The Goon Show series 6
The Goon Show, series six was a series of 30 shows (including three specials) aired between 20 September 1955 and 29 August 1956. Spike Milligan wrote the majority of the shows on his own, then Eric Sykes came in to help with five of them, and Larry Stephens with one. Eric Sykes wrote the Christmas special, The Missing Christmas Parcel on his own. Peter Eton produced the first 21 (he co-produced The Missing Christmas Parcel with John Lane) shows in the series, with Pat Dixon producing the remaining five, with the exception of the special, China Story which was produced by Dennis Main Wilson. All the shows were recorded on a Sunday and transmitted on the following Tuesday evenings, with the exception of shows 10, 15 and the Christmas special.
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An established and popular hit for BBC Radio, The Goon Show enjoyed selected repeats from its fifth season at 7.30pm on the Light Programme from late April 1955 through to the end of June, with around four million listeners tuning in - a larger audience than for the original broadcast on the less popular Home Service. In the meantime, the show's three stars - Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan - had gone their separate ways during the summer break. Spike, who wrote most of the series' scripts, had been too ill to record a special edition of The Goon Show at the end of May, and the broadcast was shelved.
While Spike's career faltered, Peter Sellers had been shooting the movie The Ladykillers at Ealing Studios since April, and following its completion in June he made radio appearances such as Star Struck and Variety Playhouse. Harry Secombe also featured in radio shows like Star Bill and Star Struck, and television spectaculars Including Variety Parade, with the BBC keen to exploit him on TV with further editions of Secombe Here! Unfortunately, the new commercial ITV organisation were not slow to book the star for a series of his own that autumn.
The trio were re-contracted for The Goon Show on Monday 6 June 1955, with a deal covering thirteen shows to be recorded at 9pm on Sundays from 18 September to 11 December, and broadcast two days later at 8.30pm on Tuesdays; there was also an option for thirteen more shows to be taken up by Friday 11 November.
A pay rise
Spike's business manager, Beryl Vertue, wrote to Patrick Newman, the BBC's Variety Booking Manager, on Tuesday 14 June to ask for a rise to 20 guineas per show for her client, commenting, ‘He realises this is slightly more than the railwaymen are asking for, and hopes that a General Strike will not ensue as a result of his request!' Newman good-naturedly agreed, and the contract was reissued on Tuesday 21 June. In the meantime, a recovering Spike took part in shows such as Man About Town. In mid-June, it was agreed that the General Overseas Service would take The Goon Show upon its return, but the station requested that the pace of the show be reduced to make it easier for listeners to follow on short wave.
As there was no demand for the earlier shows, producer Peter Eton was told that all editions of The Goon Show made prior to September 1954 could be destroyed. There was also the long-outstanding matter of a live show to tie-in with turning on the Morecambe illuminations on Friday 19 August; by Monday 4 July Eton advised that he could only recommend against the project, noting that since initial talks ‘a lot of water - some of it rather muddy- has flowed under Milligan's bridge.’ Furthermore, Peter's film schedule made the event impractical, although possibly something could be worked out for August 1956.
A chained melody
Meanwhile, Spike and Peter took the Goons into the commercial recording arena by making a 78rpm record for Parlophone - without Harry, whose recording contract was with Philips. Playing Eccles and Bluebottle, the duo recorded a comical cover version of Jimmy Young's chart-topping hit Unchained Melody. On the flipside, listeners would hear Minnie Bannister and Henry Crun warbling Dance with Me, Henry. Recording took place at EMI Studios on Abbey Road, London on Wednesday 29 June, but the owners of Unchained Melody objected to the send-up. ‘The Goon record has been chained up for the time’; noted the Daily Mirror on Thursday 15 September, ‘It will be released when the publishers give the word.’
From Monday 1 August, Harry, Spike and the show's harmonica player Max Geldray performed on a number of week-long variety bills on the Moss Empire circuit, with venues including the Brighton Hippodrome and the Southend Odeon. Peter was also in variety again at locations such as Chiswick Empire.
The looming arrival of ITV caused concern across the BBC. and on Friday 2 September, Peter Eton ruminated on the future of The Goon Show. 'Both Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan are now heavily embroiled in rather sordid Commercial Television negotiations which, if successful - and I sincerely hope they're not - may well mean the end of 'The Goons' after next April,' he wrote. Harry starred in another edition of Secombe Here! on Saturday 3, this time accompanied by Peter Sellers as his guest, while in the next show, Arenascope Presents OB Parade from Earls Court, Harry made an unexpected appearance with Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes on the live variety broadcast. Followmg this, Harry, Spike, Peter and Max united for a week in variety at the Bristol Hippodrome from Monday 5 September.
