Ever wonder where Monty Python's style of wacky, surrealistic humor came from? It is so inherently different from all the lame tame stuff that was around in the 60's - the Cosbys, Carsons, Newharts, Dillers, Rickles, Smothers Bros, etc.
Well, crazy British comedy goes back a long way. In 1951 the first (proto) Goon Show went on the air at the BBC.
It proved a perfect antidote to the general malaise in the country shortly after the end of WW II. Cities were in ruins. Food was dismal and severely rationed. People were emotionally exhausted by general deprivation and widespread shabbiness -- traumatized by the constant terror of German air raids.
As Goon Show writer Spike Milligan said: "We'd survived the war, so I suppose it was the only logical we would want to laugh as much as possible. I don't think the BBC ever really understood what we were doing. News readers had to dress in tails to read the news on the radio, and we were getting away with murder."
They sure were. Three brilliantly original comedians had successfully subverted the most gray cabbage, boring, pompous media institution in the English speaking world: the BBC.
It seems miraculous that Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe ever got on the air to begin with. The level of popular humor at the time was pretty much "Are You Being Served?" or worse.
Creative differences with the star of a leading BBC variety program led to his former writers creating their own show.
One of them, Spike Milligan, is a really truly crazy, genuine certified English Eccentric. His wild and bizarre comic imagination is very much in the logically rigorous but functionally askew "Alice In Wonderland" tradition.
Week after week he produced scripts that were perfect springboards for the improvisational genius of the young Peter Sellers.
Harry Secombe was a popular BBC Welsh Tenor -- short and stout, with a deliciously silly, virulently infectious high-pitched giggle. And a wild enthusiasm for some of the most atrocious infantile puns ever aired: "Where's the rent?" "It's in me trousers." He bent down and sure enough: he had a rent in his trousers!!!! We drank and smashed our glasses in the fireplace. I had to borrow a spare pair to get home!!!" It's a British weakness - like "knickers" (underwear) and laxative jokes. (Beavis - Falsetto Voice: "Poop!")
His character "Ned Seagoon" functioned as the relative "straight man" on the show - the plots all revolve around Neddie's convoluted, danger-ridden, world-wide adventures.
Every whirlwind twist of the plot is illustrated by some bit of sonic craziness -- speeded up crowds singing rugby songs - cloppings - swooshes - grimly marching armies - lurching waltzes - ghastly creakings - corny soap opera themes - over-the-top screams - extended mechanical flatulences: non-stop rapid-fire madness. They had the entire BBC vaults to draw from.
One explosive "Schwoopsh" and we see Neddie S. go from London to Nairobi in a split second. (as Sellers says: "try to do that on television, folks.)
Peter Sellers, was one of the funniest actors ever. All of his varied accents on the Goon Show are as superb as his Clouseau in The Pink Panther.
The upper class accents in particular are ferociously satiric: insinuatingly plummy, dripping with condescending caddishness, blustering, pompous, nitwit Col. Blimps. Yet his Indian accents are his greatest triumph -- no wonder since he honed them while living there. (Check out his movie The Party).
When you read a transcript of an episode the show doesn't seem all that funny. It's like looking at a butterfly stuck on a pin. Lightning-fast, anarchic boppings, both off the script and each other, make the magic work. The cast are continually cracking each other up, which gets the audience going -- it's impossible to resist getting into the general spirit of lunacy.
A word of warning: The Goon Show isn't as easy to get as Monty Python. It takes repeated listenings to penetrate the thicket of heavy British dialects and countless topical references from England in the 50's - media governmental celebrities, slang, post-war relief organizations - I wish there was a glossary somewhere.
Eventually, a reasonable grip can be got on what's being referred to. But things just zoom by at a maniacal, tea-crazed rate.
In a way, the Goon Show is a unique combination of two different fascinations: comedy and archeology. It is a remarkable cultural time capsule -- a continuous weekly window on English society from 1952 to 1960.
Considering the concentration necessary to keep up with such a break-neck pace it was an excellent decision to include two light musical numbers per show. One was played by the soulful Ray Ellington (a drummer, singer from Ghana) quartet and another by Max Geldray, a virtuoso jazz harmonica player from Holland, backed by the house band. This included many hip, up-tempo Cole Porter arrangements that are perfect examples of sophisticated lounge jazz played with elan, Flash, and genuine swing. These musical breathers give you a chance to uncross your mental eyes.
Because so many jokes and references are missed each time you hear it, The Goon Show can and should be listened to repeatedly. I guarantee that within a short time Neddie, Min, Eccles, Bloodnok, and Bluebottle will take up permanent residence in your own personal asylum.
To get hold of any Goon Show recordings used to be virtually impossible. But glory be to the World Wide Web you can get any of the four hundred episodes for the price of a cassette and postage! Contact this website for further info: The Goon Show US Archives
To help you out, here's a description of the basic characters who appeared every week on the show:
(This is an embellished version of a list originally written by Dick Baker, creator of the Goon Show website).
