can somebody explain to me the appeal of The Goons?

Cafe Society
1

Following on from this thread about Monty Python.

The Goons. The general opinion is that they were the forerunner to Python and revolutionised humour as we know it.
Why are they funny? Why were they ever funny?

I know these things date and the radio shows are over forty years old now, but I really can’t see the humour in them. There seems to be a lot of reliance on silly voices and rotten puns, the kind of thing a five year old loves. Occasionally they manage to be amusing, I’m not arguing they were totally without talent. But were they such giants of comedy that they merit the devotion they still get?

I have never found Spike Milligan amusing. I positively cringed when they wheeled him out on TV programmes through-out the 90s and fell about with obsequious laughter at his every utterance. The man wasn’t funny! It was embarrassing!

Peter Sellers was over-rated. His Pink Panther films were ok, but again he is refered to as a god of comedy.

Harry Secombe? He had one comic character; shouting, pompus bloke who had a habit of bursting into over-inflated song. Not very funny. For a Welshman he also irritatingly kept referring to himself as English.

Michael Bentine I liked in his TV show, with his invisible little people. But then I was a child at the time and he had the sense to get out of the Goons at the first opportunity.

So. Can anyone come up with a convincing defence for this sacred cow of British humour? Or is it about time they got the panning they deserve?

2

Well, since I have to leave for work (but not on an egg) in a few minutes, this will have to be brief…

the Goons were a welcome burst of highly inventive, colourful, loud, imaginitive, anarchic, loud, rude, sometimes drunken and often brilliantly surreal wierdness–mixed, let us not forget, with two popular music interludes (which never do much for me); all this at a time (early 1950s) when such simple staples as meat and sugar were still being rationed in your country–life was grim lad, and not just oop north. The Goons mocked small-minded government authority, army officers, petty regulations, the laws of time and space, in short they offered escape from the day-to-day drudgery of life in postwar Britain.

They caused the BBC censor no end of headaches by dropping the punchines of dirty jokes into the script (with no ‘setup’ "It’s your turn in the barrel!’), or naming characters ‘Captain Hugh Jampton’ (Cockney rhyming slang: huge Hampton=Hampton Wick=Prick). They were hell on wheels. A lot of ‘nice’ people (my mother’s family included) didn’t like them because they were just too ‘loud.’

The BBC had some “crazy” shows before, but Tommy Handley and his ilk really didn’t have the streak of anarchy that the Goons did (although they did have a stable of characters that relied on catchphrases). Besides, there was a war on, and patriotism and keeping the workers happy and on the job took precidence over weirdness!

Everyone’s sense of humour is different: read Milligan’s war memoirs. I read them starting at age 12, (back in 1973) and they still make we laugh out loud. Don’t judge him solely by the rather crotchety old man he became. Only a twisted genius could come up with storylines like climbing a mountain from the inside, or breaking the sound barrier in an airing cupboard, or having a bad guy in one episode called “the Red Bladder.”

Sellers is one of the most gifted mimics (and tragic geniuses) and comic actors ever. Rent Dr. Strangelove and Being There and The Party. (Don’t rent the last one if you’re highly PC and will lie awake at night fretting with guilt over an Jewish English actor portraying an Indian man).

Secombe? OK, Songs of Praise was something of an atrocity, I grant you; but remember that his character on the Goons was supposed to be an over-over-the-top parody of an English idiot (of course he wouldn’t pretend to be anything but English–perhaps he was an undercover Plaid Cymru operative).

Bentine had worked with intelligence during the war, and was a champion pistol shot, apparently.

Got to go to work.

3

Is that it? I’ve insulted a great British institution and no-one cares!

I applaud Rod’s defense, but remain unconvinced. The fact that Milligan, who after all wrote the scripts, continued to be lauded when he was a “crotchety old man” suggests to me it was a case of the “Emperor’s new clothes”. No-one had the guts to stand up and say that these were pearls of genius from comic legend, but unfunny, banal nonsense. If he could get away with it in his twilight, why not when at the height of his career?

Interesting fact: BBC Asian comedy “Goodness Gracious Me” was originally going to be called “Peter Sellers Is Dead”, for obvious reasons.

I never had a problem with Secombe and Songs Of Praise. It never pretending to be anything than what it was; a religious programme. But where did Secombe get off pretending to be a comic actor?

4

I’ve tried listening to a few Goon shows. At first I just couldn’t understand what they were saying about half the time, and what I could understand didn’t seem that funny. I’ll persist through a few more shows just to give them a chance.

OTOH, I think some individual pieces with the Goon members are hilariously funny, such as “The Ying Tong Song”. One of my two all-time favorite Christmas comedy bits is Milligan’s “Good King Eccleslas” (the other is Stan Freberg’s “Green Chri$tma$”).

5

Yep. Here in Australia it still runs twice a week on national radio. Any attempt to remove them is met with revolution.

Sure there are lots of silly voices and schoolboy humour (which was itself revolutionary on radio in the 50s). But there is far far more. Some of the shows are beautifully constructed plays in their own right. 1985. a spoof of 1984, is a work of genius. Napoleon’s Piano, The Flea (drawn from Samuel Pepys’ Diaries), the Great British Revolution (quite daring in portraying a worker’s revolution during the height of cold war paranoia), I could go on for hours.

6

I have hours and hours of The Goon Show. I think it holds up fantastically.

Racy, literate, manic, stream-of-consciousness lunacy.

My favourite episode is probably Confessions Of A Secret Senna-Pod Drinker. Vintage laxative-addict gags. What’s not to like?

7

Did I mention they were loud?

8

The Goons pioneered the extensive use of innovative sound effects, full-length shows with proper storylines (rather than sketches), surrealism, non sequitur, parodies of serious works, topical satire, and the daring to use just plain silliness - which is one thing MP took up on too.

They also managed to slip in quite a few scurrilous references which the BBC didn’t pick up (or didn’t mind).

9

Obviously I meant “not pearls of genius from comic legend” :smack:

10

Context. Nothing like them had ever been heard before.

Once you get that, and you get to know the performers and the characters, you will laugh too.

11

They’re funny because they make me laugh.

If they don’t make you laugh, then they’re not funny.

Personally, I don’t understand why Martin lawrence has a career, but whaddaya know, some people find crass idiots with no acting talent entertaining.

12

As Jjimm says, it’s a matter of context. Listen to Round the Horne (available on tape/CD, I believe). Kenneth Williams et al. If you find that funny, use your imagination and work back to the 50s. In both cases, it was daring at the time. Authority figures hated it.

If you’re a teenager, it’s harder than if you’re in your 40s. But even Chaucer (ca 1400) is funny when you know why it’s funny.