Goon Pod Goon Pod

"... Must admit he was very funny. I laughed. I laughed a great deal. Thought I was going to cry. I did."



A Visit to Swansea was the fourth episode of the second
series of Hancock’s Half Hour and was originally broadcast on 10th May 1955, two days before Tony Hancock’s 31st birthday.



It was long considered one of the missing Hancocks until it was discovered last year by Richard Harrison of the Radio Circle and came from the same collection of recordings as The Marriage Bureau – the only episode of HHH to feature Peter Sellers and one we covered on Goon Pod previously with the guys from the Very Nearly An Armful podcast.



It’s intriguing as this is another formerly missing show to feature a Goon – in this case Harry Secombe in a cameo, and it followed on from the three previous episodes of HHH in which Secombe stood in for Hancock who had undergone some sort of breakdown and gone off to
Italy.



Naturally it warranted an evaluation on Goon Pod and who better to talk all things Hancock than friend of the show Scott Phipps, host of such shows as Reel Britannia and the Talking Pictures podcast.

"Being the account of the hole, the wonderful way it was filled, and with what. Written for the wireless by Spike Milligan."



On the 12th August 1957 a Daily Mirror reporter encountered Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan larking about around Cleopatra's Needle on London's Embankment:



""This is 1887!" yelled Spike Milligan, standing on the base in a pair of rust corduroy trousers, green shoes, a tail coat - and a topee.

""We've just brought this back from Africa, a well-known place."

"Alongside him were Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers in tail coats and toppers. Harry screeched (and ducked): "Look out - pigeon!" then started to sing a song about "Lord Palmerston I love you..."

"Having all convinced themselves that they had just brought the needle back across the seas, Harry announced: "I now declare this needle well and truly threaded!"

"Then they sang: "There'll always be an England" and gave three hearty cheers for the Empire."



Some three years after the interesting experimental edition of the Goon Show called The Starlings which was performed more as a radio play without an audience, in August 1957 the Goons reconvened ahead of the 8th series to record The Reason Why in a similar fashion. It purported to tell the story behind the transportation of Cleopatra's Needle from Alexandria to London but through a typically Goonish filter.



Produced by Jacques Brown and also featuring Goon Show rep company player Valentine Dyall, The Reason Why was not quite as successful in its execution as The Starlings, but still a fascinating curio and this week Phil Shoobridge joins Tyler to talk about it.

In 1972 a film was released which is generally regarded as
one of Peter Sellers' weakest films - Where Does It Hurt - and joining Tyler to kick it around for an hour or so are Jeremy Limb & Paul Litchfield.



Sellers plays administrator Albert T. Hopfnagel at Vista Vue Hospital, described by Sellers' biographer Roger Lewis as being like “every over-the-top insurance salesman and fraudulent television evangelist you pray you’ll never meet…. He’s a streak of brown lightning… he appears happy and comprehensively spurious as a minor Richard III, bribing and threatening.”



From the outset the film adopts a cynical framing of the US medical system.



When laid-off construction worker Lester Hammond arrives at Vista Vue seeking a routine check-up he gets more than he bargained for – Hopfnagel runs the hospital like a racketeer, where the age-old medical maxim
“First do no harm” has been downgraded to “First bleed them for every dime they’ve got”.



As well as comprehensively trashing the film the chaps turn to other matters of import, such as My Mother The Car, Derren Nesbitt, Doctor Who, the Carry On films and Dick Emery.



10-4!

The British sitcom film of the seventies - doesn't the very mention of the genre make your heart sing?



Sure, there were some stinkers, but this week we're talking about one which we consider to be a fairly successful adaptation: Man About The House from 1974.



Why is this being covered on Goon Pod? Two reasons. Firstly, Spike Milligan is in it, playing himself. Secondly, it's Tyler's podcast and he likes MATH, so there.



Joining him to talk about the film and wander down countless conversational backstreets are three chums: Gary Rodger & Tilt Araiza from The Sitcom Club and Jaffa Cakes For Proust podcasts and Andrew Hickey from A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs.



Among other things they consider John Inman's career down under, speculate as to what exactly happened on George & Mildred's honeymoon and ponder the possibility of Harry Nilsson recording the theme tune to Porridge!

“Something’s been worrying me. You’re a French
police officer and yet you’ve got a Scottish accent.”

-“Aye. It worries me too.”



Before Daniel Craig was even a twinkle in his father's eye (give it a couple of months) there was the 1967 original big screen version of Casino Royale, a far-from-subtle James Bond spoof based extremely loosely on Ian Fleming's first novel, which would go on to become the bedrock for all subsequent Austin Powers movies!



How to best describe Casino Royale? Baffling, bloated, self-indulgent, messy - yes, all these apply. However, it's a fascinating celluloid confection and there are plenty of interesting aspects to the film, plus a handful of chuckles along the way.



Famously suffering from temperamental stars (step forward Mr Sellers) and multiple directors, and shot through with the psychedelic sentiment of the time, Casino Royale is worth watching for the cast alone: along with the aforementioned Peter Sellers we have Orson Welles, David Niven, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, Ursula Andress, John Huston, Bernard Cribbens, Ronnie Corbett, Anna Quayle, John Bluthal, John Wells, Geoffrey Bayldon, Peter O'Toole and even Derek Nimmo!



This week Tyler is joined by Martin Holmes, the host of Vision On Sound - https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/visiononsound - to try and make sense of it all!

In 1954 Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, along with Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and Frankie Howerd, formed Associated London Scripts, envisaged as a comedy scriptwriters' cooperative, situated above a greengrocers in Shepherd's Bush.



Soon it would swell in number, with the likes of Johnny Speight, John Antrobus, Terry Nation, Brad Ashton and Dick Vosburgh coming on board, with the mighty Beryl Vertue acting as sort of de facto agent for them all.



Between them they were responsible for much of the comedy coming out of Britain in the late fifties and sixties, including The Goon Show, Hancock's Half Hour, The Army Game, Till Death Us Do Part, Steptoe & Son, Sykes And A..., The Arthur Haynes Show and many more, while Terry Nation wrote for Tony Hancock and then came up with the idea for some pepperpot-shaped Timelord-botherers and never looked back.



The story of ALS is too big a topic to condense down to ninety minutes, but Tyler and guest Mike Haskins try their best - Mike was involved in a Radio 4 documentary about ALS some twenty years ago and had access to the likes of Antrobus and Galton & Simpson and has some fascinating tales to share!