Climbing Mount Everest from the inside. Tracking down the Phantom Head Shaver of Brighton. Stealing the piano Napoleon played at Waterloo from the Louvre. From 1951 to 1960 British audiences heard stories like these every week on their radios. The source was a surreally silly radio program known through most of its run as The Goon Show. The creation of a quartet of comedic geniuses–Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers–the series offered a repertoire of oddball characters in freewheeling misadventures that defied logic. Over its decade-long run, The Goon Show not only broke the boundaries of comedy but inspired legions of fans, from rock legends and movie notables to a future king.
The origins of the Goons can be traced back to World War II, when Milligan and Secombe were serving in the Royal Army in northern Africa. One day Spike’s regiment failed to secure an artillery gun before firing. The massive weapon went backwards down a hill, barely missing a tent with Harry inside. When Milligan came down and sheepishly inquired “Excuse me…did a gun just come through here?,” Secombe replied “What color was it?” Each man knew they had found a kindred spirit.
After the war Secombe became a singer/comedian at London’s Windmill Theatre revue, performing with fellow funnyman Bentine. The pair were introduced to radio actor Sellers by Secombe’s agent, and were joined by Milligan in 1948. The foursome began collaborating on stage routines and radio scripts while holding court in the Grafton Arms Pub in London’s Victoria neighborhood. It was there that they dubbed themselves The Goons, after Popeye’s hulking, big-nosed foes in the Thimble Theatre comic strip. A test recording for the BBC led to a contract for a radio series, which debuted on May 28, 1951, as Crazy People. Unhappy with the title, the stars got the network to change it to The Goon Show starting in Season Two. The second season would also prove to be the last for Bentine, who left to do solo work (and, allegedly, over creative rivalries with chief scriptwriter Milligan).
With the roster of Milligan, Secombe, and Sellers in place, The Goon Show settled into its familiar format. Each episode featured the trio playing various recurring roles. Spike was French felon Moriarty, elderly spinster Minnie Bannister, and the dimwitted Eccles, who spoke like Goofy. Harry was bumbling hero Neddie Seagoon, always ready to ask “Whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat?” And Peter was suave con man Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, military cad and coward Major Dennis Bloodnok, and Minnie’s equally decrepit suitor Henry Crun. His most beloved character was squeaky-voiced “East Finchley” lad Bluebottle, known for announcing his entrances and pausing for the inevitable audience applause.
Every week found Seagoon and company in one farcical situation after another. A seaside community is attacked by someone throwing freshly baked batter puddings. The prime minister’s 10 Downing Street residence is stolen. Gas meter reader Neddie must collect a four-pound debt from a South American dictator. These plots were the jumping-off points for multi-layered jokes and bizarre humor that played upon listeners’ imaginations as only the medium of radio could. The simple act of Bluebottle asking Eccles the time became an elaborate routine of Eccles explaining how he has the time written down on a piece of paper. Running gags often mocked the BBC and the British government. And fans from John Lennon to John Cleese to then-Prince Charles could recite such nonsensical catchphrases as “Needle nardle noo!,” “Shut up, Eccles!,” and “He’s fallen in the water!” The Goons even had a hit record, “The Ying Tong Song.”
For all the laughs, there was tremendous tension behind the microphone. Both Milligan and Sellers suffered nervous breakdowns during the show’s run. During one such episode, Spike injured himself walking through a plate glass door while trying to break into Peter’s house. The trio’s shared wartime trauma and admiration for one another helped get them through such crises. There were various attempts to bring the hi-jinks to TV, including a 1960s puppet series, The Telegoons. And the fellas made a few motion pictures together, starting with 1951’s Penny Points to Paradise and 1952’s Down Among the Z-Men (the latter with Bentine).
It was Peter Sellers, though, who would become the breakout film star, courtesy of the 1955 Ealing Studios comedy The Ladykillers. His Hollywood feature debut came in George Pal’s Tom Thumb in 1958, and six years later he won international fame as Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards’ The Pink Panther. Spike Milligan would be a regular face in British movies and TV. He also co-wrote and appeared in Richard Lester’s apocalyptic farce The Bed Sitting Room (1969); played his father in the autobiographical WWII romp Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1974); and had cameos in Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I. And Harry Secombe is perhaps best known as Mr. Bumble in the 1968 Oscar-winning musical Oliver!
In 1972 Milligan, Secombe, and Sellers reunited for a BBC 50th anniversary broadcast. Dubbed The Last Goon Show of All, the benefit’s audience included Prince Phillip and Princess Anne. An envious Prince Charles, serving on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean, sent a telegram confessing “my hair fell out and my knees dropped off” upon hearing his father and sister got to attend.
75 years after the first Crazy People episode, The Goons are fondly remembered for their convention-shattering approach to comedy. John Lennon once wrote, “I was 12 when The Goon Show first hit me, 16 when they were finished with me. Their humour (sic) was the only proof that the world was insane.” “It ignited some energy in us,” John Cleese said about the show’s influence on Monty Python. “The point is that once somebody has crossed a barrier and done something that has never been done before, it is terribly easy for everybody else to cross it.”
More importantly, when a mid-1970s Delaware high school student heard reruns on public radio, it was a Road to Damascus moment. Some friends and I started listening and repeating the lines around school so much we were nicknamed The Goons. A badge of honor, to be sure…or, in other words, “Ying Tong Iddle I Po.”