Hello, Hello to you, too. Memories immediately, of course,
of the goons. And at total to 7:00 tomorrow,
the raps come off, the first of five goon shows never before
heard in the UK. They've gathered dust for nearly
30 years and were thought to have been destroyed, but ABBC
recording engineer Ted Kendall tracked them down.
And what does he think of the goons?
The Goon Show is unique. It's a blend of radio comedy and
radio drama. It throws such strong pictures
in the mind. If you read the books, you know
that it's just Sellers, Seek and Milligan just standing at a
couple of bites doing these things.
But when you listen to them, it doesn't sound like that.
There's all these wonderful characters.
There's Blood Knock and Moriarty and Grip Pipe and Eccles and
Blue Bottle, and they're gallivanting over this
ridiculous landscape and, you know, disappearing through
portable holes. In this kind of caper, you get
things like people descending infinite flights of stairs to
answer the door in a bungalow. If the preparations for
Christmas have reduced you to a frazzle, then the best thing you
can do at 12:30 is turn down the Turkey and turn on the goons.
The. Hello and welcome to Goonpod.
My name is Tyler Adams and we have a slightly different show
this week. Last year I interviewed Ted
Kendall, the sound engineers, sound engineer and well known to
all Goons enthusiasts as the man who lovingly and painstakingly
repaired, restored and revitalized most of the existing
Goon Shows, shows which had previously been either
incomplete or muddy sounding or both.
Ted first began working on the Goon shows in the 80s, but it
was his collaboration with Dirk Mags on 1991's At Last the Go On
Show and subsequent Commission to restore a bunch of shows for
a high profile Radio Two and Radio 4 repeat season soon after
that made Ted a household name, or at least any household which
received a quarterly copy of the GSPS newsletter.
Ted would, most notably for us at least, work on the Goon Show
compendiums, and it is him we have to thank for such riches.
Not only all the extent shows restored to their highest
possible quality, but a whole treasure trove of extra
material, from show warmups to outtakes, radio documentaries,
sound effects, interviews and so much more.
There's a few reasons that the episode I recorded with Ted
didn't go out last year, mainly due to my audio feed.
But it was a fascinating conversation and for the longest
time it's been bugging me that I couldn't share it with you
listeners. So what I have done is Knocked
Together, a show which is 99% Ted talking Ted talks with
minimal involvement from me. What could be better?
I hear you cry. Anyway, when Ted and I began
talking, he briefly touched on his earliest memories of goon
type content, the Tele Goons. Here's Ted.
I love them. I mean, you see them back now
and they are a bit crude and rough around the edges.
But now I am a fan of telecoms and I well remember being rather
miffed that one Saturday the telecoms was postponed to allow
for the repeat of the first episode of Doctor Who prior to
the broadcast of the second episode.
I didn't think much of that at the time, but I'm not going to
cross the Whovians, Not on this anyway.
When I started in sound, I could drive a tape recorder before I
could read fluently. We had several tape recorders at
home. Dad was big radio buff and by
profession he was a routine chemist.
But radio and music were twin loves of his.
And we had a Grundig tape machine at home with which I
used to play about. And I remember on one of these
tapes, I mean, I know now exactly where it comes from, but
I, I, I didn't for a long time. And it was just his voice
saying, what does the dirt encrusted Saab desire all these
sensuous drinks of the Orient Ayars.
I remember the Ayars, the, the, the, the, the, the, the roll on
the R. So that was the first genuine
bit of goons I actually heard. And I, I think I just about
connected it as such. Funnily enough, I, I, I missed
the goon repeat season in 69. For me, it really took off with
the last goon show of all in in 72.
And of course that has been a sort of disease like motif
throughout my life. As you know, the last goon show
of all. But but it's it, it, it sort of
went from there, recorded it off Radio 4, played it ceaselessly,
drove my parents to distraction. My mum bought me the Goon Show
companion. I was at home on the bank
holiday weekend. I was at college by then.
I remember reading this book. I seem to remember I was playing
an album by Quiet Sun called Mainstream.
Quiet Sun was an offshoot of Roxy Music.
I remember Sun streaming in through the through through the
front room window. And I was playing Bargain
Classics off that album. It's a track called Bargain
Classics. And I was reading this book and
seeing all these TLO numbers and thinking, hey, what it would be
just to sort of live among those TL OS and do all this stuff and,
and things, you know, ridiculous dream really.
But by that time I'd already resolved I was going to join the
BBC because at that point the BBC, you know, was this great
institution. It stood for a lot more than it
stands for. Now, let me tell you, a few
years earlier I'd written to the BBC and said, look, I'd like to
work for you because wants to recording and all this sort of
things. Very keen on.
And yes, I mean, I just played around with tape machines and
with amplifiers. I mean, I had seven goes
constructing an audio mixer before I made one that worked
and one that worked was actually really quite good.
But I, I, you know, I, I, I, I could weigh the soldering iron
when I was 10, but myself when I was 10 and a quarter and learn
to treat the thing with a bit more respect thereafter.
And, and I got this propensity for sticking a microphone up in
front of school choirs and local orchestras and just about
anything that moved. So, you know, I was trying to be
pretty hands on about recording, even if I didn't know much about
it at that stage. I knew that a single crossed
pair was the way to go. Actually, it isn't necessarily,
but let's not go into that. Yes.
So I was learning about all that sort of stuff as well.
I went to university and my degree was in electronic
engineering, so it's a technical qualification and the general
way of thinking in the BBC, most of it was that technical people
looked after the equipment, planned the equipment, stole the
equipment, and the people who operated it were arts types who
were taught the technical side and that that was the prevailing
culture in domestic radio. I I was never much interested in
television to be honest. For me it was sound.
I I remember when stereo radio actually started, certainly on
the the the widespread stuff on because it the first few years
it was radio three only and only a little every week.
And then I think 72, around the time with the audio fair and the
50th anniversary celebrations, the BBC suddenly launched stereo
across radios 2-3 and four. And, and, and this isn't
absolutely miraculous. You would you because Dad had
built this Heathkit receiver and we tuned it in and the little
stereo light came up and there was stereo coming over the radio
bleed. Miraculous.