North America takes an interest
Before recording began, it was confirmed that the CBC in Canada was to start running The Goon Show from Thursday 29 September, while in the USA, NBC would take it at 8.30pm from Thursday 3 November. Spike was deeply appreciative of these sales, writing to the BBC's Head of Variety Pat Hillyard on Monday 10 October to say ‘I believe you put yourself out and went above certain authorities to do so. For this I would like to thank you very much.’ Hillyard replied, ‘The important thing about all this is, I think, that we should be able to share a common sense of humour, and congratulations to you, Spike, for blazing the trail!’
Over the summer, Spike's co-writer, Eric Sykes, had been writing The Howerd Crowd and TV shows for Max Bygraves, and would only contribute to the first couple of programmes in the new run of The Goon Show. However, the structure Eric had brought to the series over the previous year stood Spike in good stead to deliver increasingly tight and polished scripts; Count Fred Moriarty and Grytpype-Thynne continued to hatch all manner of plots to ensnare the luckless Ned Seagoon. Nevertheless, the writing was still a strain for Spike. ‘It was all fun for Peter and me,’ recalled Harry, ‘Spike had the worst of it. He had to stay bock and get on with the work half the time. He had the responsibility.’
Meanwhile on the music front, since the previous series Judd Proctor had replaced guitarist Don Fraser in the line-up of the Ray Ellington Quartet. The first show, The Man Who Won the War, was a parody of the recent vogue for war-time best-sellers, such as 1954's Reach for the Sky about air ace Douglas Bader, or The Colditz Story written by POW Pat Reid.
A new decrepit character to join Minnie and Henry was created for Harry to play: the toothless Uncle Oscar who made infrequent appearances in later series. The popular Eccles and Bluebottle begin to appear together more often, and following on from the previous year's nonsense phrase of ‘ying-tong iddle-i-po’, Ned Seagoon's new gibberish was 'needle nardle noo'. In terms of performance, Peter also now played Crun with a marginally deeper voice. The Man Who Won the War kicked off recordings on Sunday 18 September, and the Radio Times heavily promoted the return of the series the following Tuesday. ‘Danger! Goons at Play’ was an article by Richard Bennett in which Peter Eton discussed the show, explaining The new series is, of course, dedicated, like the others, to the destruction of humanity. The Goons are steadily and relentlessly decivilising the nation. 'The show claimed to have seven million addicts across the country hanging on catchphrases like Eccles' ‘It's good to be alive’ and Grytpype-Thynne's ‘You silly twisted boy’, while Spike cited his influences as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Stephen Leacock and Rabelais. With a cartoon of the Goons as balloons, the billing page announced ‘Anarchy returns to the air in the form of Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan who let loose on the army at 8.30 this evening.’ The Radio Times even retained a billing which included the show title and the increasingly fanciful synopsis from the front of the recording scripts.
The debut show was warmly received in the Daily Sketch where John Balfour proclaimed, ‘The Goon Show is pure radio.’ Asked if he would try to take the series to television, Spike replied ‘Not a chance… This will always be radio…, Our listeners are fanatics. They stick with us. Because movies come in, oil-painting didn't go out, did it?’. Listening figures remained strong at around three million on the Home Service. However, Spike was less happy with plans to reschedule the recording planned for Sunday 30 October. A prior claim on the Camden Theatre by the music department meant the Goons would have to relocate to the Garrick and share the venue with the comedy show Take It From Here. A recording time of 3.45pm was suggested. An incensed Spike wrote to Patrick Newman to complain on Thursday 22 September, fuming ‘Anybody who comes to hear a show at 3.45 on a Sunday afternoon must be: (a) without a home (b) Gormless. Psychologically it is a bad time to perform a comedy show. It is like doing Rigoletto in the middle of Bond Street, but apparently my opinion does not matter any more. Go ahead, grind it out. Perhaps you would care to tell Milligan that this early recording is at his (and Seller's and Secombe's) request!!!’ was a handwritten note on this missive. Patrick Newman resolved the confusion in the coming weeks, asking Spike if he had ‘a lack of confidence in yourself’. ‘You Win’ declared Spike via Beryl on Thursday 29 September.
