Waits for applause...not a sausage

April 5, 2008 3:04 AM

The Goon Show was a popular and influential radio comedy produced by the BBC from 1951 - 1960, starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. Here, you can listen to it whenever you like.

If you haven't had enough punishment, you can watch them! With your eyes!

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn (1956)

The Runing, Jumping, and Standing Still Film(1959)

They reunited for in 1972 for The Last Goon Show of
All

posted by louche mustachio (37 comments total)

Previously.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:05 AM on April 5

Yes. Flagged as awesome.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:10 AM on April 5

SHUT UP ECKLES!

Awesome stuff; my Dad listening to his BBC Goon Show tapes during my formative years probably had a profound impact on lots of things, not least of which my sense of humour and silliness.
posted by Chunder at 3:26 AM on April 5

The Jet Propelled NAAFI. We can be anywhere in the world with a cup of tea and a biscuit within five minutes of war breaking out.
posted by vbfg at 3:38 AM on April 5

Mmmmmmmmmmmmminnie!

This is wonderful. Thank you!
posted by valleys at 5:25 AM on April 5

oooOOooo!
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:16 AM on April 5

Prince Charles is, was, such a fan that he and his navy buddies made a short amateur ripoff of the show featuring himself as Bluebottle. HRH Productions ("A Horroh Production"). Not bad, either, but my memory of it is faint and I can't find a link, alas.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:17 AM on April 5

Unmitigated genius... so much of British comedy since came from here.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:22 AM on April 5

Oh nice!

I highly recommend Napoleon's Piano.
posted by patr1ck at 8:10 AM on April 5

love it. So many memories of childhood are listening to these tapes on long car journeys. I think I'm turning into Henry Crun as I get older though...
posted by patricio at 8:38 AM on April 5

*Enter lekvar, waits for audience applause, favorites awesome post by louche mustachio; not a sausage*

The Goon Show was probably a significant factor in the awkwardness of my adolescence, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.
posted by lekvar at 9:41 AM on April 5

What time is it, Eccles?
posted by kaemaril at 9:42 AM on April 5

*curses inability to read the page title; still not a sausage*
posted by lekvar at 9:42 AM on April 5

Great steaming lumps of thurk!

Nice post, thanks.
posted by lothar at 9:55 AM on April 5

fertannnggg!
posted by scruss at 10:30 AM on April 5

Wow, it's clear that Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Firesign Theater are just imitations of this show.
posted by Dave Faris at 10:57 AM on April 5

"This is the man who's going to drink Loch Lomond for us."
posted by jokeefe at 11:39 AM on April 5 [1 favorite]

I discovered the Firesign Theatre perhaps a decade before the Goon Show. On discovering the latter, I was floored at how much FT was inspired by them.
posted by zippy at 12:39 PM on April 5

/old fart talking

My dad used to have a girlfriend who had a copy of 10 collected goon show scripts (which I stole after they broke up). Dad had "I'm sorry I'll read that again" on reel to reel (yeah, baby, reel to fucking reel)

The low tech nature and actual voices of the goon show was something of a disappointment to actually listen to after ISIRTA, but those scripts, in my head, were superlative.
posted by Sparx at 2:33 PM on April 5

Wonderful. Thank you.
posted by elizard at 3:11 PM on April 5

Sapristi Nukkoes! There goes most of my week and my last remaining shred of sanity. And you know what?

Fine. Fine. Fine.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:26 PM on April 5

I've fallen in the water!
posted by pompomtom at 4:41 PM on April 5

a boy could get hurted doing that!
posted by polyglot at 12:12 AM on April 6

You rotten swine, you have deaded my afternoon again.
posted by Hogshead at 6:10 AM on April 6

Me drive pyramid, mate!
posted by Thoth at 8:09 AM on April 6

Great stuff! Especially thanks for the Runing, Jumping, and Standing Still Film, I've been wanting to see that ever since I read about it in relation to A Hard Days Night.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:33 AM on April 6

They'll never fire at their own matches!
posted by chudmonkey at 10:59 AM on April 6

Poor Michael Bentine, how quickly they forget. The fourth Goon.
posted by tellurian at 10:12 PM on April 6

I once had to to judge a Goons competition on a radio station I was working for.

Entrants were told to write to us, saying what the Goons meant to them, "using twenty words or less".

I awarded it to the person whose entry read: LESS.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:28 PM on April 6 [2 favorites]

Lets not forget their puppet forms. I don't recall being much impressed by the radio show as it had just been there, being endlessly repeated in the background, for about as long as I'd existed.

The breakthrough for me was when I was eight or nine and they started to appear on television in puppet form and I was completely hooked. In the pre-swinging sixties, Dr. Who and the Telegoons *were* Saturday night children's television.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:52 AM on April 7

Has anyone seen this site?

http://www.thegoonshow.net/

I loved these shows. Have a huge collection on cassette. Unfortunetly, no one else (I thought) had heard of them.

The reading of the stage directions as dialog, hilarious.

Here is Spike's version of "Its A Small World", the only version I can stomach.
posted by Ying_Ko at 11:49 AM on April 7

ooops...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGAsYbZxjXo
posted by Ying_Ko at 11:50 AM on April 7

PeterMcDermott - I looked all over for video of the Telegoons, because I really want to see that, but it doesn't seem to be up anywhere.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:14 PM on April 7

Poor quality, but here's a taste for you louche mustachio – Napoleon's Piano.
posted by tellurian at 7:58 PM on April 7 [1 favorite]

^ THANK YOU!
posted by louche mustachio at 8:08 PM on April 7

I'm putting this on the British comedy wiki page.

The Mukkinese links are broken, by the way: part 1, part 2, part 3.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:56 PM on April 13

Update: Wiki, & the last part of the The Last Goon Show of All.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:25 PM on April 13