The Reason Why

"The Reason Why"
The Goon Show episode
Episode: no.	Series: 7 Episode: Special
Written by	Spike Milligan Larry Stephens
Announcer	Wallace Greenslade
Produced by	Jacques Brown
Music	Orchestra: Wally Stott Geldray: None Ellington: None
Recording Number	TLO 35307
First broadcast	22 August 1957 (1957-08-22)
Running time	30:09
Guest appearance
Valentine Dyall

The Reason Why is an episode from The Goon Show. It is an end-of-series special in the seventh series. It was recorded with no audience and with no musical interludes. It was recorded, uncharacteristically, in the BBC Studios in Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester. It featured Valentine Dyall as a guest.

A pre-recording session took place Sunday 11 August 1957, 5pm. at Manchester's Piccadilly Studio 2 (DLO 35307A). The recording for transmission was created later that same Sunday, also at Piccadilly 2, at 9pm (TLO 35307).

The first Home Service broadcast was on Thursday 22 August 1957 at 9.15pm, its ratings were 1.1 million.

The show was repeated:

• Sunday 6.30pm, 29 September 1957, on the Light Programme to 1.1 million listeners.
• Monday 1.45pm, 28 April 1973 on Radio 4 to 0.5 million listeners.

Radio Times Synopsis

Manchester's Piccadilly Studios in Piccadilly Gardens in 1979

Being an account of the hole, the wonderful way it was filled, and with what. Written for the wireless by Spike Milligan.

• Jack Snaffle, a habit-maker: Wallace Greenslade
• Mr Henry Crun: Peter Sellers
• Hon Harold Bowles: Harry Secombe
• An omne: Valentine Dyall
• Eccles: Spike Milligan
• Lord Midgeworthy Ttrynne: Peter Sellers
• Admiral 'Biggers' Creighton: Harry Secombe
• Major Denis Bloodnok: Peter Sellers
• Pugh: Harry Secombe
• A producer: Jacques Brown

Music

• The BBC Radio Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
• Max Geldray plays I Kiss Your Little Hand, Madame (Ralph Erwin (music) / Fritz Rotter (lyrics))
• The Ray Ellington Quartet plays The Late Late Show (Murray Berlin (music) / Roy Alfred (lyrics))

Technical

Originally recorded on TLO 35307 (15 ips ¼" tape recorded at Broadcasting House).

The TLO 35307 master tape no longer exists, the programme was preserved in Sound Archives on T28595 and the show included on The Goon Show Compendium Vol 6 was prepared from a copy of the shelf tape made in 1986, and a domestic recording of the original transmission.

Show Notes

Peter Kneebone's Radio Times cartoon

• Pat Dixon was scheduled to be on leave from late July 1957, and so another producer would need to deputise on The Reason Why; this was Jacques Brown, a former musician and actor who had been one of the more experimental producers responsible for getting the Goons and their new type of humour on the air six years earlier.
• The cast assembled at Picadilly Studios at 2.30pm to take part in a photocall, clad in Victorian garb and clustered around Cleopatra's Needle. Spike's non-audience special was then broadcast by the Home Service at 9.15pm on Thursday 22 August. This precursor to another series of radio madness was promoted in the Radio Times by a cartoon from Peter Kneebone showing a trumpet playing explorer with wings flying alongside Cleopatra's Needle which was covered by all manner of strange hieroglyphics and held aloft by two mermaids. The broadcast was also covered by the magazine's ‘Round and About’ section in which The Reason Why was described as ‘a programme of midsummer madness guaranteed to gladden the Goonstruck.’