Goon Forever (The Goons)

Member Name: ickkate

Product:	The Goons
Date:	07/03/02 (362 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inspirational 1950s radio comedy group

Disadvantages: Goon but not forgotten

I wrote this a week ago, but there I was confused about where it was meant to go... so, it was topical...

The Goon's are gone forever. Spike Milligan, the last surviving Goon died yesterday of liver failure at the age of eighty-three. He has left British comedy all the richer for his presence, with many modern comedians giving tribute to him. Yesterday can only be described as the end of an era. So, I thought now would be a good a time as any to remember the Goons (although I am far too young - I'll explain that all to you a little later...,) and the heroes of comedy that they were.

The Goon Show was broadcast on BBC radio from 1951 to 1960 (although the last actual show was broadcast in 1972) with more than 240 programmes. Their humour was irreverent and surreal, and appealed to a whole generation of young people. The comedy they produced inspired generations of comedians including Monty Python's Flying Circus, and more modern comedians like Eddie Izzard. Their legacy is modern comedy (er... the good stuff!!) and has stretched further than Britain (I found a few American websites which seem devoted to all things Goonish.) Even though there were topical references in their humour, it is still funny today. Spike Milligan described the Goons as taking everything 'logically to its illogical conclusion' - it all makes sense just in a weird and roundabout way.

So, who were these Goons? Well, if you don't know, then you may be a little surprised at the other members of the team - I was when I first found out. They were Harry Secombe (yes, the guy who sang on Songs of Praise and Highway - believe me he was funny, and had the most infectious laugh you have ever heard), Peter Sellers (yep, that's where he started), Michael Bentine (you may not of heard of him... he left quite early and went off and did his own programmes like 'Square World' with the other three continuing as what is generally known as
the Goons,) and of course Spike Milligan. All of them saw active service during the Second World War, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe in the Royal Artillery, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan in another regiment. (You do have to wonder if some of their humour came from what they had all experienced during that time. I think that both Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan were treated for some kind of shock - often comedians sometimes seem to be people who have a dark side of their personality whose compensation is comedy or a slightly skewed look at the world.) They met at the Grafton Arms in Westminster, after Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine met at an audition, and started making comedy with the help of the owner of the pub, Jimmy Grafton (the KOGVOS - Keeper of the Goons and Voice of Sanity), and the rest, as they say, is history...

OK, so now you know who they are - why do I like them? Well, I have been brought up on the Goons, except that I didn't know anything about it. My Dad used to sing silly songs to me in the bath like 'I'm walking backwards for Christmas' and the 'Ying Tong' song. The thing is that I just thought these were silly songs that my Dad knew from somewhere, I just didn't know where from. Then, when I was about seventeen one of my friends started ranting on about these really great tapes that he had of these people called the Goons. Now, I knew that my Dad liked the Goons, but I had no clue that those songs were the same thing. This friend then started singing the 'Ying Tong' song, and it all fitted into place - my Dad was a plagiarist!!! So, for my Dad's next Christmas present I bought him a CD, and we were in stitches...

The shows were made up of sketches that were all linked together by an overall story-line. The links were generally pretty tenuous, and pretty surreal. I think the way that the show gained such cult status was because of the way in which they used reoccurring
characters with catch phrases and easily identifiable voices. If anybody says 'He's fallen in de water' in a babyish voice to someone else who knows anything about the Goons, they will immediately know that it Bluebottle saying it. Some of the titles to the episodes really show how surreal it all was 'The Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on Sea)', 'The Egg of the Great Auk', 'I Was a Male Fan Dancer' or 'The Mysterious Punch-Up-The-Conker'. Eventually all of the threads of the little sketches would come together and the story would have be resolved. These sketches were held together by the main character of Neddy Seagoon, who is a cheerful character whose gullibility and greediness get him in trouble. This is the character that Harry Secombe plays, and I think that the enthusiasm and enjoyment that he obviously had for the show was one of the reasons that it was such a success. You will quite often hear him going into high-pitched little giggle that really makes you want to laugh with him. (Another thing which helps it work quite well is that it was recorded in front of a live audience. They are all in stitches and this really makes you want to laugh with them too.) It is one of those programmes that once it gets you laughing it really keeps you there, so that even if a joke isn't really all that funny it keeps you laughing because you haven't recovered from the last joke yet.

