'll, I'll get ready for my hairy
divining. Oh, the hairy is used a lot,
isn't it? On the hairy, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll just put on these cardboard bicycle clips in the in the
script. In the script you've got Henry
saying Min, you'd better get behind that screen to do that.
We don't want to take risks with the BBC sensors.
Also you know the bit where. Says goodbye Neddy, and here's a
sailor's farewell and shuts the door, but does a Raspberry.
But the Raspberry is not really committed, is.
It. No.
You can miss it, can't you? It's not.
It's not like a Harry Seeker Raspberry, is it?
Yeah. And I because it that wasn't in
the script. It wasn't in the script for him
to do a Raspberry just to shut the door.
And I'm just wondering whether it was just like the spare of
the moment. He just thought, oh, I'll just
do that, But he kind of fluffed it.
A sailor's farewell. And with the music Ray and Max,
do you, did you, did you skip? Do you listen?
What? Not well, generally speaking, if
I if I'm just sitting to listen to an episode, I will always
listen to them. Sometimes if I'm coming back in
the car, that my car journey back home, sometimes from work
is not long enough for a full episode.
So I I might skip them at that point.
I mean, I think we probably need to talk about Ray's song in this
one, don't we? Because it got substituted for
the transcription service, didn't it?
Why do we think is it? Was that just because of the
Chinese stuff, do we think? I think so.
I think it. Has to be so old, isn't it?
It's really strange. It is, yeah, because I was
familiar with the the 27 minute pick of the Goons version of
this show for the longest time. So so the the The Ray song in
the original show in the broadcast.
Is how will I know? But yeah, there's this kind of
Chinese, Chinese gibberish being spoken at the beginning between
Ray and Spike. I don't know where that even
comes from. It's it's odd, isn't it?
It's very peculiar. And even during the song they
occasionally have sort of like Chinese kind of what symbols or
noises, don't they? It's just a very peculiar thing.
They obviously decided to drop it quickly.
Swiftly. Well, they they realized that it
could. But saying that.
I suppose that got to be the reason it's not a very good
song. Having said all that, I would
say that the Max tune, nice work if you can get it, is probably
my favorite Max Galdray number in the history of the guns.
I think it's beautiful. Yeah.
Let me get kind of mournful, yeah.
No, it is. It's, it's good.
I mean one of the things I always noticed about is not to
take away from Galdray is the fact that if you're listening to
the goons in the car and you've got it at a certain volume and
Galdray comes on, it is the loudest noise there has ever
been on the planet. It is unbelievable the amount of
times I've been driving down the motorway down to the East
Midlands and with a with a whole load of goons kind of get going
on there and suddenly every single time after leap.
To turn sound out otherwise they're gonna crash the car.
But yeah, you're right. Because in this one it's
actually different, isn't it? It's much more sort of mellow
and mournful. And he gets a conch
introduction, doesn't he? As well from the old Dutch conch
doesn't say to say that before it starts.
And all the PLU G. Stuff.
Yes, yeah. I said a couple of weeks ago,
when we covered the fiendish plots of Dr. Fu Manchu, I
mentioned that apparently sellers.
Was angling for a small role in that film for Max, because
essentially the film was just Sellers trying to stage a goon
show on film. It definitely was, wasn't it?
Definitely. And I'm just trying to think
what where Max might have figured in the film.
And Max, have you heard Max trying to act?
Yes, in the goons. He's dreadful.
So I think he was raised pretty good, isn't he raised?
Raised pretty good, but but, but if you think Max is such a
dreadful actor, he would have been perfect.
For that film, it just yeah, my God.
I think Sellers was just thinking, that's just to throw
everything into the mix. Whatever.
Whatever occurred to him in the moment, you know?
Yeah, get on the phone to Max in California.
Get him on a plane. Oh no, they were pretty filming
in California. I don't know.
Another in Paris. I think they filmed that anyway.
Now, the show also I mentioned, I alluded to this at the
beginning. The show sees the debut of the
line that Greenslade often would subsequently deliver at the end
of episodes. It's all in the mind, you know?
Oh, is this the first time it was used?
I didn't realize. Yeah, right.
OK. Yeah, And.
And it was Larry who came out with that phrase.
Well, it was a phrase he'd heard.
When he was doing commando training, it was instructors
would shout that line regularly. I guess is motivational, I don't
know. Oh, I see.
So, like, it's not, it's not pain, That's all.
That pain is all in the mind. It's probably that kind of
thing, isn't it? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Work through the pain. But yeah, it would green.
So I would very often, you know, a show would end with that line
usually, because there wasn't any other way of ending the
show. There wasn't a natural finish.
You know, cuz cuz the writing was getting to a certain extent,
getting lazier. So yeah, so that's this, that's
the first instance of of that line.
All right. It's all in the mind, you know.
I'm a bit of a kind of, or certainly used to be, quite
interested in the politics of this era, in particular kind of
post war. There is a reference to
Hailsham. Oh, yes.
And and again, this is this, you know, I don't think it's got
quite the same kind of laugh, but nonetheless it's a laugh of
recognition because some someone's giving a terrible
speech kind of going, it's kind of rambling speech about the
Power, the pound, England forever and book.
It's of whitewash. And the line that made me laugh
when I heard it for the first time was I say Hailsham's
informed today fiery speeches like this will save the party
and that is a very specific reference.
