Goon Pod

A podcast where we talk about classic comedy with particular focus on the work of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe & Michael Bentine. You'll also hear us discuss the likes of Monty Python, Hancock, Blackadder, the Carry On films, Peter Cook, Steptoe & Son and countless other comedy figures & fixtures from the postwar era.

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246 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes246

Newest first

May 17, 2023 · 1 hr 15 min
Sykes
Think of all the great comic characters brought to life by Peter Sellers - Bluebottle, Clouseau, Strangelove, Percy Quill, Dr Pratt, Fred Kite and countless others - but chances are you won't think about Tommy Grando. Who? In 1972 Sellers made a surprise guest appearance in his old mate Eric Sykes' titular sitcom, co-starring the sublime Hattie Jacques. Although Tommy Grando could hardly be described as a complex three-dimensional character (Sellers plays it very broad in keeping with the general tone of the show) his arrival is rather akin to a fox let loose in a henhouse. This disreputable roughhouser is an uninvited visitor who disrupts the calm and boredom which had previously pervaded the Sykes home. What follows is pure farce as Eric and his sister try ever more outlandish wheezes to rid themselves of the menace. Joining Tyler this week to discuss 'Stranger' are Andrew Trowbridge and Lisa Parker, the pair behind Round The Archives, a podcast dedicated to scrutinising the dustier fringes of archive telly as well as revisiting firm fan favourites. Round The Archives: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/round-the-archives-524254 @Roundthearchiv1 @goonshowpod
May 10, 2023 · 1 hr 33 min
Spike Milligan - The Unseen Archive
In 2022 Spike Milligan’s family opened up his archive to selected guests – and what an archive it is! Hundreds of tapes, film rolls, scrapbooks, photographs, unpublished novels & scripts, box files and albums, much of it meticulously documented and annotated by Milligan himself, including bound volumes of family history, wartime journals and assorted paraphernalia covering his earliest childhood memories right up until his final years. Sky Arts filmed a documentary which originally aired in December last year where viewers saw the likes of Joanna Lumley, Ian Hislop, Eddie Izzard and Sarfraz Manzoor (as well as former Goon Pod guests David Quantick and Al Murray) nosing around this treasure trove. Spike’s whole life is under the spotlight, from his early days in India to his underwhelming introduction to a Britain of fog, cold baths and terrible food, a world away from what he’d been used to; the wartime highs and lows (a whirlwind romance, being blown up); The Goon Show; his marriages and children; his post-Goons career on television; his campaigning and activism; his books, poetry, music and much more. Joining Tyler is Simon Meddings - Meds - from Waffle On podcast – a trailblazer in terms of telly and film review podcasts and certainly one of the few to have covered such diverse topics as School For Scoundrels, Fight Club and Donald Sinden! Meds and Tyler talk at length about Spike and his life as filtered through the documentary but find plenty of time to go off on tangents (within the first four minutes they've talked about Michael Caine and The Smiths, for instance) so there's plenty here for everybody who likes a good natter about old films, old telly... and old comics. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/waffle-on-podcast/id298729068
May 3, 2023 · 58 min
The Smallest Show on Earth - Part Two
Chris Diamond returns with the second part of our chat about 1957's The Smallest Show On Earth. We talk much more about the actual film and highlight several delightful moments, such as the scene in which the three elderly staff watch an old silent movie while the kinema is closed, and projectionist Percy Quill's evident elation following a (nearly) faultless film showing. We also ask the question: should sympathetic characters get away with committing arson? Off on a tangent, Arthur Lowe's wife comes in for a drubbing (which I'm sure nobody expected) and even podcast favourite Hylda Baker crops up in conversation. It's all good fun and there's even a knotty connection question posed for listeners to answer. The Smallest Show on Earth stars Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles, Leslie Phillips, Francis De Wolff and Sid James.
