The Great Statue Debate

"The Great Statue Debate"
The Goon Show episode
Episode: no.	Series: 8 Episode: 26
Written by	Spike Milligan John Antrobus
Announcer	Wallace Greenslade
Produced by	Charles Chilton
Music	Orchestra: Wally Stott Geldray: Paper Moon Ellington: Lady Mac
Recording Number	TLO 51440
First broadcast	24 March 1958 (1958-03-24)
Running time	35:11

The Great Statue Debate is an episode from The Goon Show. It is the twenty-sixth, and final show, in the eighth series.

A pre-recording (DLO 51440B) session took place Sunday 23 March 1958, 6.30pm. at The Camden Theatre, Camden Town, London. The recording (TLO 51440) for transmission was created later that same Sunday, also at The Camden, at 9pm.

The first Home Service broadcast was the next day, Monday, at 8.30pm 24 March 1958, its ratings were 1.5 million. The show was repeated on the following Thursday at 10pm, 27 March 1958, on the Light Programme to 2.3 million listeners.

Transcription Service Synopsis

Picture if you can, England's Parliament – five-hundred and thirty politicians and one man – tramping the country, and at their head an ordinary tobacco statue of James the Second (believed to be dead). This is the climax to the otherwise unbelievable story of a Homeless Government and its efforts to find a suitable house! You can't get the wood you know!

Music

• The BBC Radio Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
• Max Geldray plays Paper Moon (Harold Arlen (music) / Yip Harburg (lyrics) / Billy Rose (lyrics))
• The Ray Ellington Quartet plays Lady Mac (Duke Ellington / Billy Strayhorn)

Technical

Originally recorded on TLO 51440 (15 ips ¼" tape recorded at Broadcasting House). The TLO 51440 master tape no longer exists, and the version of the show included on The Goon Show Compendium Vol 8 was compiled from a tape in the Bernie Andrews collection, the TGS disc and a domestic recording of the original transmission. This version includes several gags which were edited out of the original transmission version, plus the unused playout and the Goons' goodnight to the studio audience. Bill Greenslade's query about the recording is addressed to Bobby Jaye, the panel Studio Manager on this series.

Show Notes

• The final recording of the run came on Sunday 23 March with The Piano Clubber (a.k.a. The Dreaded Piano Clubber) for the Transcription Service and The Great Statue Debate for the Home Service. This new script was another collaboration between Spike Milligan and John Antrobus and was inspired by a story in the Daily Express on Tuesday 4 March that the Ministry of Works had announced a plan to relocate the brass statue of King James II from Trafalgar Square to the Foreign Office, making way for a new bronze of Walter Raleigh to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The script also made references to Mrs Gerald Legge (i.e. socialite Raine McCorquodale), Minister for Housing Henry Brooke and the controversial Rent Act which had become law in July 1957, and even a supposed message from Sir Ian Jacob that the show was under-running!

• ‘They've never had it so good’ - a remark made in 1957 by Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of the day, about the degree of affluence among the population in general. This was indeed a time of rising living standards, although growth was uneven – Greenslade talks of ‘the recession’ in the opening of The Great Statue Debate.