On Thursday 22 September, Harry featured on Associated-Rediffusion's ITV launch programme Channel Nine, and the new commercial network then carried ATV's The Horry Secombe Show on Saturdays from 24 September to 29 October, with scripts by Eric Sykes. Thus the second edition of 'the extroorciinary talking-type wireless Goon Show' referred to Harry's work for 11V. the fact that Ray Blington had announced his plans to marry actress Ann West (later known as Anita West) and saw a jubilant Major Bloodnok start to comment 'I'm in condition tonight!'The 7.30pm t Programme repeat of The Goon Show kicked off on Saturday I October, having been precluded the previous week by an omnibus of The Archers; these generally attracted a couple of million listeners. Next day, the team recorded The l.ost Emperor at the Aeolian Hall rather than the Camden. This show dropped the traditional play-out of Clozy Rhythm composed by Irving Caesar.Joseph Meyer and Roger Kahn in favour of Ira and George Gershwin's Oh, Lady Be Good!, and over the next two weeks the orchestra would sign-off with A Go/ in Calico by Arthur Schwartz and then Jimmy McHugh's tune On the Sunny Side of the Street before Clozy Rhythm was again adopted. Following recording of The Lost Emperor, Peter and Max teamed up for a week's variety at the Hippodrome, Ipswich. The sudden changes of script which had plagued the end of the previous series returned. For the fourth show, Spike pulled his planned script, The Sale of Manhattan, and instead substituted a tale entitled Napoleon's Piano to be recorded on 9 October; the replacement script introduced Eccles singing popular songs such as Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe's I Talk to the Trees (plus the novelty songs Close t he Door and Twenty Tiny Rngers in coming weeks), phrases such as 'Have a gori//a'and even a mention of HMS Boxer, the ship which took Spike to Salerno in Italy in 1943. More topically, it referred to the UK's annexing of Rockall on 18 September, and the associated brass plaque ceremony. However, by now, the Radio Times has already been published with the wrong details. Napoleon's Piano was not taken by the Midlands, where coverage of the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Musical Festival pre-empted it. The General Overseas Service kicked off their broadcasts on Thursday 13 October when The Man Who Won the War was broadcast at I 0.30am, I 0.1S pm and 5.30pm the following day.W ith the next show, The Case of the Missing CD Plates, gags about Jimmy Young's current chart hit The Man from Laramie started to feature. Meanwhile, there was further rescheduling of planned shows.Although the Radio Times informed listeners that the following Tuesday they could hear T he Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu, the script delivered by Spike for recording on Sunday 23 October was Rommel's Treasure ... as remarked upon by announcer Wallace Greenslade in the show itself. T his replacement drew upon the 1942 esert Campaign between the Allies and German-Italian forces of which Spike had been a part. In the last week of October, Peter and Spike embarked upon a Goonish television venture, a filmed half-hour pilot episode spoofing British crime support films entitled The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn. The script was mainly written by Larry Stephens (Spike's former writing partner on The Goon Show) while Dick Emery, who had deputised for Spike on the series in 1952/3, stood in for Harry. Characters such as Eccles, Henry and Minnie featured in this offering from Merton Park Studios, the home of Scotland Yard and other such references which Peter and Spike were sending up in an attempt to attract the British and American markets.
'Goon Trio Will Head Birthday Show Comedy Team' announced the Coventry Standard on Friday 28 October, revealing that Spike, Harr y and Peter would be together on stage for the city's birthday show for several weeks.After recording Foiled by President Fred - a story inspired by the deposing of President Juan Peron of Argentina following a revolution during September - on Sunday 30, the Goons travelled to the Midlands city where they appeared in the variety Birthday Show for the Coventry Hippodrome written by themselves along with Eric Sykes.Jimmy Grafton (the Goons' original editor and Harry's agent) and Larry Stephens. 'This is a Birthday Treat to remember declared the reviews. Meanwhile, Harry released his first record from Phillips: On with the Motley (Vesti Lo Giubbo). After having printed a synopsis for Foiled by President Fred which bore no resemblance at all to the finished programme, the Radio T imes decided that advance information was simply too unreliable, and from the show broadcast on Tuesday 8 November - Shangri-La Again!, a pastiche of the 1937 movie Lost Horizon based on James Hilton's novel - declined to print any further episode titles or synopses. Meanwhile, on Friday 4 November, the options to make thirteen further editions of The Goon Show were taken up by the BBC, with the shows to record from Sunday 18 December, with the formal contracts issued on Tuesday 15; with no recording on Christmas Day, the shows would continue taping from I January to I I March at the Camden. Meanwhile, on Monday 14, the trio were contracted to record a special insert entitled Post Early for Christmas for Children's Hour, this was to be written by Eric Sykes. Peter Eton was less than happy with Peter Sellers' behaviour when recording The International Christmas Pudding on Sunday 13 November: 'He did something which put Horry off. In the Mox Ge/dray number I [. .. ] told him to stick to the script. We went bock [. ..] and he started fooling about again, and I said, "If you do that again, I'll fire you." He thought I wouldn't dare, so he did it again, so I hod to fire him. Loter he come bock and apologised.' Apologising to Pat Hillyard on Monday 14 November, Peter explained that the 'bother'was due to the 'Extreme mental stress of the previous week'and was 'surprised and shocked at Peter Eton's attitude' although admitting that he was in the wrong. Hillyard replied on Friday 18 that he took 'the gravest view of your refusal to re-record the opening spot'and wanted 'on assurance that this sort of thing will not happen again.' On Sunday 20 November, Peter responded to the BBC executive, saying that he had listened to the show in Coventry and felt that the show was unharmed by his behaviour, adding 'A very well known Actor Producer who is on ardent Goon fan [ ... ] happened to mention that he thought it was the best show of the present series.' Backing down from his suggestion of sabotage on Monday 21, Hillyard informed Peter, 'So for as I om concerned, the incident is forgotten, and I hope that you too will forget it.'
