I had the extraordinary good fortune to be in the audience when this was filmed. Spike Milligan did a 5 minute warm up after which the rest of them could have read the phone directory and we would have died laughing. It was one of the best times of my life.
As schoolboy Goons fans in days prior to tape recorders and instant access media days we would avidly listen to the Goon shows and regurgitate the jokes at school the next day. Our poor teachers would have to put up with us talking in Goon voices ( especially Eccles) and twanging rulers to imitate the sound effects. Raspberry sounds would generally be responded to with Bloodnock impersonations and “No more curried eggs for me” and the threat of detention if we didn’t “settle down”. The humour would keep us going until another show came along the following week.
People who attended the original radio recordings describe an entire visual layer that you don't get from the audio alone. How the atmosphere crackles with energy. A comedy resting on the edge of going crazy; yet it's always tight as a drum and never slides into chaos. Peters amazing voices just blow me away; and here you see how much Ray played a live part of the performance. It's superb. The sound effects are split second perfect. and you see Harry suddenly discovering another layer in the joke. What an amazing find. I have rescued enough 3rd generation material with a VHS dub in the chain; to appreciate how difficult this was. So thanks for the effort involved.
better quality than i was expecting - Milligan was a genius, these 3 were hilarious together. The absurdity of the humour was unique, and only monty python has come near, but the goons are still way ahead. the ad libbing and mistakes make these shows even funniers, and they were having fun and enjoying each other's craziness.
"BRILLIANT" many thanks for putting some genuine British comedy on where everyone can enjoy it . It's a pity that with all their wealth and power the overlords at the BBC couldn't do the same .Surely one slot late at night wouldn't hurt anyone ,and it would do wonders for their ratings as well as costing very little to put on some of our old classic comedies
BBC Radio 4 Extra have been repeating maybe as many as 144 of the episodes (the ones which were rediscovered behind a wall; the tapes having been used for soundproofing for a number of years) pretty well continuously as a weekly programme for a number of years.
The Goons were one of the reasons why a little girl, on being told how wonderful the the new-fangled thing called 'television' was, compared to radio, replied "No, the pictures are better."
Superb job. God, imagine what priceless gems went into Sellers' bonfire in 1980. A before and after comparison split-screen of a sample moment would have made you look even more of a wizard, Mr Gregg.
Wonderful. The original radio version of this show is one of my favourites. If the actual radio recordings were as chaotic as this, I'm glad I didn't have the job of editing them for broadcast!
On the piano is Dick Katz, who escaped his native Austria in the 1930s just prior to WW2. He was the regular pianist on the Goon shows and a member of the Ray Ellington Band. In 1961 Dick married Valerie Masters a well known British singer in the 1950s and 60s. Later Dick Katz become one of the most prominent theatrical agents in Britain. He died at the Savoy hotel, London in 1981 after suffering a massive stroke.
Like all great acts, rock groups and great tv shows the chances of these very special talents all meeting up in the same lifetime is remarkable. The genius of Milligan could only be brought out properly by these wonderful people. It simply does not age and I always laugh out loud {something I dont do to python} Not until Father Ted was there anything else with that power, bless you Spike, Harry and Peter
Sheer craziness, I was sick one Saturday night , my parents bought on old radio in . I could not have been more than 9 ,& laughed my head off.Eccles was always my favourite character!
Thank you very much for your efforts and for sharing this with us. I must add that I have to feel sorry for the 20 pathetic persons that felt compelled to give this a thumbs-down.
Mad !!!!! Mad !!!!! and Mad but Genius!! They clearly had so much fun!!! I have reel to reel tapes of the Goons and records and they were some of the best the BBC ever did period!!!!!!! Listened to then in the late 1950's and 60's on our radio!!!! Also the telegoons!!!! Like Prince Charles , with whom I am the same age, I was captivated!!!
I recently found The last Goon Show which was excellent for a few reasons, one of which I didn't expect and that was the visual enjoyment of a radio studio setting and the naturalness of how it flowed because it wasn't a film set. The live audience enjoyed that side of it too. There was an ad-lib to all their movements and when not performing, there was informal chats going on everywhere but no-one missed a que. We even see the sound makers ! The Royals don't appear too royal or too remote. Great atmosphere. I felt as if I was there. It's mentioned in the description that Spike didn't get his voices right in this clip but in the later 1972 Last Goon Show, he definitely does. This clip has the same feel to it and again I enjoy the informal arrangements of where everyone stands and their untutored interactions with each other and again a live audience to enjoy it with. How sad it was seen as visually uninteresting at the time. But how could they have seen the level of falsity and unreality that we see today which makes this type of setting so real and engaging. I loved this clip and am not disappointed in spite of no voices really from Spike. Will we see any more ?