You know, I still harbour sort of unbridled affection for the
Multiplex system. I think it's just something
that's so clever that got me into doing electronics at at
university. So the overwhelming push in the
BBC for somebody who came in as a technical graduate was towards
either maintenance or planning and installation.
And I got a traineeship. It was called Studio Capital
Projects Department, but it was basically planning and
installation. They renamed it from PID because
most people that stood for panic and indecision, you see.
So. So I had to give it a new name.
Anyway, you see, I was doing that and not so naturally I
wanted to get into installing sound studios if that was the
bit I was going to do. But no, I ended up in broadcast
systems, which I found dry as dust.
I could do it, but it was it wasn't really what I wanted to
do. And quite by chance, I saw an
advert in the BBC staff paper for a senior balance engineer at
Transcription Recording Unit. Transcription.
Ah ha, ha, ha, goes my little brain.
You see, that's where the gooms are.
Two birds, one stone. So full of the confidence of
youth. You see, I sent my application
in for an interview and they granted me one.
And the first thing that happened then was they showed me
into this room and they said, right, there's a 16 track tape,
mix it. Now, I hadn't sat in front of a
multitrack desk in my life. I had a basic idea of what it
was about. But in 10 minutes I had to
produce a light music balance. Now light, light music balances
are difficult. Serious music, you see generally
the ensemble balance themselves internally.
You can essentially put a pair and some spots up and the thing
will work if you've got a pair of ears and a basic idea of
what's going on. Light music is very much more
driven. You're given a lead sheet, so
the particular instruments carrying the melody.
But anyway, so it had strings. So I thought, well, yes, I know
how strings going to simply orchestra put them sort of
across the across the thing. And there was a bit of thing
and, and a bit, you know, bit of brass and a vocal and
everything. And I was a bit shy with the
reverb because I, you know, and I produced this sort of balance
and it then got immediately played to the board, you see.
And the chairman of the board, bless him, Adrian Revel, was a
recording engineer of many years standing by that time.
And I could see him trying not to laugh and, but he was very
good about it. And he sort of asked me about
details, the balance, like why did you, the strings like that?
I said, well, Symphony layout and everything.
Why didn't you put any reverb on?
And I said, well, I don't want Mantovani, which was, you know,
the, the standard funny answer to that question, but, you know,
well, yes, all right, he's got the first idea.
What about the harp? And I said, what harp?
He said, yes, all right, That was sitting on track 16.
You might not have noticed it. All that sort of thing.
And, and, and this sort of thing went on.
And like, you know, Jimmy Burnett, who was the music
coordinator, said the very vast experienced guy.
I mean, his first balancing job was Edinburgh Festival 1947 or
something and he was Julian Breen's right hand in the studio
and he said, well Ted, how would you go around getting a good
string sound? I said well I get the best
orchestra I could lay my hands on to start with because I
couldn't think of anything else to say.
I didn't get that job. But I I rang Adrian up and said
it was nice of you to at least humor me.
And he said not at all that considering you've 0 experience,
you did quite well. How about an attachment?
And that's where it all started. I got established in
transcription service and then I went looking for goons because I
knew from Wilma that there were goon tapes lurking.
And that's where the source of the professional thing started.
The first transcriptions issue, issues of the goon show were
basically more or less as soon as they went out.
The orders of transcription service was serving at the time
was very largely sort of an expat thing, very largely
broadcasting organizations within the empire or the
Commonwealth. There was still an empire in the
mid 50s, but it was diminishing. So there were a large number of
stations which weren't actually commercial, so didn't have to
have commercial breaks in 1/2 hour program.
So the general idea was to run the program to 2930 with a bit
of play out to allow for variations in turntable speed,
that kind of thing. So it fit nicely in 1/2 hour
slot. In the 50s certain things were
taken out. Topical references, offensive
gags. Now the definition of offensive
interestingly changed between the 50s and the 60s.
In the 50s it was generally smut.
In the 60s it had more to do with race, so you would find
certainly through most of the 50s, you know, the notorious gag
in white box of Great Barfield. I think ladies and gentlemen,
actually got into the TS1 issue, but was taken out of TS2 because
the sensitivities were different.
Also, there were these extraordinary things about
topicality in the 50s. In the Mighty Wurlitzer,
Moriarty is singing a snatch of I'm Walking Backwards for
Christmas and it actually comes out on the thing as I'm walking
backwards across the Irish Sea. The reference to Christmas
snipped out policy cut had to go see.
So some of those cuts either lose a joke or goblet and say
the in In the 60s, the requirements were more that
racial sensitivities become more enlightened and also 27 minutes
would leave room in the 30 minutes slot for the newer
customers to insert commercials into the half hour slot.
And and also, you know, the world had moved on and some
things that were sort of, you know, in common parlance in the
50s in common knowledge no longer standard as fresh.
So out they went. By the mid 60s, Gilbert Harding
was dead and Sabrina was retired.
I mean, Jane Mansfield, yeah, still current and she didn't die
till I think 67. And Marilyn Monroe was well
known, known enough even then to be immortal.
But but yes, there were sort of things on the on the judgment of
the particular. Producer, Hello, me again.
At this point I saw fit to mention to Ted about the
glaringly clunky edits in the String Robberies episode, it
being fresh in my mind as we'd recently covered it on Goompod.
Max Geldrey will show what fun could be had.
Brandy. Yeah, well, the problem with
that is that it didn't even get as far as transmission.
Tom Ronald was a slightly old fashioned producer.
I mean, he he did Hancock's half hour.
So he wasn't that old fashioned, but he was less in sympathy with
the Goons than most. Now that cut is a great
frustration because there's absolutely no material anywhere
now. Rumor has that when the main
editing channel for the Goons was in a room in Aeolian Hall,
there was a cupboard without takes in.
But Yodian Hall I think got demolished about 1969.
I was too late. I mean, I pulled lots of
material in from lots of other places as you well know, but no,
that particular cut, there's nothing to be done about.
The other one is Shangranar. Again, it's based on the book
Lost Horizontally otherwise known as Cross Ava Gardner with
Stethoscope Geiger counter and you know those two of the two
worst deficiencies that come to mind easily and there's nothing
to be done. I mean, I have dug extensively
and that is the best that could be done.
