The Secret Escritoire

"The Secret Escritoire"
The Goon Show episode
Episode: no.	Series: 6 Episode: 2
Written by	Spike Milligan Eric Sykes
Announcer	Wallace Greenslade
Produced by	Peter Eton
Music	Orchestra: Wally Stott Geldray: Someone to Watch Over Me Ellington: Play It, Boy
Recording Number	TLO 87028
First broadcast	27 September 1955 (1955-09-27)
Running time	30:15

The Secret Escritoire is an episode from The Goon Show. It is the second show in the fifth series. The show was recorded at 9pm on Sunday 25 September 1955. The recording took place at the Camden Theatre, Camden Town, London.

The first British public broadcast was on the Home Service on Tuesday 27 September 1955 at 8.30pm. It reached a peak listenership of 3.8m.

The show's first repeat was the following Saturday at 7.30pm, 1 October 1955, on the Light Programme. It was listened to by 1.9 million.

Synopsis

Don't tell anyone what it is, it's a secret

The ghastly story of a sinister plan laid bare by the nimble discovery of a dreaded corpse in an empty match-box (obviously not safety matches). It tells of a man's desperate hunt to clear his name of a fearful stigma (his name is Bert Stigma). It also reveals the true truth behind the last of the great chained escritoires in Piccadilly Circus and the fiendish contents it contained. This and other foetid secrets will be revealed for the first time as Neddie Seagoon's zealous hunt for the escritoire and its noisome kidnappers ranges from a deserted Chinese coffin refinery in Hither Green to the arid steam laundries of Malay (exit Mr Crun hotly pursued by Sax Rohmer in an experimental cardboard pullover).

Escritoire: A bureau modified with tiroirs and pigeon-holes (Fred Oxford's Dictionary).

Music

• The BBC Radio Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
• Max Geldray plays Someone to Watch Over Me (George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin)
• The Ray Ellington Quartet plays Play It, Boy (Matt Dubey / Harold Karr)

Technical

Originally recorded on TLO 87028 (15 ips ¼" tape recorded at Broadcasting House).

However the original tape no longer exists, and the TS master tape was destroyed in the 1960s so the version of the show found on the Compendium Vol 3 collection was compiled from the TGS 98 disc and a domestic recording.