Apr 26, 2023 · 1 hr 4 min
The Smallest Show on Earth - Part One
Chris Diamond returns once again to examine one of Peter Sellers' most beloved earlier films, the 1957 Basil Dearden-directed The Smallest Show On Earth. As well as Sellers the film features winning turns from Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles and Francis De Wolff, with stolid support from the film's nominal stars, husband and wife Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. Matthew & Jean Spenser inherit a crumbling old cinema - The Bijou Kinema (aka 'the fleapit') - and as well as the fixtures and fittings soon discover that they've also inherited a trio of elderly, shambling staff: Mrs Fazackalee (Rutherford), the cinema's cashier, bookkeeper and pit pianist; Mr Percy Quill (Sellers), a projectionist with a powerful thirst; and Old Tom (Miles), whose exact role is undefined but encompasses general caretaker and commissionaire duties. Meanwhile Mr Hardcastle (De Wolff), the owner of The Grand (the town's other cinema which far outclasses the Bijou in terms of size and sophistication), offers the couple a derisory sum to sell the Bijou to him so he can knock it down for a carpark. The Spensers decide to attempt to run the fleapit as a going concern, hoping this will persuade Hardcastle to up his offer. It's a wonderfully warm film with particularly delightful turns from Sellers and Rutherford and a rather surprising ending. Chris and Tyler talked so much that it's been split into two halves (part two next week) - in this first part we establish the characters, talk about the gradual decline in cinema attendance at the time, our memories of going to the pictures as kids and even spend a fair chunk talking about a different Sellers film: Heaven's Above!
Apr 19, 2023 · 59 min
Peter Sellers on the Radio - The Fifties
Mark Cousins returns to look again at the radio career of Peter Sellers, this time concentrating on the 1950s and largely eschewing his Goon Show activity. Sellers was constantly in demand, and nowhere more so than on the wireless; indeed, it wasn't until the latter half of the decade that he began to wind down his appearances behind the microphone and focus more on the silver screen. He more or less abandoned radio completely as the sixties dawned, apart from interviews or promotional appearances - and the odd thing like The Last Goon Show of All. Hear Mark talk about some forgotten - and mostly lost - radio series in which Sellers cropped up such as Finkel's Cafe, Curiouser & Curiouser, Paradise Street, Happy Holidays, Ted Ray Time, Me And My Shadows and many more!
Apr 12, 2023 · 1 hr 25 min
Tales Of Old Dartmoor
For this 100th edition of Goon Pod writer and podcaster Tim Worthington dons a sailor's tunic with arrows printed on it and returns to discuss the classic Goon Show Tales of Old Dartmoor, which was on the first LP ever issued of Goons episodes in late 1959. We discuss the show itself and what was happening in the world around the time it was broadcast... and listeners can expect to hear us chat about Monty Python's Election Night special, Vic & Bob, a 96-year-old with a secret, a young Jane Asher, Tim Buckley, the Monkees, the Telegoons, Sabrina, Reginald Maudling, a singing parrot, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Victor Lewis-Smith, The Goodies and Shirley Bassey! More Tim: timworthington.org Twitter: @goonshowpod and @outonbluesix
Apr 9, 2023 · 1 hr 40 min
Goon Pod Selection Box
As next week sees the 100th edition of Goon Pod drop, here's a special 100-minute long Easter bumper bonus episode! Tyler shares clips of some of the many guests he's hosted on the pod over the last hundred shows - the selection is designed to showcase how the show has developed and evolved and (in theory) can be enjoyed by anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Goons, as long as they like fifties, sixties and seventies (and eighties & nineties) popular culture and especially comedy. Typically they'll like the Beatles and have heard of Jimmy Clitheroe - that's the sort of person who listens to Goon Pod. So you'll hear from the likes of Al Murray, David Quantick, Mike McCartney, Griff Rhys Jones, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Mike Fenton Stevens as well as many others PLUS some never-before-heard material! (This episode is better than an Easter egg because it's less fattening, won't stain the furniture and even your dog can enjoy it) Twitter: @goonshowpod
Apr 5, 2023 · 1 hr 4 min
The Case of the Vanishing Room
"There was only one man for the job... there was only one man available!" And so begins The Case of the Vanishing Room, the earliest Goon Show we've covered so far on this podcast, from 1954. It was later remade for the Vintage Goons series and that is the version most people will be familiar with but it stuck very closely to the original script. This week returning guest Mike Haskins joins Tyler to examine both and try to fathom what this 'murder mystery' was all about! Did Spike lose interest halfway through the writing? Did he like the title and try to write a show around that? Who exactly WAS the murderer? And how did the room vanishing and turning up in Paris actually resolve itself? All these questions and precious few answers! Also: Tyler's great new game "From Peter To Piper" which we are confident will never return for a further round. Plus: dog lovers are well catered for as Huxley the hound makes his podcast debut!