But it's still, it's still jars now.
Meantime, Mexico will show what fun can be had.
Brandy, the story of Shangri-La. Is adopted from Fred Hilton's
book Lost Horizontally, based on the legend of Shangra Loo from
the play across Ava Gardner with stethoscope Geiger counter.
Shangri-La Goons isn't the only thing I did by long chalk.
I've done. I've done jazz.
I've done some rather important, at least to my mind, classical
releases. I've worked across the board.
And because I've been a freelance for so long, the only
guarantee you've got of anything is the phone continuing to ring.
And the only way you're going to get that is if your name on the
back of the CD case as it was, you know, you pick it up out the
rack, you turn it over, got Ted Kendall on the back, and they
say fine, that's as good as it's going to be.
If Ted's worked on it, it's as good as it's going to be, I'll
buy it. And that was the guarantee to
the consumer that I was striving for because I reckon that if
you, if the stuff doesn't sell, then people are going to pay
you. You see.
So that was sort of the ethos. I, I, I suppose, yes.
I mean, I'm a bit of a fuss ass really, but just won't get it
right. I had I had mentor in sound
restoration, John RT Davis, whose name is known to goon fans
of the world over. Anyway, I'd had quite a good
training in modern sound techniques and transcription
service, and when I seriously started doing Goons I, I'd
hooked up with John quite early, of course, because he had a lot
of acetates taken off air in the 50s.
And that turned into another branch of what I do because he
was able to bring home to me just what music you could get
off of 78 if you played the thing sympathetically.
I have to admit, sort of growing up when I did, I thought the 70
eights were a bit of a back number.
Technically, they would only sound OK, but not really good.
And John said, well, no, there are ways because of course we
jazz, of course, it's down very much more to the original
performer than the serious music.
And if you want Coleman Hawkins, the peak of Coleman Hawkins,
you've got to get it off at 78. Now granted, Hawkins was
recording into the 60s, but you know, he was a bit of a ruin by
then. A magnificent ruin to be sure,
but a ruin Stillwell drank and all that.
But you know, if you really want the cream of Colin Hawkins to
say, you know, that is the stuff recorded in the 30s on 78.
And John had done a lot of largely empirical work because
he was essentially a musician with a technical bent and I was
a technician with musical bent. So there was quite a bit of
synergy going on, which led to my disc transfer box called the
front end, which has been another one of the disease like
motifs in my existence. And he said to me quite early
on, look, a lot of people achieve things because they
don't know it can't be done. Now that's quite a powerful
idea, that. Standing on giant shoulders is
obviously a way to see far, OK. And a lot of what I've done in
goods particularly has been built on the efforts of other
people in preservation particularly, you know, there
have been tapes going out of odd parts of the BBC under people's
coats and all that kind of thing when otherwise they would have
been wiped. So, you know, there's a lot of
that going on. We got talking about the Goon
Show Companion and about Roger Willmott and Peter Copeland.
Peter had assisted Roger in putting together the companion.
I think the story goes that Roger and Peter Copeland were
given the job of clearing out a look of somebody who'd left, and
in that locker were 16 reels of the Goon Show.
And of those 16, I think 15 were very close to complete shows.
One had very little mod on it at all.
It was a badly wiped original of I think the better pudding her.
But then essentially what had happened is that this guy had
gone because transcriptions service and the external
services at Bush House had close lengths of both part of external
services. And I think this guy had
obviously gone to Saint Hilda's, which was where transcription
was at the time. One day had seen the washing
pile. Washing is the BBC term for bulk
Eurasia incidentally. And you've seen these goon show
tapes on the washing pile and had just walked out of the hand
with was very big handful of 1610 inch tapes and he'd
secreted them in his lock at a loss to know what to do next
with them. Well, Peter and Roger knew
exactly what to do with them. They spirited them out of the
building pronto. Those reels eventually came back
to the BBC when I sought them out in, I think 1986.
Whereas a transcription service, I got an attachment to archives
to find exactly what was in transcription service, which
would be of interest to Sound Archives, Extraordinary, the two
parts. The BBC didn't communicate
better, but there you are. That's the way the BBC worked at
the time. But there were a lot of things
that were right about the BBC then which aren't now.
So I don't wish to decry the BBC of old and the spirited these
tapes out and preserve them. They didn't actually get back on
air till about 808687. But once I got to transcription
service and and and found out there was all this stuff, I did
quietly start to talk to people about it.
One of the producers on comedy, Bridget Marrow, nice lady, she
humored me, which was nice of it.
And she said well look, you know, let's try and find out
exactly what there is, see if there's more stuff we can put
out. Because I think there was a bit
of interest generated around 1985 because Richard Eves was
doing good repeats at the time and he got in touch with
Transcription and said, look, if you got the original of 1985,
obviously Transcription never issued it because it was too
topical. But yes, we did have 1985 that
got dubbed and sent over and had a, a domestic repeats.
And then that got sent out overseas.
And that created a little flurry of interest.
And Bridget said, well, look, can you do a bit of ferreting
and see what else we've got there which could be used?
So that was really the start of that.
And that caused me to get in touch with John RT, Now Peter
Copeland, of course, I knew from the Gooncho Companion.
And by that time in his career he was the fastest dubbing mixer
in the West. Well, he worked out of Bristol,
so that was in the West. But he was doing soundtracks
with things like film dubbing for things like wildlife on one.
And as he said to me, his greatest virtue in that thing
was that he had a reaction time of about 8 frames.
OK, 8 frames is about 1/3 of a second in in film parlance,
slightly less in television because it's 25 frames.
But this reaction time and, and, and, you know, he could
construct soundtracks for all the these Attenborough epics and
very good he was at it too. Peter was essentially a
collector of sound recordings. He was recording off air.
Well, he started on disc, built his own disc recorder and he
started using tape about 1960. And by this time he was already
working for the Beeb. He kept his sound business going
basically as an insurance against sudden dismissal from
the BBC because he felt he was probably saying a little bit
close to the wind for the way the BBC worked at the time.
But the BBC actually decided he was quite valuable because he
was one of those guys they could show anywhere to plug a hole.
