Queen Anne's Rain

"Queen Anne's Rain"
The Goon Show episode
Episode: no.	Series: 9 Episode: 8
Written by	Spike Milligan
Announcer	Wallace Greenslade
Produced by	John Browell
Music	Orchestra: Wally Stott Geldray: The Birth of the Blues Ellington: Too Marvelous for Words
Recording Number	TLO 72851
First broadcast	22 December 1959 (1959-12-22)
Running time	29:49

Queen Anne's Rain is an episode from The Goon Show. It is the eighth show in the ninth series.

Two pre-recording sessions took place at two locations:

• Wednesday 17 December 1958, 4.15pm. Aeolian Hall Studio 2 (DLO 72629)
• Sunday 21 December 1958, 4pm, The Camden Theatre (DLO 72851/A)

The recording for transmission was created at 8pm on Sunday 21 December 1958, at The Camden Theatre, Camden Town, London. At the same time they did the recording for this show Spike also did a special message to the British research teams in the Falkland Islands taped from 4pm to 4.15pm; this would be relayed via the General Overseas Service's Calling the Antarctic at Christmas.

The first Home Service broadcast was the next day at 8.30pm on Monday 22 December 1958, its ratings were 0.8 million.

The show was repeated:

• Wednesday 9.31pm, 24 December 1958, on the Light Programme to 2.3 million listeners.
• Thursday 7.30pm, 18 February 1960 on the Home Service to 0.6 million listeners.
• Friday 9.30pm, 14 February 1964 on the Home Service in Vintage Goons, to 0.6 million listeners.
• Sunday 12 noon, 21 August 1983 on Radio 4 in Smash of the Day.

Transcription Service Synopsis

It has rained for eighty days and nights and experts finally agree that the terrible floods are caused by a leaky sky over England. The villagers of Little Dicker are desperate and they petition Parliament to keep the sky in good repair. But the Honourable Members decide to despatch a gunboat to quell the insurrecting villagers. After a fierce naval engagement, Little Dicker seems doomed to destruction, but the situation is restored in the nick of time - when Queen Anne stops raining!

Music

• The BBC Radio Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
• Max Geldray plays The Birth of the Blues (Ray Henderson / Buddy G. DeSylva / Lew Brown)
• The Ray Ellington Quartet plays Too Marvelous for Words (Richard Whiting (music) / Johnny Mercer (lyrics))

Technical

Originally recorded on TLO 72851 (15 ips ¼" tape recorded at Broadcasting House).

The TLO 72851 master tape no longer exists, and the version of the show included on The Goon Show Compendium Vol 10 was compiled from the TGS disc, the SA pressing of the TGS disc and a domestic recording of the 1964 repeat transmission.

Ted Kendall's restoration

A persistent problem with this show has been the muffled quality of the opening two minutes on the TLO, possibly caused by a clogged head on one of the recording machines. The engineer in the recording channel would have compared the signal coming back from tape with the incoming signal, and, on finding it unsatisfactory, would have run his second machine, hence the change of quality just before Crun cries (appropriately!) "Eureka!" It may be that the TGS master tape did not suffer from this problem, but since all we have left of it is a noisy British Homophone pressing. it was not possible to correct the fault from this source. Instead, it has been tackled with equalisation and noise reduction, to the point where the join is barely noticeable.