Spon

"Spon"
The Goon Show episode
Episode: no.	Series: 8 Episode: 1
Written by	Spike Milligan
Announcer	Wallace Greenslade
Produced by	Charles Chilton
Music	Orchestra: Wally Stott Geldray: It Happened in Monterey Ellington: Sonny Boy
Recording Number	TLO 38857
First broadcast	30 September 1957 (1957-09-30)
Running time	30:35
Guest appearances
Dick Emery, no Harry Secombe

Spon is an episode from The Goon Show. It is the fifteenth show in the seventh series.

A pre-recording session took place Sunday 29 September 1957, 5pm. at The Camden Theatre, Camden Town, London (DLO 38857A). The recording for transmission was created later that same Sunday, also at The Camden, at 9pm (TLO 38857).

The first Home Service broadcast was the next day Monday at 8.30pm 3 January 1957, its ratings were 1.8 million. The show was then repeated on Thursday 9.31pm, 3 October 1957, on the Light Programme to 2.6 million listeners.

AudioGO Synopsis

Dick Emery stands in for Harry Secombe as Inspector Emery-type Seagoon and goes on the trail of that dreaded brown terror – Spon. It's three in the morning and two in the afternoon (making a grand total of five in the evening) and a Finchley child of no fixed trousers bears all the marks of a severe Spanning. Via the terrible tortures of a National Health hospital ('Stand by your beds') the search for Spon moves to Africa and the Canadian Rockies and involves the Cruns, Moriarty. Bloodnok and Harold Blun the gorilla. But there is a happy ending – for Cynthia.

Music

• The BBC Radio Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
• Max Geldray plays It Happened in Monterey (Mabel Wayne / Billy Rose)
• The Ray Ellington Quartet plays Sonny Boy (Al Jolson / BG De Sylva / Lew Brown / Ray Henderson)

Technical

Originally recorded on TLO 38857 (15 ips ¼" tape recorded at Broadcasting House). This tape survived intact in TS (apart from the opening announcement) and was used for the version of the show included on The Goon Show Compendium Vol 7.

Show Notes

• In mid-September 1957 Harry Secombe was stricken with Asian flu and bronchitis, losing his voice. He was advised to stop work for a fortnight by his doctor. Charles Chilton telephoned Spike in the French Riviera where he was on holiday, and as a replacement for the first recording Spike suggested Dick Emery who had previously stood in for himself during shows in 1952/3 and had worked along with Peter and Spike on the 1955 cinema short The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn.
• Recording for the new shows initially took place at 9.15pm on Sundays at the Camden Theatre, with Spon recorded on 29 September and Dick Emery playing 'Emery-type Seagoon'. Spike's script was barbed with jokes at the expense of the Conservative government under Harold Macmillan, which had been voted in in January, while other topical references added shortly before recording included Moriarty's comments on the Wolfenden Report which had recommended the legalisation of homosexuality when published on 4 September. Spike's new scripts were also increasingly fragmented and free-formed; the concluding joke of Spon was that there was no ending, with this fact pointed out by Wallace Greenslade. Spon kicked off the new series the following evening at 8.30pm on the Home Service. The show was promoted in the Radio Times by a piece in the ‘Round and About’ section of the magazine which explained how Dick was standing in for Harry. The ‘usual mad mixture of logic and lunacy’ was promised, while the text explained that ‘Spike, in his time, has worked as a van boy, draughtsman, and musician, but tells us that he dislikes scriptwriting most of all.’
• A BBC Audience Research Report on Spon was prepared on 17 October. Presenting the views of 358 members of the Listening Panel, the audience size was found to be above average, but the appreciation index for the edition was well below that of recent editions. 'Can it be that Secombe's absence has killed the show?' asked a 'Schoolmaster' indicating disappointment from many of those interviewed who detected a 'lack of sparkle' and felt that Dick Emery had not fitted in well. Sadly it seemed that many former fans were drifting away from the show finding it 'muddled' or 'confusing'. By contrast, there was a hard core of devotees tuning in, with the 'Wife of a Woodwork Teacher' declaring that this was 'A good start to a new series of one of my favourite comedy shows.' Eccles and Bluebottle were nominated as the favourite characters by many listeners. Although not noted in the report, the new series' ratings were generally down on the previous year as the expanding medium of television continued to erode radio's audience base.