Mar 29, 2023 · 1 hr 32 min
Parkinson Meets Peter Sellers & The Goons
This week's guest is John Williams, who joins Tyler to examine a couple of classic telly interviews from the seventies hosted by Barnsley's favourite son Michael Parkinson. In 1972, fresh from their triumphant return in The Last Goon Show Of All, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers joined Michael Parkinson for a special show, with Spike Milligan on VT and Ray Ellington providing the music. A couple of years later, shortly before his big comeback as an international superstar via The Return of the Pink Panther, Sellers joined Parky again and chatted about his life and career for over an hour. Both shows were subsequently issued on LP and are considered among the very best of Parkinson's interviews. In this week's podcast we discuss: * The many iterations of the solo Sellers show: the original broadcast was 1974, with an edited tribute repeat in 1980, a further truncated repeat in 1996 and the LP version. Does the original still exist? * The ubiquitous German army helmet * Sellers' list of ex-wives * Warrington Minge * Harry Secombe's nervous energy * Fred Roper and his Midgets * The Spirella Corset Factory * Ghostwatch! * Sellers' childhood touring the theatres * Spike in Australia * "I seen him! I seen him!" * Impersonating officers in the army mess * Michael Caine * Who else appeared with Parky on the cover of Band On The Run * The Goon Show Scripts * Derek & Clive * Thora Hird ... And much much more!
Mar 22, 2023 · 1 hr 33 min
Hancock's Half Hour: "The Marriage Bureau"
Last year the sky was dark with hats when it was announced that a missing Hancock's Half Hour radio show had been discovered, and for once Hancockians and Goonatics were able to put aside their differences and embrace like sisters because it turned out that this newly discovered episode featured the vocal talents of Peter Sellers! The hosts of Very Nearly An Armful, the Tony Hancock podcast - Tim Elms, Jon Street, Martin Gibbons and James Griffith - join Tyler this week to talk about "The Marriage Bureau" and Tony Hancock's history with Sellers and Secombe in particular. One of the biggest revelations was that Sellers had barely fifteen minutes to read and run through the script before recording yet pulled it off like a pro and the episode is now regarded as one of the standout shows from the first series of Hancock's Half Hour. It's a fun, fact-filled 90 minutes of chat which will appeal to all fans of the Goons, Hancock or radio comedy in general! http://www.tonyhancock.org.uk/ https://goonshow.org/ Twitter: @goonshowpod @NearlyAn @theGSPS @TonyHancockAS
Mar 15, 2023 · 1 hr 8 min
Griff Rhys Jones
"He opened the door and there he was standing in just a pair of gold boxer shorts..." This was how a young BBC Radio producer named Griff Rhys Jones met Frankie Howerd for the first time! Sometimes on this podcast we like to open it up and talk more generally about comedy - and especially when we get a special guest of Griff's calibre! Rude not to. Griff - who will be touring his new show from May and filming Griff's Vietnam Adventure this year - joined Tyler to talk about his career (which does include a prominent role in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's Puckoon) and was more than happy to reminisce about his time on the likes of Not The Nine O'Clock News, Alas Smith & Jones and The Young Ones, as well as university revues, radio, plays and his subsequent documentaries and travel shows over the last twenty years. Includes chat about: * Mel Smith and their long comedy partnership * Some favourite S&J sketches (including Porno & Bribeasy) * The Homemade Xmas Video * The Two Ninnies and Ronnie Barker's reaction to it * Being Bambi * Alexei Sayle * Douglas Adams * John Lloyd * Chris Langham * Beryl Reid flirting with him * The post-war generation of comedians * Almost appearing in Blackadder the Third * Restoration * Cleaning skyscraper windows in New York * Performing in Australia and New Zealand * The television landscape * Reacting to critics * And working with Frankie of course! As well as his thoughts and observations on Spike and the Goons in general. Griff was extremely generous with his time and tickets for his forthcoming tour are available here: https://www.chortle.co.uk/comics/g/34307/griff_rhys_jones
Mar 8, 2023 · 1 hr 22 min
The Sinking of Westminster Pier
How to salvage London's sunken Westminster floating Pier? Simple. Don't raise the pier - lower the river! And so begins another (mis)adventure in which the two arch fiends Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty hoodwink the hapless Neddie Seagoon in what was probably one of the most topical shows the Goons ever attempted - The Sinking of Westminster Pier, broadcast the week after that historic landmark had indeed sunken into the Thames in early 1955. Spike was amused by a photograph in the newspaper of an 'Out Of Order' sign sticking out of the river and so, fired by inspiration, wrote this episode to replace the scheduled show, The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street. Much to Wallace Greenslade's chagrin. Having previously come on Goon Pod to investigate The String Robberies, Molly McDade returns to talk about piers, oysters, farting mules, Russian frogmen, television police procedurals, David Attenborough, George Raft and even Winston Churchill! Along the way she performs an impressive Willium 'Mate' impression, delivers a heartfelt plea for more Goon-type animation and, most importantly, talks in some detail about seeing the recent Hislop & Newman play 'Spike' a total of three times last year! Molly is on Twitter @AuthorOfNebulae
