8 September: The Goons

Two of the stars of British Comedy show The Goons were born on this date – Harry Secombe in 1921 and Peter Sellers in 1925. 10 facts about the Goon Show:

1. The show was broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960. There were 238 episodes in all and 12 specials. There were plans for the Goons to appear in TV in 1952 in a pilot show called Trial Gallop. On the day it was due to broadcast, King George VI died, which meant the show was postponed and later cancelled completely.
2. The first series, in 1951 wasn’t called The Goon Show. It was called Crazy People.
3. Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe first met by accident during the second world war. Milligan was with an artillery unit which had a bit of an accident with a large howitzer gun – it rolled off a cliff. As it happened, there was a small wireless truck under the cliff, which Harry Secombe happened to be sitting in. He later recalled "Suddenly there was a terrible noise as some monstrous object fell from the sky quite close to us. There was considerable confusion, and in the middle of it all the flap of the truck was pushed open and a young, helmeted idiot asked 'Anybody see a gun?'” The young idiot was Spike Milligan. Secombe's answer to his question was "What colour was it?" They met the others through writing and performing in variety shows on theatre and radio after the war.
4. They all used to meet up in a pub called Grafton’s on Sunday nights and in due course started recording their joking around sessions. Peter Sellers was doing seasonal work for the BBC at the time and the BBC wanted to get him on a more permanent contract. Hence a producer called Pat Dixon, who’d heard one of their tapes, pushed for the series. The BBC weren’t keen at first but eventually agreed, somewhat reluctantly, as some of the BBC bosses simply didn’t get the humour. The show, however, was a massive hit.
5. The format was usually comedy sketches separated by musical interludes, since the Home Service’s brief was to provide “light entertainment”. These interludes were provided by the Ray Ellington Quartet – who performed a mixture of jazz, rhythm and blues and calypso songs – and by harmonica virtuoso Max Geldray who performed middle of the road numbers and jazz standards of the 30s and 40s accompanied by a big band. The show would finish with either Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead from Wizard of Oz or a German military march called Alte Kameraden (Old Comrades') followed by Max Geldray and the Ray Ellington Quartet playing Crazy Rhythm, a 1920s swing tune.
6. The Goon show has even added to the English language. One episode was called Lurgi Strikes Britain in which Spike Milligan created a fictional disease called lurgi (or lurgy) the symptoms of which included the uncontrollable urge to cry "Eeeeyack-a-boo". The word is used today to describe any miscellaneous or non-specific illness, often the common cold, often with the adjective “dreaded”.
7. The Goons had some hit records, too. Possibly the best known is The Ying Tong Song, which was a chart hit in the 1970s. Other hits were Bloodnok's Rock and Roll Call and the seasonal I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas. In 2003 300 residents of a town in Australia decided to commemorate the song by walking backwards through the town. However, thanks to the old Health and Safety Gone Mad and litigation culture, their parade couldn’t go ahead as planned. The town council were afraid people would fall and injure themselves while walking backwards and then sue. So participants had to walk forwards while wearing their clothes back to front.
8. Famous fans of the show include the Monty Python Team and Eddie Izzard, who say the Goons were a massive influence on them. The Beatles, and in particular John Lennon, Elton John and Prince Charles were also fans. When a bunch of students at Cambridge challenged Prince Philip to a tiddlywinks match in 1958, he appointed the Goons as his champions to play the match on his behalf. There’s even a reference in the animated film, Shrek – when Donkey and Shrek look up at the stars, Shrek points out the constellation 'Bloodnok the Flatulent', a reference to the character Major Bloodnok, whose digestive system was immortalised as a sound effect using complex editing of sounds (such as burps, whoops from oscillators, water splashes, cork-like pops, and light artillery blasts) on tape.
9. Which brings us to another Goon Show running gag, the raspberry. It was originally used as a comic device to avoid silence on radio, but became a signal from Milligan that he was about to crack up laughing. The Ying Tong Song features a solo of Milligan on a raspberry blower, and later Milligan collaborated with Ronnie Barker on The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town. The credits read, "Raspberries professionally blown by Spike Milligan".
10. Peter Sellers died on 24 July 1980, aged 54. Michael Bentine died on 26 November 1996, aged 74. Harry Secombe died on 11 April 2001, aged 79, Spike Milligan died on 27 February 2002, aged 83. When Secombe died, Milligan claimed to be relieved since it meant Secombe couldn’t sing at his funeral. However, a recording of Secombe singing was played at Milligan’s funeral. Milligan wanted to have the words “I told you I was ill" inscribed on his gravestone, but the church wouldn’t allow it at first. A compromise was reached in the end and the words were written there, but in Irish: Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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