I don't think that the Goons could have survived particularly well as a TV show, (and shows like 'At Last The 1948 Show' didn't take off in the same way). I think that the way that the characters switched quickly would have been limited by television - it would have to become too rehearsed in order to allow props and costumes to be changed quickly. As it happens, all that needed to happen for another character to suddenly appear, spontaneously and ad-lib, was for someone to change their voice.
I'm not quite sure how accurate this is, (so you'll have to take this with a pinch of salt,) but I heard that Spike Milligan scripted around about twenty minutes worth of script, in order to allow for the improvisation that normally occurred in the show (the show was about thirty minutes long). I think that the level of spontaneity also added a lot of humour to the show. I think that you can sometimes see a very funny bit of writing with a really comic cast fall flat on its face when they have just misjudged their show by over-rehearsing it - it is just dead, rather than having that energy that good comedy has.

Just to give you a little idea about what the sketches were like, here is a little section called 'What's the time Eccles?' from 'The Mysterious Punch-Up-The-Conker'. (I don't know if quoting sections of the Goons is a particularly good idea, because as I said before it is the way the jokes just keep you constantly laughing that makes you find the next one funny - anyway, hopefully this will at least give you an idea of the wit.) Bluebottle and Eccles are standing in a clock shop. Bluebottle is a young boy scout who quite often reads his own stage directions, and who speaks in a childish high-pitched voice, and Eccles is a very stupid character (who apparently was the first Goon) who speaks in a gulpy kind of voice that sounds a bit like the Disney character Goofy:

"Bluebottle: What's the time Eccles?

Eccles: Just a minute, I've got it written down on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote it down for me. If anyone asks me the time, I show it to them.

Bluebottle: Let me see that paper. It is writted here that it is 8 o'clock. Here what happens if they ask you and it's not 8 o'clock.

Eccles: Then I don't show them the piece of paper!

Bluebottle: But how do you know if it's 8 o'clock?

Eccles: I've got it written down
on this piece of paper!

Bluebottle: You should get one of those things my grandpa has. It tells the time, gets you up in the morning, makes you tea.

Eccles: Oh yes, what do you call that?

Bluebottle: My grandma!

Eccles: Here! How does she know what time it is?

Bluebottle: She's got it writted on a piece of paper!"

(This may not strike you as funny when written down, but when Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan do it, believe me it is funny!) From this little excerpt you can see that a lot of the humour comes from language and word play. If you do look at it, the logic kind of makes sense - it really is taking something 'logically to its illogical conclusion'!

Apparently they were also great innovators, and people who the status quo weren't always that pleased with. Although they were on the BBC, the BBC was a little confused and perturbed by this little group of insane men, with some of them thinking, early on, that it was called the 'Go-on show'. (My Dad had to go and escape to his bedroom to listen to it because my grandparents thought it was complete rubbish.) They were even banned Peter Sellers' impersonations of Winston Churchill and sketches including MPs sleeping in the House of Commons.

I hope that this might make some of you who have never heard of the Goons go out and listen to them. They were a group of people who obviously enjoyed their comedy (although Milligan is meant to have suffered depression during the writing of many of the scripts) and who changed the face of British comedy. They had a surreal brand of irreverent humour that has inspired generations of comedians. I think that if there had not been the Goons there would not have been Monty Python, Blackadder (the use of wit and word play), Eddie Izzard, or many other comedy groups or comedians. In fact, I might even go as far as to say that without the Goons, we would not have h
umour as we know it. My personal opinion is that as we remember the Goons, we should not just remember Spike, but that we should also remember the other members of the team who have sometimes been underrated. Thank you Mr Milligan. Thank you Mr Secombe. Thank you Mr Sellers. Thank you Mr Bentine. It's been a laugh!

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