Peter, Harry and Spike were interviewed at the Hippodrome for the Midlands Home Service magazine programme What Goes On, broadcast to the local listeners early on the evening of Friday 18 November. T hat Sunday, the trio were back in London taping The Pevensey Boy Disaster. Unfortunately, the same day there was a serious derailment of a passenger train at Milton in which eleven people were killed. Suddenly a comedy show about a railway became decidedly less funny. In place of the recorded show, China Story - a popular edition from the previous series and one of Spike's favourites - was put out in its place on Tuesday, while the Light Programme replaced that week's Sunday repeat with Family Favourites on 'financial grounds.' Rather than sell The Cose of the Mukkinese Bottle Hom to television, it was decided instead to screen it theatrically as a support film in the New Year. Meanwhile the deferred script The Sole of Manhattan was finally recorded on Sunday 27 November, after The Missing Christmas Parcel (Eric's insert for Children's Hour) taped at lunchtime; in this, the Goons emphasised that gifts and letters for Christmas needed to be sent before 19 and 21 December respectively. T hen, during the following week, Peter Eton - the producer who had made The Goon Show a success since taking the helm in 1952 - announced that in early 1956 he would be leaving BBC Radio to become a producer at Granada Television. Another postponed script, The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu, was taped on Sunday 4 December, and again contained gags directed at commercial television.A few days later on Thursday 8 December, The Missing Christmas Parcel kicked off the first quarter hour of Children's Hour, and even contained a brief contribution from senior BBC announcer John Snagge, a fan of the show who had contributed to Nineteen Eighty-Five the previous year. Planning ahead for Christmas on Friday 9 December.Assistant Head ofVariety Jim Davidson indicated that two programmes would have to be recorded on Sunday 18 December, and noted that one of these could be a fresh version of the unbroadcast The Pevensey Bay Disaster, but with all references to a train crash deleted. By now, the Coventry stage show was drawing to a close, with Spike rather dejected by some of the reception from local audiences whom he felt had not understood the finer aspects of his routine. Pinned to his dressing room door were notes which he had written reading, 'Mr S Milligan died at 8.10 again - Dr Sproles Thirk' and 'For sole: Ten-minute act with recorded applause - then ghostly silence - Apply within.'T he show closed on Saturday IO December, and acidic asides to Coventry would feature in his forthcoming scripts.
The Lost Year was recorded at the Garrick on Sunday I I, and saw Harry's chart success with On with the Motley (which peaked at number 16) becoming a running gag for the team, while the script also made reference to BBC announcers - such as Leslie Mitchell - having defected to ITV stations. Peter too was about to hit the big time with acclaim for his role in The Ladyl<illers which premiered just before Christmas. With the stage show over, Spike appeared on BBC TV in Great Scott, It's Maynard while Peter and Max were in the variety bill Stars from the Goon Show at the Northampton New. Spike made minimal changes to The Pevensey Boy Disaster and, now entitled The Hastings Flyer - Robbed, it was recorded on Sunday 18 December before The Greens/ode Story. This new script thrust Wallace Greenslade centre stage with a story built around him, and saw John Snagge drop in at the Camden Theatre to take part in the recording with gags about Harry's chart hit. In this show, Peter's semi-regular Lew character was specifically ATV impresario Lew Grade - partner to Val Parnell. While Harry began rehearsals as Buttons in Cinderella at Manchester's Palace Theatre, Peter and Spike united for a BBC Light Programme show, The Listening Room, in which Peter Sellers would spoof The Critics and select as one of his records a new song by Spike. This was the nonsense piece entitled I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas, written by Spike on his way home one night on the tube because he was unimpressed with the festive pop music on offer.The song was taped at Portland Place on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 December and included - along with Parlophone's unreleased Dance with Me, Henry- in Peter's live broadcast later that evening. On Friday 23 December Jim Davidson informed producer Pat Dixon - one of the original champions of the Goons at the BBC - that from Sunday 15 January 1956, he would be shadowing Peter as the new ringmaster attempting to keep order on The Goon Show. That evening, Peter Sellers was massively impressed with the zany quality of The Dick Lester Shaw from Associated-Rediffusion, and phoned the writer/director, suspecting that he and Spike had found the creative force to bring the Goons to television in 1956 ... Programme notes, episode notes and cast biographies researched and written by Andrew Pixley
