“At least 53 ‘bloodies’ in half-an-hour last night. This is definitely not British sir! I suggest you study the British working man more!" So thundered a disgruntled viewer in 1969 after watching an episode of the Johnny Speight & Spike Milligan sitcom Curry & Chips. One notes with interest it was the word 'bloody' which triggered him, as opposed to any of the other bad language with which the series as a whole was replete. Starring Spike Milligan in brownface as Kevin O'Grady, Curry &am...
Jul 02, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 198
Over a long and rightly celebrated career Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were careful to file away, log and generally archive much of their written output, correspondence, contracts and other ephemera. Now York University's Borthwick Institute for Archives is attempting to secure the collection for the nation and the Institute's Gary Brannan joins Tyler to talk about the G&S archive and the fund-raising campaign - appropriately titled 'Innit Marvellous'. More information here: https://yustart.h...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 197
There is absolutely no connection between the Goons and the Simpsons so what on earth is this special bonus episode all about? Well, my very good friends Ian and Michael over at the Lord Of Adders Black podcast - celebrating all things Blackadder - joined me to share our love for The Simpsons and talk through our favourite episodes! (Their podcast is really good - find it here: https://shows.acast.com/lord-of-adders-black ) Great comedy is great comedy and while it's fair to say that few people ...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 24 min
How young Ned Seagoon journeys by steam packet to the Americas to find the Lost Gold Mine and how, after being foully tricked by several desperadoes, he eventually triumphs. The action takes place aboard the S.S. Filthmuck, in a New Orleans dustbin, near the desert town of San Fairee Ann, and in a dried-up gulch near Hammersmith. Sandwiched between The Whistling Spy Enigma and The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-On-Sea, this episode of The Goon Show is an often overlooked gem from early...
Jun 18, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 196
One of the few actors who could genuinely command respect and admiration from Peter Sellers, Irene Handl is mainly remembered now for her multitudinous 'mum', 'gran', 'landlady/charlady' and general 'dotty old dear' roles in films and on TV. She and Sellers appeared together in films, on record, on stage and on television. Perhaps the pairing is most well known from the 1959 film I'm All Right Jack, in which they played Mr & Mrs Kite. That same year saw the release of the LP Songs For Swingi...
Jun 11, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 195
Commissioner Dreyfus had for years wanted to see his infuriating underling Inspector Jacques Clouseau dead and buried and for a while, with the death of Peter Sellers in 1980, it seemed like the shambolic Sûreté shamus had indeed been laid to rest... ... Until somebody had the bright idea of filming two new movies back-to-back trading on the Clouseau character - after all, the Pink Panther film series had been a massively successful franchise, why spoil it all just because the main actor was dea...
Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 194
When Adam Faith and chums decide to make a fake Loch Ness monster they set off a chain of events too hilarious to describe. With a script by Terry Nation, What A Whopper! is a serviceable British comedy film of the early sixties slightly let down by rather colourless leads but lending solid support are the likes of Sid James, Wilfred Bramble, Charles Hawtrey and - you guessed it - Spike Milligan, who plays a tramp fishing on the bank of the Serpentine. Returning guests Tilt Araiza and Gary Rodge...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 193
Issued on BBC LP in 1979, The Rent Collectors is still often overlooked which is a bit unfair. Although given of a slight plot - not unusual for a Goon Show! - it has some marvellous set pieces and gags and an interesting guest performer in the shape of actor Bernard Miles. It also heralded the first official appearance of Little Jim whose catchphrase has delighted audiences ever since (it says here). We talk about Miles' appearance (which was very much last-minute), Sellers' ATV Saturday night ...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 192
This week a slight departure as we go back forty years to the alternative comedy landscape of the 1980s and Tyler chats with Rowland Rivron, that difficult-to-define Swiss army knife of a man who has done a bit of pretty much everything: musician, comedian, actor, writer, voice-over artiste, panel game captain, television presenter, dancer and at least a dozen other things. Rowland was partly responsible for one of the funniest hours of British television: The Comic Strip Presents Mr Jolly Lives...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 191
This week Tyler talks to Robert Sellers, author of a new book detailing the entire history of the Pink Panther/Inspector Clouseau film series from Peter Sellers to Steve Martin. There's loads of interesting stuff discussed - did you know: Peter Sellers was once upstaged by Richard Burton & Elisabeth Taylor at the premiere of Return Of The Pink Panther? The creator of Asterix tried to claim authorship of the plot of The Pink Panther Strikes Again? Blake Edwards broke his neck diving into a sw...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 190
