I’m out - can’t think of anyone.
Taking a chance…
IQ:
DId you found the National Theatre of Ireland?
Nope, take another DQ.
I feel obliged to point out this late in the game that though he was Irish, our mystery guest did most of his best-known acting and writing for the BBC.
I actually went and checked whether any of the Pythons names begin with an S 
Nope, no such luck. I’m so looking forward to see who this guy turns out to be.
I was hoping somebody got this over the weekend–I’m completely stumped.
Last call. Anyone? I’ll give it until 12:00 Noon EST (It’s 8:27am now).
That was Seamus Barnes IIRC.
Still stumped. I give up.
No research! Just what’s between your ears.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, elephants and raccoons of all ages, it is with great pride and no little embarrassment that I have the honor to present for your illumination, edification and preternatural enjoyment the man who reached the top of Mt. Everest from the inside, the pride of Woy Woy, the pathogen of the dreaded lurgi, that fearless clinically insane maniac:
Spike Milligan!
Now, for those of you who aren’t dismantling your knees because you couldn’t remember this man, who upon receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1994 British Comedy Awards, called Prince Charles a “little grovelling bastard” (for which said Prince bestowed an honorary knighthood on him):
Spike Milligan was the author/creator and one of the actors in the Highly Esteemed Goon Show, playing the roles of Minnie Bannister, Count Jim Moriarty, Throat and the Famous Eccles (Hello, dere!), among others.
The other main goons on this extremely popular BBC radio series were the star of British stage Harry Secombe and that guy-who-went-to-America-and-made-it-in-the-movies Peter Sellers.
The Goon Show, according to Mr. John Cleese, Mr. Terry Jones, Mr. Michael Palin and Mr. Eric Idle, is the reason we had Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Mr. Graham Chapman could not be reached for comment, as he is currently dead.
He also did some TV, some children’s books, and other series of books, but it is for the Goons that he is remembered best.
But don’t take my word for it:
#5
11-18-2012, 09:12 AM
C K Dexter Haven
Right Hand of the Master
Administrator Join Date: Feb 1999
Location: Chicago north suburb
Posts: 14,792
Quote:
Originally Posted by madmonk28
That scene is in the version with Michael York and Raquel Welch.
Correct. 1973-ish, I think. With M. Bonacieux played by Spike Mulligan (famous British weirdo comedian who starred with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe in The Goon Show, a precurser to Monty Python.) It’s a great version, IMHO, directed by Richard Lester (of HELP! and HARD DAYS NIGHT fame), with an amazing cast (Charleton Heston as Richelieu, for starters).
There’s a second part (THE FOUR MUSKETEERS) that completes the novel.
Last edited by C K Dexter Haven; 11-18-2012 at 09:13 AM. Reason: Fixed typo
#17
11-27-2012, 07:15 PM
Biffy the Elephant Shrew
Charter Member Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Over on the left
Posts: 10,899
Quote:
Originally Posted by C K Dexter Haven
M. Bonacieux played by Spike Mulligan (famous British weirdo comedian
Nitpick: Milligan.
BrokenBriton
Guest Join Date: Sep 2012
Not to forget, they stood on the shoulders of giants like Spike Milligan and Peter Cook. Both were over 12’ tall.
Quote:
one interview with the Pythons in which John Cleese said: “Shows prepare the way for other shows, and sometimes shows that make genuine breakthroughs are missed. Spike Milligan’s Q5 was missed…when we first saw Q5 we were very depressed because we thought it was what we wanted to do and Milligan was doing it brilliantly. But nobody really noticed Q5”. Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam concurred. Jones noted that “watching Q5, we almost felt as if our guns had been Spiked! We had been writing quickies or sketches for some three years and they always had a beginning, a middle and a tag line. Suddenly, watching Spike Milligan, we realized that they didn’t have to be like that”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(TV...nner_in_comedy
#10
08-31-2012, 12:59 AM
commasense
Charter Member Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Posts: 5,006
I’ve never heard of the game, but I’m reasonably sure that the name derives not from Conan Doyle, but from the Goon Show, a 1950s radio comedy show on the BBC that starred Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Spike Milligan. Among the regular cast of oddball characters was Count Jim Moriarty, played by Milligan, who was a sidekick to the show’s perennial villain, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne.
The Goon Show virtually invented surreal comedy, and was a direct influence on the founders of Monty Python, the Firesign Theatre, and countless other comedians and humorists. As such, it seems an apt inspiration for such an absurd and pointless game.
