Goon Pod

In the second of our extra special bonus episodes in the company of stars from the hit show ‘Spike’ – written by Nick Newman and Ian Hislop – Tyler talks to the wonderful Margaret Cabourn-Smith! Margaret can be seen and heard in so much top British TV, radio and podcast comedy over the last twenty years, such as Miranda, Motherland, Psychoville, John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme & Do The Rig...

On Sunday it’s 20 years since Spike Milligan died and this week Tyler is joined by comedy writer, poet, performer and producer Henry Normal to talk about his memories of Spike and the Goons. Henry, along with Steve Coogan, launched Baby Cow in the late nineties and over the course of 30 years Henry has been closely involved with a wide range of films and television series such as Paul Calf’s Video...

In the wake of Storm Eunice a special fun-filled BONUS episode to listen along to as you pick up your roof slates off the lawn and extract next door’s cat from the trellis! Tyler talks with actor John Dagleish, who is currently wowing audiences as the eponymous Spike in Ian Hislop & Nick Newman’s new play which is enjoying packed houses at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury (on until 5th March s...

Comedy series tie-in books used to adorn the floors of many a lavatory and we all remember with fondness the likes of The Goodies Book Of Criminal Records and Janet Lives With Mel & Griff.  In 1972 a bright spark named Jeremy Robson hit upon the genius notion of publishing a book of Goon Show scripts. At the time the Goons’ currency was high owing to The Last Goon Show Of All & its re...

When blackmailer Dennis Price threatens to dig the dirt on Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton the four of them do everything in their power to stop him! Wee Sonny McGregor (Sellers) risks irreparable damage to his reputation as a cuddly television personality if his second job as a slum landlord is revealed; Lord Mayley (Terry-Thomas) has been indiscreet in a park and his w...

It’s good to be alive in 1985! Joining Tyler this week - after finishing his shift operating the pornograph machine in the Forbidden Records Dept – is Sean Gaffney, who was keen to talk about the Goons’ celebrated take on Orwell’s 1984 which had been dramatized for BBC Television merely weeks earlier. 1985 was received so warmly by listeners that it was swiftly followed by a restaged episode but t...

A new play about Spike Milligan opens on Thursday 27th January at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury. Written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman (The Wipers Times, Trial By Laughter) SPIKE stars John Dagleish, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Jeremy Lloyd, George Kemp and Stephen Fry. Focusing on arguably Spike’s most consistently creative period of his career – the 1950s and The Goon Show – the play examines his...

During Series 8 of The Goon Show the team also recorded a dozen or so remakes of episodes which originally went out in 1954 and these were gathered together into a series especially for Transcription Services called Vintage Goons. Apart from a handful which were broadcast immediately ahead of the start of the ninth series the rest of the shows were not broadcast in the UK until the 80s & 90s,...

If this week’s guest and I were to find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic dystopian wasteland in which only twenty or so people survived, and podcasts didn’t exist anymore, we’d no doubt agree that our lives no longer had any purpose and head off to ask Nurse Marty Feldman for a couple of death certificates. On our way we’d be careful to avoid uxoricidal Shelter Man Harry Secombe, bewhiskered GPO Ma...

If you want it, here it is, come and get it! This episode, the first of 2022, looks at the hugely ambitious if not entirely successful 1969 film adaptation of Terry Southern’s satirical novel The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr and a cast of familiar faces including Spike Milligan, Hattie Jacques, John Cleese, Richard Attenborough, Patrick Cargill, Roman Polanski, Raquel We...

Well now, here’s a thing – a Goon Pod Bonus Episode for New Year’s Eve! Back in early November, with special guest and host of the Beatles Books podcast Joe Wisbey, we examined the landmark 1995 BBC documentary The Peter Sellers Story (see episode 24) Now Joe has been talking to the director of that documentary, Peter Lydon, exclusively for Goon Pod and the resultant conversation is here. Peter sh...

This week actor, writer and comedian Toby Hadoke guests on the show to talk to Tyler about the Nigel Kneale-influenced Goon Show episode The Scarlet Capsule, which aired the week after the final instalment of Quatermass & The Pit was shown on BBC Television in 1959. Toby talks about his career and enthusiasms while also discussing the Goons and British comedy in general. We discover that The S...