This week we fire up a Wurlitzer and crack open an oyster as we celebrate one of the aspects of the Goon Show that made it so unique: the sound effects. Joining Tyler to talk about some of our favourites are Chris Smith and Graeme Lindsay-Foot and the idea for the show first occurred to Chris when he heard a news item on the radio several years ago. According to Chris: "They covered the recent creation of a "sounds archive", dedicated to preserving sounds previously very familiar butwhich are fa...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 189
We revisit some beloved children's television series from the seventies and eighties this week as Chris Diamond returns to talk about those occasions when Spike Milligan would pop up as a special guest in shows such as Super Gran, The Sooty Show, Pob's Programme, Jackanory, The Muppet Show, Number 73, Tiswas and The Ratties (which Spike narrated). Wiping a nostalgia-fuelled tear from his eye, Chris regrets the lack of original children's programming which has cut-through these days and warmly re...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 188
"Ah, here is is Christmas Eve and still no offers of pantomime!" One of the best-known Goon Shows ever, Dishonoured - Again went out in January 1959 and before the year was at an end was commercially released (with Tales Of Old Dartmoor ) on the LP The Best Of The Goon Shows . It was subsequently repeated more frequently than most Goon Shows and its script was published in a Roger Wilmut book. A remake (superior in every respect) of a Series 5 episode, due to Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens bo...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 187
This week we’re turning our attention to Peter Sellers’penultimate film (if we disregard those pesky ‘flogging a dead Panther’ posthumous farragoes), and the film for which he came closest in his career to carrying off a Best Actor Oscar: Being There from 1979. Very much a passion project for Sellers, the film, directed by Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude) and based on the novel by Jerzy Kosiński, centres around the character of Chance, a gardener and late middle-aged ward of an elderly man whose d...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 186
Can you believe that for half a century student bars the length and breadth of the land have resounded to the excruciating cries of "Nii!"? Yes, the film the Spanish call 'The Knights of the Square Table and Their Crazy Followers' turns 50 and to mark the occasion here's a bonus episode with Tyler and writer, podcaster & performer Tom Salinsky in which they talk at length about the film. Tom thinks that Life of Brian has more to say but Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most consistentl...
Apr 05, 2025•1 hr 22 min
"Do you want a taste of the lash?" "No thanks, I've just had some cocoa." In 1974 the BBC issued the first Goon Show Classics LP. On one side was The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea and on the other side was the show we're talking about today: The Histories of Pliny the Elder , Spike Milligan's attempt to pen a sword-and-sandals Goonish epic. It has become one the most beloved Goon Shows ever, with some highly memorable gags and an end-of-term looseness about it. They all sounded...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 185
According to Peter Sellers: “It all started because Spike Milligan and I once said we wanted to experiment in visual humour. We got as many friends together as we could and went and found a field. That was all we had – friends, a field, a roll of film.” What resulted was 'The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film' (1959), directed by the up-and-coming Richard Lester, a friend and collaborator of Sellers and Milligan. The short film soon became a word-of-mouth hit and was even nominated for ...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 184
A darkly comic satire about an increasingly deranged leader of a Western power, tensions with Russia and the threat of World War 3 breaking out – sound familiar? That’s the premise of Whoops Apocalypse, the 1986 feature film very loosely based on the sitcom of the same name, created by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall. Sadly where the film fails to imitate real life is the presence of a female President in the White House and she’s the (relatively) sane one, while her British counterpart (playe...
Mar 02, 2025•1 hr 29 min
In 2024 we asked Goon Pod listeners to nominate their all-time favourite British comedy film. It didn't have to have a Goon in it - no, we wanted to put together a comprehensive Top 20 chart which covered all the bases. This week as we wind up the show this series Simon Meddings from Waffle On podcast joins Tyler to count down the list from Number 20 to Number 1. While there will be films you'd expect to turn up in a list like this there's also a number of surprises and even omissions. Will your...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 183
A special Christmas bonus edition! As part of Goon Pod Film Club - www.patreon.com/GoonPod - every month Tyler and a special guest discuss a British comedy film and in August this year Tim Worthington came to talk about his favourite: Billy Liar from 1963. Here's the full episode for Goon Pod listeners to get a taste. As you’d expect from Tim the conversation takes many twists and turns – as well as analysing the film itself, its themes and ideas, its stars, its production, its position in the p...