So he ended up dotting around various bits of the BBC through
the 60s, doing various difficult jobs and he was found very
useful and he washed up in film dubbing.
But all this time he was collecting the 70 eights and
spoken word on 78 was a big thing with him and recording
comedy, particularly comedy off air all throughout the 60s and
70s. Throughout the 60s, it was
pretty good quality. The 70s, like a lot of us at the
time, he felt the economic pinch a bit and the, the speeds went
down and the tracks got narrower.
But still, it's all valuable stuff.
And, you know, his involvement with the goods was basically
part of that. I think he had a fairly complete
run of the Radio Times or, or could access it And, and, and he
was, you know, a meticulous researcher as well.
See, when I was in transcription, I, I've been sort
of gooing around for for a little while that I was actually
what was rather fun because I, I sort of been trained up, but I
was obviously a little bit square, Peggy in their eyes.
But no matter. But they found and Bridget have
found this thing that I wanted to do was good at and I was
actually put in the allocation sheets for the day.
You know, I have a whole day goons, which was great.
So I go digging and dubbing and generally sorting things out.
And then the retiring OPS manager Pete Brunskill said.
You know, Ted, we've got a few goon tapes in this cupboard in
my office, would like to check them over.
He was a lovely bloke Pete, he'd been in the RAF, I think he'd be
bomber crew. Anyway, he's a lovely bloke and
and things. And so he handed me these tapes
and I sort of took them into a channel and played them.
And I thought, yeah, right, yeah, Mountain eaters, yeah, all
right. But we've really got mountain
eaters and there's this thing dreaded about a pudding hurder.
So I put that on without any sort of particular expectation.
I thought TOXTOX, that sounds odd.
Tox means that it was recorded in a channel at 200 Oxford St.
rather than at Broadcasting House.
You see, I'm playing this thing and I'm expecting it to be
better. Pudding herder.
And of course it's the same script.
And then little things in the performance start to go adrift.
And you think it isn't, is it? What is this?
And then it took a little while to realize that Milligan wasn't
there because Peter was doing a good job doing Eccles and all
that. And then you have the little
things with, you know, Eccles talking to another Milligan
character. So they had to pre record one of
them. That's right.
It's Blue Bottle talking to Eccles.
So so Peter was doing Blue Bottle live and the response
from Eccles was played in on a disc and he thought, yeah, now
what's going on? What's going on?
And then the this is Mr. Attlee. Somebody's just throwing a
better pudding at me, you know, and and, and who would have done
that? And they rang up, rang a number
as a 29 Hyde Park gate which the Churchill's residence after he
resigned. So that put it later than 54
because Church has gone 55. And, you know, I mean, it seems
so obvious now, but I mean, the, the the clues were slowly
meshing in my head. And I think it hello, yes, this
is actually something different. And then I saw Doug further and
found, yes, it was indeed. But that is the only show that
Wilmot missed, which is it's remarkable for research work to
be that good that long after publication.
It's extremely thorough. Blonde buttons there's no need
to worry about the mine. Yes, I must worry.
And Matt, I don't want to be Diddy, you know can't tell you.
Why did I tell you why I didn't want to be in Daddy?
Because I'm wearing my best iron laptop spots yet hurriedly puts
on carbo tin head. Don't you worry, blonde button
that mine can't hurt us. That mine is one of ours.
Around about 8687 could have been somebody decided to have a
bit of a policy at Radio Four. They do it from time to time.
You see, It was to the effect that comedy shows in particular
were after editing, were coming out rather too short and
announcers were having to do a lot of fill.
So the edict went out that for a 30 minute slot, the program had
to run at least 29 minutes 15 or for every 5 seconds the under
ran 100 lbs would be taken off the program budget.
Now, of course, to produce, there's nothing like a monetary
incentive. So when Richard Edis was given
job of selecting the Goon show for that year and it turned out
to be the International Crystal Pudding, first thing that
happened was he got sent the 27 minute version and he came back
and said well that's 27 minutes. Got a bit of a problem with
that, which he explained and that got thrown to me as the
Goon man. And it was one of those
instances where I was able to say, well, it just so happens
that I have about me a tape copy of the original TS issue, which
was one of the tapes which had come from Peters Cash at
Bristol, which had come out of the tin cupboards in Bush House,
which sort of thing. And straight off the bat, I was
able to reinstate most of the script just by cutting between
versions. The cuts actually work quite
well. The, the, the, the tapes were
very far, weren't very far apart in terms of sound, which was
useful. They, they shouldn't have been
being studio does. But there was sort of little
subtle things that were done to the pick of the goon stuff.
Bit of limiting, little bit of equalization.
But the joints weren't well enough.
And that got the thing out to length because I was able to get
the play out off the TS1 version and they weren't on the the pick
of the goon's versions with about one exception, I think
there was no actual play out. So that was very nearly the
thing at transmission length. So Richard was inclined to say
job done, but you see, I wasn't because there was one line left
and that was the explodable granite statue with built in
plunger, which was originally an explosive granite statue of
Bessie Braddock with built in plunger.
Now of course by that time most people have forgotten Bessie
Braddock. Bessie Braddock was quite, quite
significant actually. She was a an MP for a seat in
Liverpool Labour and she was a fierce champion of the
underprivileged and particularly of underprivileged women and
children. And she was a little
uncomfortable for the Labour leadership even in the 1950s.
And the way she went about this, she just did not belt up and she
was about 5 foot nothing and a right battle axe, but a battle
axe in a good cause. So unfortunately the only tape I
had of the complete broadcast was a bit hissy and the
techniques I had available at the time were not brilliant, but
I fought that thing as hard as I could and it was good enough for
transmission. So that thing went out a
complete length. And of Bessie Braddock, yes, it
hisses a bit, but it's there. Now the later restorations are a
lot better because I had different sources, better
techniques, all that sort of thing.
But that was, I think, my first full length restoration that
sort of put me on the map as far as the corporation was concerned
anyway. At this point I asked Ted if he
referred to or borrowed from any of the LP's which had been
commercially released, specifically those the BBC
issued. I tended not to pay too much
attention to the BBC issues because I knew they'd had
various things done to them. The call of the West, for
instance. I mean, it's been through a
noise gate, you can hear it. A noise gate.
