The Goon Show was a highly popular and immensely influential radio show on the BBC in the 1950s featuring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan. They would sometimes do live readings of episodes, here's a video recording of The Whistling Spy Enigma (parts
1,
2,
3) and a much later recording of Tales of Men's Shirts (parts
1,
2,
3). The first features Ray Ellington, musical director of the Goon Show, and the second John Cleese, who, like his fellow Pythons, was a huge fan of The Goon Show growing up. In the 50s BBC turned The Goon Show into a TV show with puppets, called Telegoons. A number of shows exist online: The Lurgi Strikes Britain (
1,
2), The Nadger Plague (
1,
2), Captain Seagoon RN (
1,
2), Tales of Montmartre (
1,
2), The First Albert Memorial to the Moon (
1,
2), The Hastings Flyer (
1,
2), The Affair of the Lone Banana (
1,
2), The Africa Ship Canal (
1,
2), The Booted Gorilla (
1,
2), The Ascent of Mount Everest (
1,
2), The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea (
1,
2), Fort Knight (
1,
2), The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu (
1,
2), The Lost Colony (
1,
2) and, finally, back where we first began, the Telegoons version of The Whistling Spy Enigma (
1,
2).
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 8, 2010 -
43 comments
The BBC is asking visitors of its news site to
vote from a shortlist of the ten most embarrassing political moments. Visitors can watch a
short film [real media] which shows all ten nominated moments (forgive the home-video moments style background muzak). There's some variety here: Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock in moments exhibiting a baffling degree of misguidedness, George W Bush and Kenneth Clarke in tight spots (figuratively and literally), while Charles Kennedy and John Prescott probably coming out of their situations looking better than they did beforehand. For me the most cringe-inducing clip is that of John Redwood, the then newly appointed Secretary of State for Wales, attempting to mime the Welsh national anthem. Genuinely difficult to watch.
posted by nthdegx
on Dec 5, 2003 -
31 comments