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 (CD 6,Track 11) With Valentine Dyall Pre-Recording: Sunday 11 August 1957, 5pm, Piccadilly 2. DLO 35307 A.

Recording: Sunday 11 August 1957, 9pm, Piccadilly 2.TLO 35307.

First Home Service Broodcast: Thursday 22August 1957, 9.15pm. Ratings: I . I million. RI: 53.

Repeats: Sunday 29 September 1957, 6.30pmm, 1.1 million [Light Programme]; Monday 28 April 1973, 1.45pm, 0.5 million [Radio 4].

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 17 February 1957, 5pm. at The Camden Theatre, Camden Town, London (DLO 25010). The recording for transmission was created later that same Sunday, also at The Camden, at 9pm (TLO 22507).

The first Home Service broadcast was the following Thursday at 8.30pm 3 January 1957, its ratings were 2.6 million.

The show was repeated:

• Wednesday 9.31pm, 17 December 1958, on the Light Programme to 2.3 million listeners.
• Friday 9.30pm, 6 March 1964 on the Home Service in Vintage Goons, to 0.5 million listeners.
• Friday 9.30pm, 20 August 1965 on the Home Service in Let's Laugh Again, to 0.2 million listeners (the broadcast was affected by a fault on the reproduction equipment).

Radio Times Synopsis

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 35307master tape no longer exists, and the version of the show included on The Goon Show Compendium Vol 6 was compiled from the TGS disc, the POTG master tape and domestic recordings of both the original transmission and the 1964 repeat.

The Reason Why. Originally recorded on TLO 35307. The programme was preserved in Sound Archives on T 28595 and this issue was prepared from a copy of the shelf tape made in 1986, and a domestic recording of the original transmission.

Show Notes

• 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.’