Mar 1, 2023 · 1 hr 17 min
Foiled By President Fred
President Fred of Argentina owes the South Balham Gas Board four pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence and thus begins a thrilling tale of international intrigue, replete with revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, forged money, real money, red sacks, blue sacks and even coercion by liquorice allsorts! Joining Tyler to unpack this awfully knotty Goon Show from 1955 is Jeffers, the man behind the new podcast Podcasto Catflappo! Jeffers is doing God's work by scrutinising the unfairly overlooked Rik Mayall & Ade Edmondson one-series sitcom penned by Ben Elton: Filthy, Rich & Catflap - an important link in the chain between The Young Ones and Bottom. He's also co-host of Sitcom Showdown and waaaaay back in the day cut his teeth on The Goodies Podcast. He's also Australian but we won't hold that against him. It's fair to say that Jeffers saved Tyler's bacon on more than one occasion during the recording of this episode, having made copious notes and being properly organised. He was able to navigate through Milligan's peasouper of a plot whenever the hapless host got lost, however, thanks to judicious editing and money down to buy Jeffers' silence the listening audience will remain blissfully unaware of this fact. https://t.co/SMjiQkp5Gm
Feb 22, 2023 · 59 min
An Album Called Fred
He's someone who refuses to embrace modernity and is still scandalised by the obsolescence of wax cylinders in favour of shellac discs, however this week your hidebound host Tyler has been listening to sound recordings via the medium of Compact Disc, albeit with a stiff brandy and a cool damp flannel to hand. But he needn't have worried - "An Album Called Fred" is a delightful new CD recently released on Jasmine Records and compiled by producer & sound engineer (and Goons fan) Richard Moore. Bringing together a varied assortment of rare and in some cases never-before released recordings of songs and numbers from the likes of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Ray Ellington, Max Geldray, Angela Morley and George Chisholm, as well as a couple of original recordings which were musical staples of the Goon Show and the original theme music from I'm All Right Jack and Two Way Stretch, "An Album Called Fred" takes its name of course from the 1956 Associated-Rediffusion series A Show Called Fred (and the CD even features the famous 'Jump Into A Dustbin and Dance' number!) Richard joins Tyler to talk about the creation of the album and where the idea originally came from - the CD can be ordered directly from Jasmine here: https://jasmine-records.co.uk/gb/comedy/3660-the-goons-an-album-called-fred.html
Feb 15, 2023 · 1 hr 28 min
David Renwick
"I remember he once castigated me for picking up a wine bottle by its neck." That's David Renwick talking about dining out with Spike Milligan, and in the early eighties Renwick, along with his regular writing partner Andrew Marshall, worked on Spike's 'Q10-by-another-name' There's A Lot Of It About. David joins Tyler this week to talk about Spike the man, the comic, the creative juggernaut, and how to a certain extent the incorrigible Milligan acted as a sort of self-appointed patron to the two younger writers. That said, by this point in their careers they were well on the way to becoming household-name comedy writers with hit shows such as The Burkiss Way on the radio and End Of Part One on television, and Whoops Apocalypse just around the corner. David also had regular writing responsibilities on other shows, notably The Two Ronnies, and within a few years Renwick and Marshall would be the driving forces behind shows such as Alexei Sayle's Stuff. However, it is for two major series in the 1990s (and into the 2000s) that David Renwick is best known: One Foot In The Grave and Jonathan Creek. As well as discussing Milligan, David talked at length about other aspects of his career, in particular One Foot In The Grave (including an explanation as to how the series is shot through with Neil Simon's creative DNA), as well as his early comedy influences, attending recordings of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and Monty Python's Flying Circus (and is it any wonder that Tim Brooke-Taylor from the former and Eric Idle from the latter were both involved with One Foot In The Grave?), his short-lived career as a journalist on a local newspaper, writing for Mike Yarwood, Bruce Forsyth's Big Night, working with David Jason again in the 2010s on the radio show Desolation Jests and... Bill Cosby. Tyler's only regret? That he forgot to ask about *that* episode of Father Ted.