It's basically designed to reduce your perception of noise
in the reproduction by dropping the gain of the channel when
there's no signal present. OK, so if something's happening,
yes, you let the signal through. But when there's a bit of
silence, it closes down to a degree so that you hear less
hiss. And and and if you're doing a
rock mix, it's great if you've got a sort of a rather noisy
guitar amplifier and and you just want that Channel to be
quiet when the guitar isn't actually playing.
Very effective when you start using it on a signal, because
then it's just one element of the mix and everything that's
going on around will disguise the action of the boys gate.
But when it's on a mixed signal, it's different matter.
And the air will pick these things up very, very readily,
which may make the thing OK for entertainment value, but it
validates it as a source unless you're ready forced to.
But you know, various things with the BBC issues out of
commercial necessity. The Lagoon show Pure has been
repurposed in many ways for many markets.
And my job, I suppose, was to get it back to the point where
you think it's had it it it hasn't been molested at all and
and then it's just as it was, I suppose.
It's remarkable the number of times I actually managed to do
that and make it completely inaudible.
There are others where, you know, one had to do the best
that could be done for some stuff.
There's there's only one source and it's not ideal.
And it's at that point you rarely earn your corn because
you're trying to make its deficiencies as unobtrusive as
possible and to make the joins as seamless as possible.
And nothing interrupts the comic flow like a burst of hiss or
harm or something like that. It's just distracting.
You're, you're, you're it because, because we're animals
whose survival depended on the acuity of our hearing,
especially to transits to changes in sound.
The you know, the, the tiger that's going to eat you is
probably going to snap it big behind your neck, behind your
left ear, and you have to pick that transient up right.
So the ear is sensitive to these things because of evolutionary
considerations. Part, part of the task is to
make sure that such disturbances don't occur and distract the ear
from the subject matter. And remake of 1985 there was
quite a reasonable, there was one version which I think was
quite reasonable on a slow speed tape, but that it started in the
middle of the Jon Snake telescreen announcement at the
beginning. So it was about a minute and a
half, two minutes missing off the front.
And then the music items were chopped out.
And yeah, I think that had to be from two or three originals,
none of which was particularly good.
And it was just a question of taking the one that was best,
using that as the sort of the the template to match the others
too, and then doing the best I could.
Now our 1985 mark two was, yeah, not fun.
Actually not fun. My name is 846 Winston Seagull.
I'm a worker in the great new reflecting centre of the Big
Brother Corporation, or as you knew it, the BBC.
In every room is ATV screen that gives out a stream of orders.
Attention people of England state.
Thanks to the rationing of the free market, the price of tea
has now gone down to 85°. 1/4 And here's good news for state
housewives. The following goods are now in
the shops. Plastic and sawdust elephant
night shirts, second hand concrete parachutes, artificial
explodable woolen bloomers and self igniting tailless shirts
with anti Thunder sheet attached.
There are unlimited supplies in the shops.
Oh, it's good to be alive, I. Mean, of course, I went
freelance in the teeth of the recession.
I was a bit cushioned by the redundancy payment, but by the
middle of 91 things were looking a bit thin and I took a brief
and rather disastrous appointment at a music college
as their recording manager. Little did I realize at that
point I was being parachuted into a toxic environment and
lasted about a month and I just thought life's too short really.
I was living at the time in Leeds because I'd gone my last
years in the in the Beeb. I'd gone up there to do
recording for the Northeast region.
The North region was split for a few years in the 80s as some
sort of experiment, and basically the Northeast region
was supposed to produce stuff at barking basement prices.
So they were using local radio practices for domestic radio.
And because it was local radio practices, it was engineers on
the knobs. I've been traded transcription
and the serious music producer Tony Askew, I knew from
transcription. So he said, look, there's this
job, come do it. And that was a chance to buy a
house and all that sort of thing.
As I say, I did that rather ridiculous sing at music college
for a month, then a gig with Conifer Records doing a lot of
stuff off 70 Eights started up just about the week after I left
this college, which was pretty fortuitous.
And the guy I worked with, the Conifer, knew Michael Poynton.
Michael Poynton obviously knew Dirk Mags.
And the producer I was working with at Conifer knew I was good
and mad. So he entered in the
introduction. Ah, come to think of it, Dirk
being BBC, would probably have talked to Bridget.
Dirk would have gone to Bridget for material that was in
transcription service. And Bridget would no doubt have
mentioned whether if you're doing goons, don't do it without
Ted Kendall, because he can smooth your path.
He knows. He knows where everything is.
Well, of course I didn't, but I probably knew where more stuff
was than most people. So that's how I got roped into
it last to go on show. Lots and lots of goon talk going
on 'cause we were three goon nuts together.
And I, I said to look, you know, there's a problem with the goon
show among many, but there are so many shows that haven't been
heard in their entirety for so long because EMI have them and
they've only put out these truncated versions.
They're not likely to do anything else with them.
And this thought obviously went into Dirk's mind because at last
the go on show went over very well.
I mean, that was a magnum opus. And oh, it's put it this way, on
the final assembly that was in, I think age 51 or somewhere in,
in BH. And Dirk goes into it in the
podcast. But to start with, there were
three of us there at about 9:00 at night.
I just, I just gave up. I said, sorry, guys, you've got
everything you need to have you. Yes, they said.
So I went home and I hadn't realized at that time that this
was sort of Dirk's MO that in the, in the, in the, you know,
the final assembly or something like that.
He would just work through the night, which we did on the remix
of the Last Goon Show. And obviously that conversation
that Dirk and I had about the EMI shows went into his head and
stayed there. And the phone rang a while later
and he said, look, I've got eight slots on Radio Two and
eight slots on Radio 4. Can you put 16 restored shows
together? Well, I thought for all of a
nanosecond before I said yes, obviously.
And class work was scarce at the time, apart for anything else.
And that is where those restorations started.
I was quite lucky with one of them.
China's story was originally on tape, but there was a very good
copy on three sides of let's say 16 actually, with 17 and a
quarter because they're acetate but slow speeds discs which had
found their way to the National Sound Archive.
The Bieber made them perhaps for repeat or something, I don't
know. But anyway, there they were in
the National Sound Archive and they were pristine.