As a final, I think clinching, bit of evidence, I give you this CD collection, named, as many of the sets were, after a common catch phrase from the show: Moriarty, Where Are You? It does not seem a great stretch to me to imagine that someone invented this Goonish game and named it after a misremembered catch phrase.
#35
12-11-2011, 10:45 PM
PlainJain
Guest Join Date: Apr 2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink
It doesn’t directly answer your question, but are you aware of the research into the “World’s funniest joke”?
From your link:
Quote:
The winning joke, which was later found to be based on a 1950 Goon show sketch by Spike Milligan, was submitted by Gurpal Gosal of Manchester:
"Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services… "
I note your disclaimer but any joke requiring a cell phone probably won’t meet the OP’s criteria.
#32
05-08-2011, 03:14 AM
jjimm
Guest Join Date: Jul 2001
Neither German or Russian, nor a novel but: if you’re prepared to read something that isn’t any of these three, I would recommend in the strongest possible way to anyone who has any interest in the actual daily experience of a soldier in WWII, rather than the geopolitical bits or the blood and guts and derring do, the Spike Milligan War Diaries.
Spike Milligan was a bipolar genius of humor and a jazz trumpeter, who had a long and successful career after the War (he had a very strong influence on Monty Python); these diaries are his humorous yet moving account of his experiences. This is the only thing I’ve ever read that comes anywhere close to letting me understand what it was actually like to be a soldier. Not just the fighting, but the long periods of boredom and fear, how the conscripts filled that emptiness with their own music, comedy shows, pranks and fart jokes; the bad food, horrible NCOs, the unbridled lust, and occasional liaisons with the opposite sex; then the short and terrifying bursts of fighting.
Scabrous and pulling no punches in their raw honesty, these books are hilarious and ultimately incredibly moving, charting Milligan’s military career from trying to avoid the draft, to training, to North Africa, then Italy, his wounding in the battle for Montecassino, then internment in a military hospital with mental illness. There are six books in all but each is fairly slim. I’ve read them all two or three times - they’re unfailingly entertaining.
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
“Rommel?” “Gunner Who?”
Monty: His Part in My Victory
Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall
Where Have all the Bullets Gone?
Goodbye Soldier
There’s a seventh book in the series, written about his post war life, that I didn’t even know about but am ordering from Amazon now: Peace Work.
#1
03-17-2006, 08:46 AM
NoClueBoy
Guest Join Date: Oct 2002
Everyone forgets The Goon Show
A statement in another thread about some “pre Python” humour reminds me that manny peoples are missing out on enjoying some of the best irreverant, surreal, and plain silly British humour ever broadcast.
The Goon Show
The Goon Show was a BBC Radio program with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan, and Wallace Greenslade that lead the way for such TV shows as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Benny Hill Show. Filled with surreal, zany, and irreverant humour, it was often quite cerebral. If a skit from the Python boys or Benny was memorable, it’s likely that it was a rework or an expansion of an original Goony skit.
So… any time someone looks at an old British work, and marvels at how “Pythonesque” it was, remember that there was already a precedent for such odd moments of humour, since the Goons went on the air in 1951.
Our next letter shall be:
J
Man, and it was someone I didn’t have to google to find out what he was famous for (although I did have to google to find out about his Irish citizenship from 1981 to death).
IQ1: Do you commonly ask whether someone is a threat or a menace?
IQ2: Do you have an SI unit named after you?
IQ3: Are you the inspiration for the phrase “drinking the kool-aid”?
Needle nardle noo.
I’m not Joule. I’m not Jim Jones. Take a DQ for #1.
1: J. Jonah Jameson liked to run the headline “Spiderman: Threat or Menace?”
2: As you said, James Prescott Joule
3: As you said, Jim Jones.
DQ: Are you a fictional character?
And I thought of Jameson, but I always remember him saying Spidey’s a menace, and forgot about the headline.
DQs:
- Real
IQ1: Do you love Rock and Roll? Should I put another dime in the jukebox for you?
IQ2: Do your friends all drive Porsches, must you make amends?
IQ3: Should I use your title instead of your first name if I’m nasty?
I’m not Joan Jett. I’m not Janis Joplin. I’m not Janet Jackson.
IQ1: Were you the head of the GE microwave and television programming division?
IQ2: Do most people picture you in a pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat?
IQ3: Did you become famous among the sci-fi set for playing an omnisexual 51st-century former time agent?
3 out of 3
nm
I’m not Mrs. Kennedy. I’m not Mr. Barrowman. Take a DQ for #1.
Jack Donaghy, as played by Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock.
DQ: Male?