Jan 18, 2023 · 57 min
Ghost In The Noonday Sun (1973)
This week Chris Diamond returns to discuss Ghost In The Noonday Sun, a film in which Peter Sellers in a bad wig and bad accent fannies about for ninety minutes. Goon Pod has clocked up 91 episodes - good grief - and so far we’ve talked about a dozen or so films either starring or featuring Peter Sellers and mostly they’ve been pretty good– true, The Blockhouse, Down Among The Z Men and The Great McGonagall are not universally loved (and it still surprises me the number of people who get wound up by The Magic Christian) but none of them are total stinkers. Is GITNS really THAT bad? It's certainly up there as one of the worst films Sellers was ever attached to but it's no Where Does It Hurt. The film features some great actors and performers such as Spike Milligan, James Villiers, Murray Melvin, Clive Revill and blink-and-you'll-miss-him Peter Boyle as well as Anthony Franciosa (described by Chris as being like one of those uncles you had as a kid who wasn't really your uncle) and Dave Lodge with very little to do. The script is pretty wretched, even though it was Milliganised, and had the film actually been released in cinemas at the time no doubt it would have sunk quicker than a pirate ship foundered on rocks. But of course it did result in a memorable telly advert for gaspers. More on that in the show.
Jan 11, 2023 · 53 min
The Ghost Of Peter Sellers (2016)
"I want to kill people but... they're all dead!" Director Peter Medak had a less than shipshape experience making the 1973 'pirate romp' Ghost In The Noonday Sun, starring Peter Sellers & Spike Milligan. The film from day one was beset by difficulties, dramas and indignities and as an exercise in therapy in 2016 Medak made the feature-length documentary The Ghost Of Peter Sellers. It charts the many obstacles to making GITNS that Medak had to grapple with, and the largest obstacle was its star. Tyler and returning guest Chris Diamond watched the documentary and the 1973 film and had a lot to say so their conversation has been broken down into two halves - this week their focus is largely on The Ghost Of Peter Sellers and next week's episode covers the actual film Ghost In The Noonday Sun.
Jan 4, 2023 · 1 hr 6 min
The Greenslade Story
"Let those undisciplined sprites, The Goons, do their worst - he, Wallace Greenslade, will be true to BBC traditions!" Officially voted listeners' second favourite Goon Show episode of all time, The Greenslade Story is a love letter to the Goons' beloved announcer, 'The Massive Greenslade' (as a colleague nicknamed him) who joined the show in 1953 and stayed with it right to the end in 1960. Big in every sense, Wal fitted right into the show and had no qualms about joining in, often playing odd characters as the script required alongside his official announcer responsibilities. Joining Tyler to talk about this wonderful show is Donna Rees and the pair had a great time talking all things Greenslade! Also: Sellers' vocal fireworks; why they remade The Pevensey Bay Disaster on the same night; Irene Handl swearing; Ray Ellington barking; some Eccles continuity; Wallace in chains; the Coventry disaster; whatever happened to Morecambe & Wise?.... and Stanley Unwin.
Dec 31, 2022 · 1 hr 35 min
Listeners' Top 20 Goon Shows
In summer 2022 listeners to Goon Pod were asked what their favourite episodes of The Goon Show were and the response was brilliant - so many of you voted that it took Tyler and a team of unpaid interns several weeks to collate the data, interpret the results, hem and haw and finally prepare THE definitive list of Listeners’ Top 20 Goon Shows. Tyler is joined by Mike Haskins & Sean Gaffney to run down the list, tease out interesting titbits and generally grumble like middle-aged men tend to do. Where is YOUR favourite show placed? Will it be in the Top 10? The Top 5? Will it be the coveted Number 1?! You’ll have to cancel all plans and strap in for ninety minutes of frenetic Goon chart chat to find out!
Dec 28, 2022 · 59 min
Phantom Raspberry Blower: Part 2
Actor, writer and director Lee Moone joins Tyler this week to talk about the history of Spike Milligan's The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town and how he brought it to the stage in 2015 with 'Guest Phantoms' Jon Culshaw, Danny Baker and John Challis. Following on from last week's chat with Joel Morris, Lee and Tyler look at the genesis of the original script and dig a bit deeper into its intended purpose: to be a one hour television special for Milligan, Sellers and Secombe that never came off. They talk about its subsequent seventies versions with Ronnie Barker solo and then, more famously, as part of The Two Ronnies. Lee tells Tyler how challenging it was adapting the script for the stage production. The biggest obstacle to its success would have been the non-cooperation of Norma Farnes, Milligan's agent, but thankfully she was supportive of the project and gave it her blessing. A major turning point was enlisting the services of Dirk Maggs as director and with him on board it all began to come together. Lee explains how it could have gone on with an extended series of shows but various factors conspired to prevent this happening - however, Lee is hoping to bring the show back. It's a great conversation with a really interesting guy and we wish Lee all the best in his endeavours to revive the show and keep alive the memory of The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town!