Despite him being officially The Hardest Working Man in Podcasting, the Goon Pod production team begged, bribed and eventually blackmailed the magnificent Mike Fenton Stevens and he agreed to appear on the show! Mike looks back at some interesting highlights from a career on TV, radio and the stage spanning more than forty years and he explains how the Goons informed his early development in terms...

In March 1957 the Dirk Bogarde second world war film Ill Met By Moonlight was released and little over a week later the Goons successfully parodied it with their own version. The Goons relished doing send-ups of WWII movies and some of their greatest shows included The Man Who Never Was, I Was Monty’s Treble, Rommel’s Treasure and, of course, the episode we’re covering today: Ill Met By Goonlight....

In 1976 a Neil Simon-scripted movie called Murder By Death was released which cleverly spoofed the detective fiction genre and featured one hell of a cast, including Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, David Niven, Maggie Smith and Truman Capote. Five world-famous ‘tecs accept an invitation to stay at the crazy house of the mysterious Lionel Twain and over dinner are informed that someone wi...

Timed to go out exactly a month too late for Halloween, this week’s episode details the saga of the dread Spectre of Tintagel and joining your genial host is another ex-pat Kiwi now living in Blighty – cartoonist and comic book writer Roger Langridge. The Spectre of Tintagel is not one of the better-remembered Goon Shows yet it remains powerfully atmospheric (well, as atmospheric as a Goon Show ca...

We’re on a slightly more literary tip this week as actor, composer & voiceover artist (and YouTube sensation!) Darrell Maclaine steps into the pod to talk about growing up on a steady diet of Spike, such as A Book of Milliganimals and his books & poetry in general, and how it helped him ignore his draughty portacabin classroom & nurtured his comedy sensibilities. He also talks about Sp...

What can be done about a BBC announcer who has gone over to the dark side? Find out this week as we welcome Heather Wainwright, co-host and beating heart of the ever-popular RetroTube podcast, who popped along to talk about the absolute stone cold classic The Phantom Head Shaver (of Brighton). As Nugent Dirt enters the annals of criminology as the Phantom’s first victim and Wallace Greenslade’s to...

Comedian, satirist and writer Mark Thomas has been holding the establishment to account for over thirty years through television, radio, live shows and activism, using comedy to expose often outrageous political and corporate abuses of power and influence. Mark joined Tyler on the pod this week to talk about The Goon Show and Spike Milligan in particular, whose rebellious nature and healthy distru...

The telly equivalent of a bumper Beano summer special, the 1995 BBC Arena documentary about Peter Sellers was stretched over three episodes and clocked in at nearly three and a half hours. Made up of extensive home movie footage and interviews with most of the key players in Sellers’ life, as well as clips from his career and some wonderfully atmospheric music, it was arguably the second-most impo...

Corps blimey! Live from a stench packing factory is this week’s guest: writer and podcaster John Rain, the man behind the mighty Smersh Pod and author of the recently published Explodobook (available from all good Amazons) John first heard The Goon Show as a young shaver and joins the pod this week to talk about an episode very dear to his heart: The Case of the Missing C.D. Plates from Series 6....

It’s another general chat about the Goons and much else besides with podcaster Martin Holmes this week! The conversation took so many twists and turns that I confess I got quite giddy but we managed to squeeze into an hour or so’s chat a lot of Goon-related nattering. Martin briefly adopted an Australian accent at one point during a conversation about British sitcoms Down Under and it was so convi...

In 1954 the Goons produced a special show without an audience which is considered by many to be an absolute classic, but by others as a rather muted curio. The Starlings preceded the start of the fifth series of the Goon Show by a month and in some ways showcased the direction the show was to take. A satire based on actual attempts by local councils across the country to rid their public buildings...

It’s Milligan and Bentine back together again! (sort of!) Joining Tyler this episode it’s the welcome return of former guest, writer and film academic Dr Adrian Smith, who has written the viewing notes to accompany the recent release on blu ray of the 1972 British film Rentadick. A film which strains every sinew to be a sex comedy but never quite pulls it off, Rentadick qualifies for inclusion on...

Joining the pod this episode is Barnaby Eaton-Jones – celebrated writer, producer and actor – to talk about the much lauded and garlanded audio drama There Used To Be A Me, starring the mighty Alfred Molina as Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers (and, er, Peter Sellers). Written by Ian Billings and directed by Barnaby it is a rambunctious and at times moving reimagining of the life and...