The Goon Characters
Harry Secombe plays:
Neddie Seagoon, the central figure of all the shows. Cheerful likable, gullible, but his greed regularly leads him astray. "What what what what what what?" ""
Peter Sellers Plays:
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, a posh educated voice based on that of English actor George Saunders, who often played the suave cad. Grytpype-Thynne is a crook and con man, and the basic plot of most shows revolves around the efforts of him and his henchman, Count Moriarty, to swindle Neddie Seagoon. ("You silly twisted boy, you.") Pronounced homosexual sub text.
Major Dennis Bloodnok (Signature fanfare then: "Bleiough! Aeeeioughhh! Bleeioughh!!!) A devout coward either retired or deserted from the British Army. He too is a thief who tries to steal from one and all. He is afflicted with extreme gastric distress, and his introductory theme is usually followed by a bizarre series of explosions and bubbling noises. He comments on these sounds himself with "Quick nurse -- the screens" or "ohh, it's no wonder I can't go to parties anymore." Occasionally the sound effect won't play and he'll exclaim "I'm cured!!"
Henry Crun, crumbling, fumbling, fusty, very old man. "Mnk -- grnk -- mnk -- grmp - Nnk?" But he takes "Elderly Gentleman's Get Fit" hormones and is the (nearly) lusty paramour of Minnie Bannister. Most shows contain an extended scene with just him and Minnie. ("Did you put the cat out, Min?" . . . . . . . . "I didn't know it was on fire, Henry.")
Bluebottle ("Yee hee hee. Heuheuheuheuheuheuheu hee.") A young boy scout who usually reads his own stage directions, wears a cardboard and licorice-string boy scout suit. Frequently inserts gratuitous "N"s as in self-reference "Bloonbottle" and "sausinges" for "sausages" (slang for applause.) Is always "deaded" by end of episode "I don't like this game!" He and Eccles often engage in mutual hysterical giggling fits, foreshadowing Beavis and Butt-Head by fifty years.
William "Mate" Cobblers: an elderly cockney who calls everybody "mate" (pronounced "Myte") He most often appears as a constable, but really can pop up in almost any role. "You can't park there, myte." "I can't do That myte" "I've got a chit -- I'm excused, myte.") The Cockney janitor on Are You Being Served is based on him.
Spike Milligan Plays:
Eccles, "Well hello dere. The original Goon combining Disney's Goofy character, Edgar Bergen's Mortimer Snerd, and Clifton Finnegan, the super-stupid regular customer at Archie's Tavern. Jokes about his stupidity are a staple of the show, with Eccles himself cheerfully chiming in. His character serves both grown-up parts and as the on-going playmate of Bluebottle. (Bluebottle: "Shut up Eccles . . ." Eccles: "Shut up Eccles" - goofy laugh.)
Miss Minnie Bannister: spinster, a sexy senior citizen who plays the saxophone and regularly breaks out into song or dance. She lives in sin with Henry Crun, but whenever Major Bloodnok comes on the scene it's made clear that they were lovers in the past. (Milligan got the quaver in her voice by pinching his neck and wobbling it about as he spoke her lines. "We'llallbemurderedinourbeds."
Count Moriarty, French scrag and lackey to Grytpype-Thynne, who usually introduces him and attributes him some outlandish title or record that he holds ("Has played the male lead in over 50 postcards"). Delightfully wretched in his poverty and degradation, he speaks in semi-coherent Gallic mutterings, lives in suitcases and fish crates carried around by Grytpype-Thynne to save on hotel bills.
Excerpt from . . . "The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler (Of Bexhill-On-Sea)"
SEAGOON: Oh! What's happened to this dear silver-bearded lady?
CRUN: She was struck down from behind.
SEAGOON: And not a moment too soon -- congratulations, sir.
CRUN: I didn't do it.
SEAGOON: Coward -- hand back your OBE. Now tell me who did this felonious deed. What's happened to her?
CRUN: It's too dark to see -- strike a light.
SEAGOON: No Madam, we daren't -- why, only twenty-eight miles across the Channel the Germans are watching the coast.
"TV actress/model Sabrina was mentioned
frequently in the Goon Show,
as in 'Neddie, keep them covered with these
measurements of Sabrina while I telephone for the police.'"
SEAGOON: Oh, alright.
F.X.: MATCH STRIKING -- QUICK WHOOSH OF SHELL -- SHELL EXPLODES.
SEAGOON: Any questions?
CRUN: Yes -- where are my legs?
SEAGOON: Are you now aware of the danger from German long-range guns?
CRUN: Mnk mnk ahh! I've got it -- I have the answer -- just by chance I happen to have on me a box of German matches.
SEAGOON: Wonderful strike one -- they won't fire on their own matches.
F.X.: MATCH STRIKING AND FLARING -- WHOOSH OF SHELL -- SHELL BURST.
CRUN: . . . Curse . . . the British!!!
SEAGOON: WE tried using a candle, but it wasn't very bright and we daren't light it -- so we waited for dawn -- and the light of the morning sun, we saw what had struck Miss Bannister. It was -- a Batter Pudding.
ORCHESTRA: DRAMATIC HORROR-MOVIE CHORD.
"And there's more where that came from."