And because Peter Coblin was by that time conservation manager,
useful, he saw his view as conservation manager as making
sure the stuff was conserved. So if somebody outside, cuz they
were short staffed, if somebody outside was motivated to make a
really good copy of that, as far as he was concerned, you could
borrow the thing, do the copy, give them the copy and then you
know, provide the copper. I was OK use that copy which
which we did. So fortunately China's story I
didn't have to put together from umpteen different sources, but a
lot of the others I did with the cheek of the devil.
I went to EMI and said can I have a dub of your master tapes
of the Scarlet Capsule? Wish to be fair to them.
They did. And that was useful because
there were bits on on on scarlet capsule which had been
prematurely faded for the discard, but which were present
on master. So that was good.
And the EMI were very open handed about it because it
wasn't for it was for the BBC who had the broadcasting right.
So they saw no problem with that.
And I got all that. And yeah, that's how that's how
those happened. But that was around that time I
just about got hold of my first digital editing kit and adapt
machine. So a lot of the acquisition was
done on that. Some of the editing, no, all the
editing was done quarter inch because I didn't have my saving
then. So some of the acquisition was
done on that. But all the equalisation, all
the trimming up, all the editing was all done on quarter inch
with block and blade. And considering all that, I
think it came out remarkably well.
I asked Ted what were the criteria for choosing particular
shows for the series of repeats and and then the topic of the T3
wall arose. Part of it was stuff where there
was the material readily available to do stuff at full
length and some of it was stuff where it was really unfinished
business and the EMI stuff had to be expanded to full length.
You know, particularly in Scarlet Capsule, which was, you
know, brilliant parody of quite a mass.
I think I had a complete cover copy of the rent collectors
which had come out in the infamous T3 wall when Sandoca.
I was paid by transcription salary for six months to go
digging. I basically had carte blanche
from both sets of management to go seek where I would because a
lot of stuff that was in junk piles might well be of value.
And I've been sniffing around this sort of thing for a few
weeks, going through tape library and all this sort of
thing. And then Quentin Fuller, who was
the senior classical balancer at the time, I knew quite well
because classical music, another one of my things, you see.
And I was doing assemblies with him and he said, well look, if
you're looking for tapes, you better take some of the wall
panels off T3. T3 being the channel in
Kensington House on editing room, if you like, where we did
the classical assemblies. And I said, well, tell me more.
And he said, well look, T3 was originally mono.
And when we went over to stereo and put the speakers in the
obvious place, everything was very wolfy on the right hand
side. In other words, there was a base
resonance. And he said, well, we looked
there and we found that behind the acoustic treatment on the
right hand side was cavity. It was about 6 foot deep and it
was floored ceiling and it was anything up to 20, about 1012
feet wide. And he said, well, obviously
there was a can of this this cavity which was woofing away.
So we had to do something about it.
So he went down to tape library and just took the first half
many cubic feet it was off the washing pile and stuffed them in
there and deadened it. So he said if you take those
panels off, you may well find some stuff of interest.
Obviously we want you to refill the whole.
So yes, I had to go and find some other more current tapes
that definitely weren't of interest and put them in.
There was very little actual new good material, but there was a
lot of stuff that was in better quality.
Several shows which were the backup copies of the shows which
have been rather badly sliced up for the stereo versions.
The stereo versions is not a can of worms.
I felt it must have been tempting during the restoration
process to tighten up or correct bits of shows with maybe a delay
in a sound effect coming in, or a bit of Graham's hiss, or
simply a fluff which was never removed and and I asked Ted if
he tried to improve upon what actually went out as broadcast.
Where the gag was partly derailed by some technical
deficiency, I didn't hesitate in the fear of wages.
There is blood not playing back his account.
Little bit of what is in the in the script as music, then it's
something I I promise I pay you back at rate of a month.
And then there's Segan says blood not how much is or rather
Segan how much is so much a month.
It's about and it's the the the the barrel organ doing whatever
it is right. OK, so for that gag to work
properly, you want those middle two inserts to be the same
because the Japanese is saying I pay you back at rate of and
blood not saying Seagram how much is OK.
Now on the original transmission, that was basically
a record continuously playing and they were just opening the
fader where the insert was required.
So it was a fairly simple snip job just to make those two the
same. Now I wasn't the 1st to do that
transcription did that actually 'cause that only came out as
pick of the games. I think fear of wage didn't come
out as TS1. So so they did that fine.
I didn't hesitate to follow. If there's a you know, if
there's something that's obviously if a sound effects
playing in from disc and the gag is at making obvious it's from a
disc, then I took the surface noise and the crackles out.
If it was making it obvious that it was actually a gramophone
record as part of the gag, I left them in.
Those running boots are repeat of the running boot you heard in
Those Were the Days on the Light programme of March the 2nd and
was taken from the BBC Great Sound Library of 9000 Scratchy
Records. I like to think that my role was
more that of, you know, you get editions of the Beethoven
sonatas where where, where you have a knowledgeable guy
actually doing the editing like occasion, there may be a wrong
note in, in, in in the editions than previously printed.
And then you say, well, yes, we I've done it this because I
forget what they called it. They didn't call them curated
editions, but it's just, you know, as I say, it's well, it is
an edition of the stuff, if you like, it is my edition.
For the most part, I just let it speak for itself.
But there are times where it's fairly obvious there have been
technical obstacles in the way of the comedy and I've tried to
remove those. There was another thing I tried
to correct in the white Nettie trade, you know, get your get
your teeth out of my legs sort of thing where, where the spot
effect was too early. But any attempt to correct that
just made it worse. So I left it it, it's very
largely about not getting in the way of the comedy.
So no, I, I try not to get fetishistic about mistakes.
If, if it's an obvious mistake, I'll correct it.
I mean Call of the West was a bit tricky, but then I had the
most material for Call of the West.
The trouble was with the line tape that at some point if you
played on tape of the magnetized head, so there was a bit of
rumble going on in the background and that had to be
minimized. There was a fair bit of cross
cutting to do. Spectre of Tintagel, the only
copy I had of the end wasn't brilliant.
