The Great Survivors: Bloodnok, Bluebottle And Henry Crun
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 3, 1998
THE GOONS The Story
By Spike Milligan, Sir Harry Secombe and Eric Sykes (edited by Norma Farnes) Virgin, 192pp, $29.99
ISBN 1 85227 679 7
I WAS 11 when the Goons won me over with a single line of pure, distilled humour. Neddy Seagoon related that there were no oars in his lifeboat, "but luckily we found two outboard motors and we rowed with them".
That line, along with the entire script of The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on-Sea), appears in The Goons. A scholarly compendium for fans, it contains contributions by Spike Milligan, Sir Harry Secombe and Eric Sykes (Milligan's frequent co-writer) as well as hundreds of photographs from their collections.
Long after The Goon Show had ceased recording, I became a maniacal fan, buying books whenever pocket money allowed. Once, when Spike Milligan was in Sydney, my teenage self tracked him down for an autograph. He wrote: "This girl is being returned in good condition." It is the only autograph I have ever collected.
That is the effect the Goons had, and continue to have. Fans are kindred spirits, recognising each other by the near-masonic code of "He's fallen in the water" and "You rotten swine". No-one who has ever loved the Goons is entirely bad. (It is the most likable thing about Prince Charles.)
The Goons have been strangely resistant to time, which ravages nothing faster than humour and fashion. On radio, no-one can see the cut of your trousers - a mercy not extended to the Goons' most obvious heir, Monty Python's Flying Circus. But these days, much '50s comedy is eerily unfunny. Why have the Goons survived?
Perhaps it's because Milligan and his co-writers almost dispensed with plot. The surreal result, brilliant wordplay and the impression the shows give of being improvised (all, of course, were carefully scripted), add up to comedy that is perfectly suited to today.
Some things have dated - and not just the musical interludes by Max Geldray and Ray Ellington. Many of the characters are straight out of World War II: Milligan, Secombe, Peter Sellers and the largely forgotten "fourth Goon", Michael Bentine (who left early and whose contributions later fell victim to BBC spring-cleaning) were in the services. In the 1950s, Bloodnoks and Bluebottles and Henry Cruns walked the streets; today their ranks have thinned.
This book, edited by Norma Farnes, Milligan's manager for more than 30 years, has it all: from the postwar days at the Grafton Arms and Windmill Theatre, through the Goons' BBC pilots (the first rejected, the second mercifully successful), to their decision, a decade later, to quit while they were still ahead. Much of this will be known to fans, but the book has the look of a final testament.
A highlight comes in the final chapter, a brief recollection by the real Bluebottle, one Ruxton Hayward. This high-voiced Boy Scout type was spotted by Bentine and sent along to be "interviewed" heartlessly by Sellers, Milligan and Secombe. Hayward sounds both ridiculous and dignified when he recalls: "I didn't realise that Bluebottle was based on me until Peter Sellers said so on Parkinson Meets the Goons in 1972 . . . It is always the victim who is the last to know . . ."
Milligan says that writing a new script every week for six months a year drove him mad. "I found I was disliking more and more people. Then I got to hating them. Even my wife and baby."
He began to think: "I must do something desperate so they will put me in hospital and cure me. I know what I'll do. I'll kill Peter Sellers."
Now, of course, Sellers and Bentine are dead, Secombe warbles songs of praise to a higher God, and Milligan has found lithium and launches bitter tirades against the BBC for making money from Goon Show recordings while neglecting to broadcast them.
Age has wearied them, but their pure humour defies time. Goon but not forgotten, you might say.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald