Goon Pod

"... Sellers is very funny. Unfortunately, the movie’s general approach to hippiedom is what we’ve come to dread. Hippies wear funny clothes, sleep on the stove, don’t wash, read the Los Angeles Free Press, bake pot brownies, put up posters everywhere and operate with a sort of mindless, directionless love ethic. So the movie becomes conventional after all. If they’d dropped Sellers into a real hi...

In 1966, at the height of World Cup fever, an unassuming little British comedy film came out and caused nary a ripple despite a stellar cast of well-known faces. Michael Bentine stars as Horace Quilby, the titular Sandwich Man, who walks the streets of London and seems to know everyone he passes. Without anything so distracting as a plot the film meanders somewhat and is essentially a series of sk...

This week a slight departure as Chris Diamond returns to take a leisurely meander through the world of British comedy, randomly choosing from a selection of topics (such as Who Was The Fifth Goon?) and pondering upon the genius (or otherwise) of such performers as Kenneth Williams, Michael Bentine, Bob Monkhouse, Arthur English, Hinge & Bracket, Bernard Manning and Spike Milligan, plus shows s...

Seven years after the publication of Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous novel Lolita Stanley Kubrick brought it to the big screen, having adapted the author's screenplay sufficiently, assembled a fine cast and applied the directorial flourishes that would come to mark his films out as unique. As Humbert Humbert Kubrick cast James Mason, who portrayed the predatory intellectual with just the rig...

Sean Gaffney returns to talk about a favourite Goon Show episode from 1956 - Six Charlies In Search Of An Author, loosely based on a play by Fred Pirandello. Was it a cry for help from Spike? A thinly-veiled portrait of a man whose life was beset by the weekly demand for a funny script, pouring scorn and contempt upon the very characters he created? Or was it just a neat idea for a particularly sh...

Fred Nurke is missing! An over-ripe banana in a deserted Cannon Street shipping office is the only clue to his whereabouts. Inspector Ned Seagoon follows the trail to a British Embassy in South America. Why are Senor Gonzales Mess and his gang trying to cut down the only banana tree in the Embassy gardens, and what is the connection between Fred Nurke and the over-ripe banana?  Find out (maybe) by...

Best known to audiences around the world as Lt Gruber from 'Allo 'Allo! Guy Siner joins Tyler this week to talk about the show, his career and his brand new podcast - Listen Very Carefully - in which he and friends & colleagues Kim Hartmann (Helga) and Richard Gibson (Herr Flick) look back fondly and drink gin. Before landing the role of Gruber Guy had appeared in Genesis of the Daleks...

A chaotic naval lieutenant, who cannot be discharged due to his connections, is transferred from the Admiralty to a mothballed destroyer whose crew is running dodgy Bilko-esque money-making schemes. David Tomlinson stars as Lt Fairweather and Peter Sellers, with a whiskery Irish brogue, plays Chief Petty Officer Doherty. Returning guest Graham Rinaldi discusses Val Guest's 1958 comic romp - do...

John Rain & Paul Litchfield join Tyler to discuss Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's 1978 adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes story, an attempt to make a hit mainstream comedy but which failed to find an audience. Mostly owing to it not being very good. Directed by American Paul Morrissey this was the first major film project he made without the involvement of Andy Warhol. Rather bizarrel...

It's 50 years since Spike Milligan recorded an LP version of his children's story Badjelly the Witch, with music by Ed Welch. The story is simple and hilarious. Two children, Tim & Rose, go in search of their lost cow Lucy and along the way have adventures with characters such as Binklebonk the tree goblin and his grasshopper Silly Sausage, Mudwiggle the worm and Dinglemouse, a former...

In early March 1958 the elderly actor A.E. Matthews staged a protest outside his cottage in Bushey Heath – he sat on a chair over a hole the council had dug with the intention of erecting a lamp post there. A minor squabble which quickly caught the ear of the media, Matthews’ stand against his local council became a cause célèbre and he was interviewed on television. Spike Milligan liked the cut o...

At last the Ted Kendall show! In 2022 Tyler spoke with genius sound engineer Ted Kendall about his career with an emphasis on the work he did in lovingly restoring Goon Shows to their original broadcast length and best possible quality. For a number of technical reasons this interview lay in the Goon Pod vaults for the longest time but finally it can be heard! Ted talks warmly about his career and...

60 years ago the Labour Party won the UK General Election, booting the Conservatives out of office after thirteen years. It is not known if Harold Wilson listened to the LP 'How To Win An Election (Or Not Lose By Much)' but even if he had it is highly unlikely he would have found it instructive. Leslie Bricusse brought together Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe to record this album one afternoon in...

“Then I submit, Inspector Ballon, that you arrived home, found Miguel with Maria Gambrelli and killed him in a rit of fealous jage!” The Pink Panther received its world premiere in Italy in December 1963 and was officially released in the US in March 1964. Despite David Niven topping the bill, the character of Inspector Jacques Clouseau - played by Peter Sellers - stole the film. Just three months...

Johnny Speight, creator of Alf Garnett, had a long friendship with Spike Milligan, stretching back to the mid-fifties and the Associated London Scripts days. Speight wrote Till Death Us Do Part which delighted and shocked television audiences in equal measure, with Garnett given to frequent outbursts against what he perceived as society's ills: immigration & foreigners in general, socialis...

"... Must admit he was very funny. I laughed. I laughed a great deal. Thought I was going to cry. I did." A Visit to Swansea was the fourth episode of the second series of Hancock’s Half Hour and was originally broadcast on 10th May 1955, two days before Tony Hancock’s 31st birthday. It was long considered one of the missing Hancocks until it was discovered last year by Richard Harrison...

"Being the account of the hole, the wonderful way it was filled, and with what. Written for the wireless by Spike Milligan." On the 12th August 1957 a Daily Mirror reporter encountered Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan larking about around Cleopatra's Needle on London's Embankment: ""This is 1887!" yelled Spike Milligan, standing on the base in a pair...

In 1972 a film was released which is generally regarded as one of Peter Sellers' weakest films - Where Does It Hurt - and joining Tyler to kick it around for an hour or so are Jeremy Limb & Paul Litchfield. Sellers plays administrator Albert T. Hopfnagel at Vista Vue Hospital, described by Sellers' biographer Roger Lewis as being like “every over-the-top insurance salesman and fraudule...

The British sitcom film of the seventies - doesn't the very mention of the genre make your heart sing ? Sure, there were some stinkers, but this week we're talking about one which we consider to be a fairly successful adaptation: Man About The House from 1974. Why is this being covered on Goon Pod? Two reasons. Firstly, Spike Milligan is in it, playing himself. Secondly, it's Tyler&#39...

“Something’s been worrying me. You’re a French police officer and yet you’ve got a Scottish accent.” -“Aye. It worries me too.” Before Daniel Craig was even a twinkle in his father's eye (give it a couple of months) there was the 1967 original big screen version of Casino Royale, a far-from-subtle James Bond spoof based extremely loosely on Ian Fleming's first novel, which would go on to b...

In 1954 Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, along with Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and Frankie Howerd, formed Associated London Scripts, envisaged as a comedy scriptwriters' cooperative, situated above a greengrocers in Shepherd's Bush. Soon it would swell in number, with the likes of Johnny Speight, John Antrobus, Terry Nation, Brad Ashton and Dick Vosburgh coming on board, with the mighty Beryl...

In 1990 the airwaves were set alight with the arrival of Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel to BBC radio. Based on material from a series of the same name broadcast on American radio in the early thirties, these modern adaptations benefited hugely from great production, excellent scripts and a highly talented cast, particularly the two lead performers Michael Roberts and Frank Lazarus , both of whom...

It is June 1970. Ted Heath is days away from becoming British Prime Minister. Mungo Jerry are riding high at the top of the charts. And popular television personality Simon Dee's career is just about to collapse in a spectacular fashion. How ironic then that Dee should co-star in the film we're discussing this week, playing a popular television personality! Doctor In Trouble was the last o...

"All trams have been melted down and made into melted-down trams." In 1952 London's last tram rolled into the depot. Two years later the Goons decided to mark the occasion with a show - better late than never! At the London Pleasure Transport Board, Redundant Tram Department, Inspector Ned Seagoon receives a phone call informing him that there’s still a tram at large on the Highgate-...

" In ye year of Grace, Mary and Uncle Fred, 1190, Wallace Greenslade, an itinerant announcer, was bounde for Nottingham when ye coach was stoppd inne Sherwood Forest by Robin Hood who did persuade himme to join hys bande as second sackbuttist and part-time dustman. Greenslade did don Lincoln Green and did assiste ye outlaws in their recklesse adventures." (Radio Times listing for 'Ye...