It was a bit hissy, so I was driving the his reduction a
little too hard. Although, hang on, I think I
remade that for the companion and made rather better fist of
it because of course, you know, I've been doing these shows over
30 years and of course the techniques for restoration have
become slowly more powerful and there have been more, Yeah, and
more problems I've been able to tackle successfully.
Series four, there was one from Sound Archives, which was OK,
that was basically discopy. There was another one Bank of
England robbery which came via Roger Bickerton from a guy in
the West Country somewhere, and that was a remarkably good
recording considering the time it was made.
I think it was done on domestic Grundig and quite possibly from
one of the experimental VHF transmissions which were
happening at the time. There wasn't a full VHF service
officially to the middle of 55, but there were tests on FM from
about 1953 and some of the more enterprising people took stuff
off there and and then that, that, that was quite good.
The second or third series stuff was, yeah, pretty nightmarish
for the most part. I think Mark Cousins had a very
much better dub of Spike Sound mirror tapes than I'd been able
to get hold of before, but they were still sound mirror tapes.
There was a couple of shows which were made by a guy who
emigrated to New Zealand and his son sent me copies of those.
That was irritating actually, because the punchline of one of
those shows was missing, because the bloke could some put some
sort of spoken introduction of his own on the front.
And if he hadn't, if he dispensed with the spoken
introduction, we could have had the punchline of the show, which
was Henry Cron spent half an hour looking for this rare bloom
and in the process of photographing it, he stepped
back on it. See.
Which is, I mean, it's really going all over, isn't it?
It's no good. Your heart.
I've lost my bearing, so you must have had a hole in your
pocket. I mean, I just know where we
are. I know exactly where we are.
Where here. Thank heavens.
I thought we were lost. All right.
No, no. Come, come.
We can't go up. We've lost over 60 of our
photos. I'm dying at first.
And Illington is dead, aren't you?
Yeah. You see?
Yeah. Come, gentlemen, we must find
this rare African white carnation.
I feel it. Look.
Yeah. Right at my feet.
There's one glowing right at my feet at last.
And that's the. That was that.
But yeah, I mean, there was sort of sound engineering things, and
there were one or two shows in the very early boxes which came
off wire recordings which just wowed all over the place and
slew to a stop. Keith Wickham gave me what
copies he had, which were like MP threes and Oh dear.
But I mean, you know, that was very much the case of any port
in the storm. This is good material.
If that's the best copy there is, I've just got to take it and
do the best I can with it. The wow was appalling and I'm
not sure I made it any better with the tools I had available.
So, you know, bits of those boxes weren't fun, but it had to
be done to get the material, the rarest material out is, you
know, keeping faith with the audience.
Again, look, you know, here it is, it's not brilliant, but here
it is. First meeting I had with John RT
Davis was quite an event ready because I was on a goon research
day and I rang him up and John could be this sort of force of
nature that he was great enthusiast full stop.
You know, anything that caught his fancy, he was enthusiastic
about and he had an opinion on. And very often those opinions
had quite large grains of truth in at the very least.
And and he, he, he said, well, you know, you know, come on,
come on, come down. And because you're not very far,
I'm only in, only in Burnham, you know, come down and let's
see a thing. So I stayed at home about 3:00
the following morning that he just sort of he'd seen something
in me. I hate, you know, this is a guy
I can hand, I can hand some of my torches to and sort of thing.
And I mean, he, he, he sort of when he was expanding his
philosophy of remastering, you know, 70 eights, he said, look,
you don't want something that's you want a sound that comes out
and said, Hey, man, listen to this.
And while he was saying that, he grabbed me by both shoulders and
shaken me as he and he strained a couple of intercostal muscles
in the in the process. I woke up the following morning
a pain in my ribs I'd never had before.
Anyway, at at the end of this little seance, you see, John
said, look, you better take these tapes away with you.
They were willed to me. They're from an estate.
Now this guy was jazz buff and he was goon buff.
OK, so you go through, keep all the goon tapes and let me know
what's on the jazz tapes, OK? I said deal.
So in that box of tapes, among other things, was the master and
Crest shortage. Sorry, no.
The collapse of the British railway sandwich system.
The earlier version of the script, there was one good
version which was slightly incomplete and one rather less
good version which was complete, which is why you can hear the
his change of the box because there weren't any better
sources. But on one of those tapes,
tucked away at the beginning of a track, was the Goons hit
Wales, made by a bloke called Ian Jennings, who died sometime
before 1986. But he was, he was another one
of the giants in that box of tapes.
There were all bits of 3040 shows, most of which were his
own recordings off air, most of which were off were FM.
Some were dubs from John's acetates, but most weren't.
And yeah, that's another source. The the bit at the front of the
Great Regions Park Swim, having a go at Eurovision that came off
one of those tapes, for instance, Yeah.
This is the BBC Home Service, but it's sloping to the right
wall. Would you mind standing in the
centre then, please? So I caused it you and soil
erosion in John Snag's office. And I thought it was an optical
illusion. No, no, no, no, no.
It really is sloping to the right.
So that's where the corporation's going downhill.
This may be amusement to you, but it's better and better to
us. Not so loud.
There may be planners listening. It's hard enough for them
already. Yes, indeed, Poor planners.
Poor fellows. Forced to fly to the continent
every week for conferences about Eurovision.
Forced to wine and dine and stay in the best hotels in Paris.
It must be hell in Paris. Well then, there it is.
You speak I'll of my masters. You, you, you naughty Emmanuel,
you get a punch of your silly old tiger.
Tim's naughty nose just about reached it.
Now then, kindly put on the chiffon nitrous.
Can I announce your attempt to redeem last week's show?
Ladies and gentlemen, the All leather Goon Show presents the
great Regions Park Swim. I know there's a load.
There's about 8 goon sound effects acetates which is still
floating around. They came up for auction about
2025 years ago and I missed them, so somewhere there's some
others. I've got some stuff for the
mountain eaters press for the Plasticine man maybe?
I'd have to check, but amongst amongst other things you see on
my I, I managed to get hold of the I'm walking backwards for
Christmas sequence from the seller's program, the listening
room. It turned up unannounced on an
acetate and I think that's about the only fragments of that
program that exists now, but but that was fun.
