The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from May to September 1951, was titled Crazy People; subsequent series had the title The Goon Show.
The show’s chief creator and main writer was Spike Milligan, who performed the series alongside Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and (for the first two series) Michael Bentine. The scripts mixed ludicrous plots with surreal humour, puns, catchphrases and an array of bizarre sound effects. There were also light music interludes. Some of the later episodes feature electronic effects devised by the fledgling BBC Radiophonic Workshop, many of which were reused by other shows for decades. Many elements of the show satirised contemporary life in 1950s Britain, parodying aspects of show business, commerce, industry, art, politics, diplomacy, the police, the military, education, class structure, literature and film.
Throughout its history, each episode of The Goon Show, which usually ran just under 30 minutes, was essentially structured as a comedy-variety programme, consisting of scripted comedy segments alternating with musical interludes. In keeping with the variety requirements of the BBC’s “light entertainment” format, The Goon Show scripts were structured in three acts, separated by two musical interludes. These were provided by the Ray Ellington Quartet – who performed a mixture of jazz, rhythm & blues and calypso songs – and by harmonica virtuoso Max Geldray who performed mostly middle of the road numbers and jazz standards of the 30s and 40s accompanied by the big band. Both Ellington and Geldray also made occasional cameo appearances.
From Series 3, The Goon Show (as it was now officially titled) gradually settled into its ‘classic’ format. Milligan, Stephens and Grafton began to work within a narrative structure and by the second half of Series 4 each episode typically consisted of three acts linked by a continuing plot, with Geldray performing between Acts I and II and Ellington between Acts II and III. Almost all the principal and occasional characters were now performed by Milligan and Sellers, with Secombe usually playing only Neddie Seagoon, who had replaced Pureheart as the hero of most of the stories.
Several of the Goons’ nonsense songs were recorded in the late 1950s such as the “Ying Tong Song”, number 3 in the UK Singles Chart in 1956. The radio show had high audience ratings in Britain at its peak; tickets for the recording sessions at the BBC’s Camden Theatre in London were constantly over-subscribed and the various character voices and catchphrases from the show quickly became part of the vernacular. The series has remained consistently popular ever since, with the show being broadcast weekly by Australia’s ABC network as late as 2012. The show is also broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