To the Tory conference in October, the same month when
Lord Hailsham, hereditary peer who was made Tory party
chairman, gave gave rabble rousing speeches, at least for
as far as Conservative MPs in the Conservative peers in the
50s could do. But he was perceived as a threat
to the then Prime Minister Macmillan and basically at his
speech closing the conference in October. 12th of October he rang
a bell. He picked a bell and started
ringing it and said let it ring more loudly, let it ring for
victory. And the Daily Mail had this
immortal headline the next day saying Hailshemism.
The man with the bell draws big cheers for his hot gospeling and
overshadows the Prime Minister. So Hailsham at that point was
sort of like really in the news, which and presumably I think by
the sound of Milligan held that kind of thing and contempt, the
idea that this was a rabble rouser, you know, a registry
peer of a certain age. He then went on to, before Tony
bended, he dropped his, he resigned his peerage
specifically to try and become leader of the Tory party, but
didn't get it. Was he was his real name
Quentin? Hogg he was.
He became Quentin Hogg again after he resigned his peerage.
But then, in 1964, when the mysterious movements of how the
Conservatives elected, they didn't elect their leaders.
They just appeared. It was like the men in the Gray
suits they used to call it. Yeah.
So it was double shooting, wasn't it then, Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So.
So he came out of nowhere and Hailsham didn't get it, and then
he retreated, licking his wounds and ended up being made a life
pier in 1970. But I just thought that was,
again, it was one of these things where you got this
fantastical episode with the way that it kind of like unravels
and kind of unrolls, but then in it you've got these very
specific, right up to date references.
In there and of course as we've said right at the start based on
a specific article in the specific event, because I think
that's that's the line you just mentioned about how they say, of
course we were just digging to test the safety of the walls,
but it was a failure because we didn't find the treasure.
Again, that's the sort of implication of that article,
isn't it as well. You could read that, yes, we
weren't really looking for treasure and by the way, we
didn't happen to find it. It's that kind of when they
obviously would have been desperately excited to come
across it. Hailsham.
Lord Hailsham. Yeah, I again, I've said this
before. I repeat myself so often on this
podcast, John. I'm aware of it.
But Lord Hailsham, to me is the payoff to at least a dozen to
Ronnie's jokes. Yeah, I'm right in saying that,
aren't I? He was kind of, he was a
ubiquitous figure, particularly I think in the in the 50s and
60s, but he was still around. He kind of constantly appeared
in the in the 70s as well as this sort of old August.
Old stager, but he was a real each as far as the Tories had.
He was tried to be a rabble rouser, hence doing gimmicks
like ringing bells and talking about saving the party.
But it was it was a very kind of yes, I think he was he was a
butt of jokes. He he kind of.
He couldn't keep himself. He was a strange kind of mix of
I'm a, you know, a member of the peerage, I'm the bastion of
conservatism. But he could not resist getting
his face in the newspapers. And being there, so he was very
He was a ubiquitous figure. So I did make me laugh that he
cropped up in this very specific context.
Yeah. Well, OK.
Well I think we've, I think we've gone all over the shop but
we've we've we've covered the show talked about a great it is,
it is as I say one of the top, I would say top top five certainly
top ten probably top five. Series 8 going shows and if you
haven't listened to it or you haven't listened to it for a
while, check it out. It's on BBC Sounds, it's on
YouTube, it's on Spotify and it is.
Yeah, but like I say, you do need to sort of keep notes while
you listen to it to make sure that you keep up to speed with
what's going on. I'm still not sure whether it
actually is logically watertight or not.
It's it's all feels like it, but one of those things that gives
the illusion of feeling like it might be.
Yeah. As long as you don't look too
hard. Yeah, I know.
It's a favorite of friend of the show Sean Gaffney.
All right. Regular guest as well.
I know he probably would have wanted to do this, but tough
cheese, Sean. Oh, you might feel bad now.
So Jonathan, thank you so much And what are you on Twitter?
I'm world of telly. Yeah, it's a check out John on
Twitter. So have you got anything coming
up, any projects you're working on that you wanna?
Yeah, I've got, I've been sort of taking kind of like taking a
back. See, I haven't really done many
sort of writing projects recently, but I've been, there's
a long gestating one about the TV soap opera Triangle that I'm
working on and World of Triangle is what that will be.
So I'm hoping to find the time at last.
To give that show it's due. Triangle of despair.
The triangle, Well, that's one way of looking at it.
Yes, it's so. Anyway, so they'll be, yeah,
watch this space for that one and we might be starting up
something again to do with Tacky on TV, which was the old podcast
we used to do years ago, that sort of Doctor Who based
podcast. Which we started many, many
years ago, but it's it's now as old men who doing it, trying to
organize our lives to find enough time to actually do it.
But other than that, yeah, so that will be coming, and I might
still be on Twitter, but whether Twitter will still be there is
anyone's guess at the moment. That's the only problem.
Yeah, by the by the way, I should have said triangle of
sadness. That was what I was trying to
think of. So that ruined the very weak.
Yeah, Triangle now that had Kate O'Mara sunbathing topless.
That's what everybody remembers about it.
But you know, there's so much more to Triangle than that.
Sure there is. She was only in the first
series. All right, Okay, All right, Job,
listen. Brilliant.
Great to have you back and we will certainly speak again.
Yeah, great. Thanks a lot, Tyler.