That's never actually had an outlet yet, but because there
were bits of those effects, this found their way into the last
goon show of all the the stuff of the rolling of the piano into
a wall that that was on one of those discs.
That was that was quite fun. And what was it for?
Oh, great statue debate. Some of the you know, you know,
that ridiculous effect just before Greenslave walks away and
and says, I told them a fib. We're not overrunning at all.
And the sort of very odd groaning effect that happens
before then it, it's vastly slowed down sort of Hinge Creek
with Milligan going at the end of it.
What the hell it meant when they recorded it, What the hell it
meant when they played it in, I don't know, but there you go.
That's Milligan, I say.
We're really behind time. I told them a fib And I must say
I did enjoy it. We weren't really behind time.
We weren't. You were right.
And I say we weren't really behind time.
You better write it in. I say we weren't really behind
time. I told them a fib And I must say
I did enjoy it. Of course, the thing that turned
up in one of the Goon Show boxes was the bit of the sale of
Manhattan where they were doing the read through before
recording the soundtrack for the telecoms.
This is now the sidetrack. You see Angus Mackenzie, who was
this blind guru of, well, he thought he was a guru of audio
engineers and great proponents of stereo rodeo and everything.
No, I mean, in all fairness, he did a lot of good.
And when he died, very long story, but when he died, because
I was also a member of the audio engineering society, I got to
hear that his test gear was up for sale and his hifi equipment.
And, you know, would people like to go on the House, along to the
house and see what they wanted and what you know, and pay the
family? And so I went along and picked
up a couple of bits of test gear and that was fine.
And but the first thing that happened was when I went to the
door, I just tripped over this box of tapes.
And his daughter, who was organizing most of it, said, oh,
don't worry, they're going in the skit next week.
I said they are not. She said, you're going to drag
them away. Then I said, yeah, She said,
you're on two transit vans later.
And I mean, they're still out in the shed here, most of them,
Right. But this is, I mean, I mean, you
know, a lot of it is sort of classical stuff off Radio Three
but doesn't exist elsewhere. Of course, he ran Olympic
Studios for several years. So there's Olympic Masters out
there, all that sort of thing. But while he was one of the
things that happened at Olympic was the soundtrack for the Tele
goons, which were re recordings, as you probably know, not
edition. And all that survives all.
All that I have of that is about a 15 minute sequence of them
reading, doing the read through of the sale of Manhattan.
And significantly, I'm told it's all three goons because sellers
wasn't available for one or something.
But this is all three goons. There may well have been other
people taking stuff off here at the time.
The overwhelming likelihood is that it just got shoved into a
skip. As you see, Angus Mackenzie
stuff, 40 years of audio history, and his own family were
willing to put it in a skip just because they didn't think,
couldn't think of anything else to do with it.
I mean, it's not malice. I appreciate people's dilemmas
here, but you know, it's fairly certain that that quite a lot of
material has disappeared and, and, and, you know, it's just a
question of being grateful for saving what we can save.
You see, you see, the, the, the, the, the line type of call of
the West. I mean, that was, that was just
pure chance. That was with a guy who was in
nuts about the goons. He was nuts about jazz.
Peter Bolt, who works at that time, and I knew him for he'd
retired from from Thames Television.
But I mean, I mean, this man was Nutter enough to get the Jazz
Couriers to play in Morecambe in 1959.
Go and look that up. Right, OK.
The gig is available on Gearbox Records now.
There, there, there you are. I've given the man a plug and he
had a couple of reels of goon material and he just said, well,
here they are. They're goons.
You're the goon man. Take them away.
Do what you can with them. Let me have a copy.
And one of them was sort of fairly standard.
It was the Great Spawn Plague and it was the TS1 edit.
But the other one was very nearly the complete line tape of
the Cold West. In other words, the thing as
recorded from the studio. Now, admittedly, being on this
magnetized head, it had a bit of rumble on it, but basically it
was there. And that was just chance that
would have got into the washing pilot transcription service.
Somebody would have got it out under their coat.
But it must have gone through three or four different hands
before it ended up on Peter's shelf.
And had I not been doing jazz remastering for Hep Records at
the time, I wouldn't have met Peter Bold.
And if I hadn't met Peter Bold, who knows what would have
happened to that, That, that tape.
You see, you know, every day in life we have a binary choice of
one kind or another. And you never know.
I mean, you know, if you think too much about it, you just go
mad. You know, you just have to sort
of, you know, try and do the right thing at any given point.
But I've got a feeling from what I've heard of the the the sort
of third series goon shows that, you know, if they came out
intact, we might not be quite as thrilled with them as as the
distance. You know, it's his distance less
enchantment to the view. You see that the Goon show
proper in a way, really did start with the starlings.
That was when all the elements properly coalesced.
There's some good stuff in the fourth series.
It's very nearly there. But but you see with genius
people want even the chips from the workbench.
I can understand that to a point.
You see another one of my big things, Django Reinhardt,
enormous, you know, gypsy guitarist, completely feral,
right, completely feral. But you put a guitar in his
hands and it's, you know, you're you're hearing stuff from the
gods. Basically what that guy could
not do on a guitar with a crippled left hand.
Be it said, you know, anything Django played, I want to hear
just because it is to me that glimpse of the infinite almost
and and I I you know, I can see people wanting wanting
everything of The Beatles. But there's this lovely, I think
Ray Coleman thing was doing one one of those many Beatles books
that were out on the in the 70s. I think there's AB side.
You know my name. Look up the number.
And he said it's funny in places, and that was that.
And there more or less we concluded our chat as we both
had pressing engagements to meet.
However, Ted to his credit did offer to return one day because
in some areas we barely scratched the surface and I was
thinking that perhaps a future show could solicit questions
from listeners to put to Ted. This listenership is extremely
goon savvy and I'm sure would not disappoint in putting
interesting and even challenging questions to the great man.
So if you enjoyed this episode and would be interested in a
follow up, please let me know. You lot are not backward in
coming forward with feedback and thoughts so I'd really welcome
this. It only remains for me to say
thank you for listening. Please rate and review in the
usual places. Please tell your friends.
Please do whatever it takes to raise the profile of the show
and ensure that more and more people TuneIn every week or
download every week and and listen to this load of rubbish.
Anyway, see you soon. Bye.