The Goon Show

[nuttycyclist]

I just spotted we had a Bluebottle in the member list, and wondered if youtube had anything of The Goons even though they were radio based.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/pd0ONww0rrw&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/pd0ONww0rrw&rel=1</a>


Now the tears of mirth have subsided, I'll watch part 2.



Sheer genius, and I can't believe that the humour has passed the test of time (it must have revised well).   I cannot think that anybody would be hunting out archives of most modern humour shows in over 50 years time.

[Noodley]

not funny.

[microphonie]

I'm not really a fan either: I find it difficult to make out what they're saying half the time 

Anyway, you probably already know this but the radio shows are often repeated on BBC7 along with other 'classic' shows.

[Wowbagger]

I've tried very hard to like the Goons, and some of their stuff is indeed excellent, but I felt that they missed the mark too often.

Monty Python, regarded by many as the Goons' natural successor, was superb in the first two series, and I still struggle to find a rival to its consistent high standard.

[TimO]

I've never been a particular Goons fan, mainly because it was all before my time, and I never got into them.  I do like some of the little odds and sods that I've heard though, like the Ying Tong Song.

I thought that clip was cracking, yes a little indecipherable in places, but that was mostly the asides from Milligan when has wasn't near a microphone.  I think it demonstrates the rather silly humour, and tendency to improvisation.  It's just a shame that none of them are with us any longer.

[Phil]

They're clearly enjoying themselves, but all I got out of it was a couple of fart jokes. 

[Pete]

For me, and probably most people here, they were a bit before our time, both in actual chronology and in the datedness of their off-beat humour.  I was too young for the original radio broadcasts but I remember the cut-down 1960s TV series set to animated puppets, the Telegoons, which I quite enjoyed in my teens.  Having browsed the link, I now realise that they were not the original radio broadcasts dubbed onto puppet shows, but complete new scripts (based on the original episodes) re-recorded by Secombe, Sellers, and Milligan.

One English master I had at school was a great Goons fan (he derided the Telegoons) and was forever punctuating his lessons with snippets from their episodes, citing them as defining moments in the development of English satire.  Which few of his pupils (certainly not I!) were able to follow.  How he still got us through English O-level I'll never know.

Nevertheless they're worth a chuckle now and then...

[nuttycyclist]

For me it's the clever use of language, how a conversation can flick from one meaning to another, the pictures they paint that only work on the radio (e.g. that classic one where they turn up at a house but the occupant can't get in as the door is locked, then everybody going in and out of the house to try the windows ) and generally just how easy listening and funny it all is.

Yes Monty Python was just as good, but I think followers in the trade and also a conversion for TV (where it lost out as you can no longer rely on the listeners imagination) instead of innovators of the humour.

[oldcobblers]

I've often found that the Goon, and Python, humour either hits you between the eyes and you're hooked for life, or it misses you completely and you spend the rest of your life wondering what all the fuss is about.

[Pete]

For me the defining radio-only comedy satire had to be Round The Horne - another one from the sixties which I devoured avidly.  Never got transcribed to TV AFAIK (if it ever did, don't tell me!).  Again dominated by the anticipated catch-phrase, but lovely stuff all the same!  Of course I'll never know what Julian - and Sandy - and Rambling Sid Rumpo - and Professor Chou-En-Ginsberg MA (failed) - and Lotus-Blossom - and all the rest - were really supposed to look like - but I have their images firmly fixed in my mind nonetheless.  For evermore.

[Wowbagger]

"One for the woggler up my splod that ruined my cordwangle!"

[Wowbagger]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dct_VJNLvAk&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Dct_VJNLvAk&rel=1</a> may well have been from the radio series but is sung here for the benefit of M. Parkinson.

[nuttycyclist]

For me the defining radio-only comedy satire had to be Round The Horne ......

Yup, another one that I enjoyed.


Maybe one of these days I'm going to try to work out how to receive Radio7.  Is it only on this new fangled digital thing?

[TimO]

Maybe one of these days I'm going to try to work out how to receive Radio7.  Is it only on this new fangled digital thing?

Depends on which new fangled thing, you can get it on DAB, DVB, and streamed over the net (probably on various satellite systems as well, but I don't have any of those).

[nuttycyclist]

I just have a radio I have had for years, and 5 channels on the telly.

I've not had much luck with streaming radio.