Dec 29, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 182
The man behind the Goon Show Compendiums, audio engineer extraordinaire Ted Kendall returns to answer your questions in this Christmas edition!
Dec 25, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 181
“For a shortened version of this programme, please read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and you won’t find much resemblance.” On 24th December 1959 the tenth and final series of The Goon Show got off to a thoroughly festive start with a show VERY loosely based on the classic Dickens story, in which Scrooge (played by Henry Crun) entrusts Eccles with a Christmas pudding full of gold threepenny bits. This attracts the attention of Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty and all manner of chaos ensues. ...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 180
Who were the key figures in getting the Goon Show to radio? Which people were pivotal to the Goons' success? Join Tyler and Roger Stevenson as they rank those within the Goon Show's orbit in order of importance and show their working. Roger took the brief seriously and put a lot of thought and care into his choices; Tyler slightly misunderstood the brief and went more down that 'Who was the Fifth Goon?' route. What resulted was an interesting mix of names, and increasingly desperate attempts by ...
Dec 11, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 179
On 4th December 1994 Jonathan Ross hosted the British Comedy Awards in front of an invited audience of the great and the good and Noel Edmonds. It was a good year for the likes of Steve Coogan, Michael Barrymore and the Drop the Dead Donkey team but almost from the off Ross was beset by problems, including announcing the winner of the wrong award, having to deal with an out-of-control Meatloaf whose sole intention, it seemed, was to reduce Wossy to a quivering mess, and, most notably, attempting...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 178
A rare straight acting role for Peter Sellers in 1960, Never Let Go starred Richard Todd as a man for whom life outside of uniform has never been easy, as he struggles to put food on the table and his problems multiply when his new car is stolen. The vehicle has been stolen to order by teen tearaway Adam Faith, who supplies local garage owner and all-round nasty piece of work Lionel Meadows (Sellers) with hot wheels which are subsequently re-plated and sold on. John Cummings (Todd) is determined...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 177
In 1979 Peter Sellers released Sellers Market , an LP of all new material which was recorded mostly in Paris and included contributions from the likes of Alan Clare, June Whitfield and Irene Handl. While it failed to reach the heights of his previous hit records The Best of Sellers and Songs For Swinging Sellers, Sellers Market does contain some good stuff – notably The Whispering Giant (featuring Irene Handl on top form) and The Eaton Square Blues . Perhaps most intriguingly is what wasn’t incl...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 176
Released 69 years ago this week, The Cockleshell Heroes was a heavily fictionalised account of the real-life WW2 Operation Frankton, in which a group of marines, headed by Herbert ‘Blondie’ Hasler, covertly entered Bordeaux Harbour in kayaks (or ‘Cockles’) to sabotage German cargo vessels. The film starred actor/director Jose Ferrer and Trevor Howard, with Anthony Newley and… drum roll… DAVID LODGE providing solid support as Marines Clarke & Ruddock respectively. Although The Cockleshell Her...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 175
"In the little Essex hamlet of Great Bardfield, a tiger with influenza is mounting guard over a mysterious white box. What is the secret of the box of Bardfield—does it contain the dreaded International Christmas Pudding or is it really full of priceless Essex snow?" So ran the Radio Times listing that week for the show we are discussing, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the International Christmas Pudding but has everything to do with selling snow to Sudan. It's Tyler's favourite Goon Sh...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 174
Everyone at Goon Pod Towers is very excited this week as this is the first time we've ever covered a Best Picture Oscar winner on the show, and this one features everybody's favourite beadle Harry Secombe who's in fine voice for this tremendous 1968 film based on the hit Lionel Bart stage musical! Joining Tyler are those incorrigible urchins Chris Webb & Robert Johnson from Still Any Good podcast and among other things they discuss: The magnificent Ron Moody The novel vs the film Harry hits ...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 173
In 1975 David Dimbleby conducted an interview on television with Spike Milligan, and as the Fates would have it Spike was in the perfect frame of mind for such a probing and personal interrogation. They talked about his childhood, the war, his career, his mental health, the breakdown of his marriage in the fifties, his hopes and regrets and even touch on (then) contemporary events - the boy he shot in his garden and the fallout which resulted in him being dropped from several animal charities. T...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 172