Absolutely brilliant.. Zany British humour at its best and it's simplest.. Good clean insanity... Without the Goons we most likely would not have had Monty Python and many other madcap comedies
Based on "The Whistling Spy Enigma" as originally broadcast on the BBC Home Service in September 1954. The original episode is one of many released on CD if anyone's interested. The announcer is Ray Ellington, who sang musical interludes and played politically-incorrect roles in the original.
@pythongoon Im currently working on a new restoraion from a much higher quality print. Still sady soursed from DVD and not Digicam, but a great improvement none the less. Plus my techniques for restoration have improved somewhat too
OH, WELL DONE FOR PUTTING THIS UP. SO THAT'S WHAT RECORDING A GOON SHOW REALLY LOOKED LIKE - I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT THE GUYS IN "LAST GOON SHOW" FILM LOOKED A BIT SELF-CONSCIOUS, SO THIS IS AS CLOSE AS WE'LL GET TO THE REAL THING. THANK YOU!
Goons Rock!! I was lucky enough to get to record all of the vinyl records from a friends collection. More video please!!! More Goonery!! Ying Tong Iddle I Poe!! Needle Nardle Noo!!
I hope I can join your ranks (as Private First Class Twit). I have some 60 cassette tapes of Goon Shows, some bought from the BBC, the rest inherited from a guy who recorded the shows on to reel-to-reel tapes! I transferred them to cassettes. The differences in the series were quite marked, with producers various stamping their mark on proceedings. Too much to discuss in this small space, but much kudos to you for presenting both this video, and your thoughts on TGS. Thank you.
I'm hurting from laughing so much. Thank you for your great efforts. Part of me understand that Sellers wanted it to be ephemeral. Part of me calls him a vandal of the highest calibre. You have done a great job in saving this.
@@MirlitronOne By the way, there was a Sean Milligan credited re: packaging on one of their reissues on Esoteric Records. Spike's son or just a coicidence?
@Ade Gregg. I saw you mention somewhere that you had restored the video for the goons whistling spy enigma TV broadcast. I'd love to see it, if possible.
What does Milligan say when Secombe says "i'll step on your foot boy!" at 2.42 This is fantastic. Thank you so much for the effort of restoring it and putting it online.
Is it possible that the new ai upscaling and sharpening techniques could now be applied to this footage? Look at what Peter Jackson did with original wartime footage - it might be time to have another crack at it.
I have seen the complete version of this on RU-vid in the past, back around 2008 or so, but it was since pulled down. I don't know why or when. One thing I DO know, however, is that there's more details you've omitted here. First off, this was meant as more of a 'performance' for a special of Harry Secombe, and it was made a lot more ad-lib because of the fact that the segments would be televised. The Crun you hear is actually heard a lot, and was one of two variations that matched with Sellers' vocal range, the other being a lot more higher-pitched in sound to sound like a more alert and crotchety old man (as can be heard in the episode 'The Phantom Head-Shaver of Brighton' and here, which is a version also heard in episodes like 'The Lost Year' - part of this being a change in Sellers' vocals during the late 50s as he began to become more prominently known. The Bluebottle voice was always rather whiny, and it is possible that it has only become more-so due to the deterioration you mentioned earlier. Having a lot of the original Goons stuff on tape, and Sellers' insistence on how the voice came about being modelled on a 'Brown Owl' Scout Troop Leader he knew, it's still notably similar, though not entirely the same. As to the scripts, it's why a lot of the rehearsals were never actually taped or filmed. Milligan was a manic depressive, as is well-known to the Goon Show fans of the world, but he also was a chronic ad-libber and rewriter. In fact, he frequently ad-libbed his own lines into a show, as he did here. Secombe and Sellers would also ad-lib, and Milligan would pull them up since he had a vision of what he wanted. Here, they were told in all likelihood not all of this would be used even though it was filmed - and so they decided 'what the hell - let's just have fun with it'. Part of this was that Elington, in spite of his brilliant performance as the announcer here, wasn't as much of a 'straight-man' to play off as was the then-late at the time Wallace Greenslade. There are a LOT of points which could be argued on this, but it was one of only three big occasions I know of where the Goons reunited to perform a show together after 1960. The most prominent of these is the well-known 'Last Goon Show of All' in 1972, but they also had John Cleese as an announcer when they did 'Tales of Men's Shirts' again at some point, though I think it might've been the late 60s...
Thanks for the detail .. but I'm thinking Spike would have something to add to the notion of 'the then-late at the time' Wallace Greenslade. (I'm still trying to work it out).
I don't think that any of them (including Bentine) were ever not friends. I've read that Secombe made a concerted effort to be there for Milligan as much as was possible in his depressive times. Theres also a telegram from Sellers (and footage from a Parkinson) begging Spike to do another Goon show but a year later the man was dead.
