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This year’s GSPS annual meeting will take place on Saturday 30th September in the same location as last year, folks. That’s Stephen’s House and Garden in Finchley, North London, where the Spike Milligan Memorial Bench sits just outside in the park.

One order of business will be holding the Annual General Meeting and, with our chairman determined that this will be the end of his stint, it may be significant. Besides that, if the plan works, we’ll be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Telegoons with the original puppeteer, Ann Perrin, while the Associated London Scripts comedy writer Brad Ashton will be another guest to entertain us.

Saturday 30th September 2023, 11:00am to 5:00pm
in the Stephens Room at Stephens House and Gardens,
Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley, London N3 3QE

Lunch is available to buy at Inky’s Stables Café on the premises.

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Car parking is limited. There is on-road available, but please note:
The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) has grown since last year. As we understand it, it will cover the area within Harrow to Enfield to Havering to Bromley to Kingston-upon-Thames to Hillingdon and back to Harrow again.
Please be aware! You can pre-register with no fee now and if you enter within they will only then charge you. Your car may be exempt from charges.

It’s still only August, but the September issue of our newsletter is on its way to members already. That’s a clue to there being advance news of a member’s meeting in September.

The big feature is a celebration of the Telegoons 60th anniversary, and there’s much more.

If you’re not a member, why not join today? It’s not too late to get your copy of this magazine along with all the other benefits – membership details here.

The Colin Murray show on BBC Radio 5 Live on 7^th August dedicated its third hour to a celebration of the life and work of Spike Milligan (so actually it’s from midnight going into the 8^th). The guests were Jane Milligan, GSPS Secretary Richard Usher, poet Henry Normal and war historian Professor Lucy Noakes.

You can listen to it here through the BBC Sounds website (jump to the third hour of the programme.) It’ll be available for the next 30 days or so.

16th July marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Larry Stephens, who, on his own or co-writing with Spike Milligan or others, contributed to the scripts of no less than 131 episodes of the Goon Show.

Larry was part of the Goons from the very beginning, brought in to complement Spike’s work as the scriptwriting task would have been too much for one writer. His first period on the show lasted until series 4. If he hadn’t been there, the Goon Show might not even have survived beyond those periods when illness prevented Spike from writing. Larry returned to the Goon Show towards the end of the 6th series and was there through the 7^th and 8^th. His last script was for The Seagoon Memoirs from series 9, co-written with Maurice Wiltshire. It was just a few weeks after that when, after attending a Goon Show recording, Larry died suddenly. It was 26^th January 1959 and he was only 35 years old.

Larry’s loss was a huge tragedy, he packed so much into his 35 years. During WWII he’d undergone the gruelling commando training course (where do you think the phrase “It’s all in the mind” comes from?) and fought in SE Asia. He was an accomplished jazz pianist, a cartoonist, and after the war his scriptwriting talents developed, not least when writing material for his close friend and flatmate Tony Hancock. He wrote for many shows throughout the 1950s and was working on the popular TV sitcom The Army Game when he passed away.

If Larry had survived and worked on, he would surely now be remembered as one of the great British comedy scriptwriters. To help keep his memory alive, his relative Julie Warren researched and wrote a biography – It’s All In The Mind: The Life and Legacy of Larry Stephens. It’s a fascinating read and a must for anyone interested in 1950s entertainment or even WWII history. Copies are becoming hard to get, but Julie has a few paperbacks still available. You can buy one through eBay.
eBay link

GSPS members might also like to search through their collection of newsletters, or their Encyclopaedia Goonicus, for issue no 105 from 2002, which was a Larry Stephens special.

And a bit of extra news. Birmingham Comedy Festival will be celebrating Larry’s anniversary by staging two of the shows he wrote. More info here.

_{From a press release:}
The Goon Show will be making a triumphant return to the stage at this October’s Birmingham Comedy Festival.

The one-off performance sees the festival marking the centenary of the birth of Goon Show writer Larry Stephens – who was born in nearby West Bromwich and raised in Quinton, on the outskirts of the city.

Two 1958 scripts written by Stephens and Maurice Wiltshire will be recreated – The Seagoon Memoirs and The Moriarty Murder Mystery. The night will also include a Q&A section featuring Stephens’ biographer, Julie Warren. She will delve into the life of the scriptwriter who famously wrote for flatmate Tony Hancock. He also collaborated with fellow Goon scribes Milligan, Eric Sykes and Jimmy Grafton on other high profile radio projects.

The event is set for Sunday 8 October 2023 at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Tickets are on sale now – click here.

Birmingham Comedy Festival were the first company to produce an officially sanctioned stage production of The Goon Show, performing a sell-out run of The Canal and The Phantom Head Shaver (of Brighton) in 2014. They returned in 2017 with The House Of Teeth and The Jet Propelled Guided NAAFI. The 2017 shows were described as “absolutely, utterly, 100% unmissable!” by The GSPS’s Chair, John Repsch.
“Shut your eyes for a moment and you are suddenly at home listening to it on your Bakelite wireless set.” he continued. “Open your eyes again and you are catching what listeners missed.”

The cast for the 2023 performance include Richard Usher (Sellers), Mark Earby (Milligan) and Jimm Rennie (Seagoon) – who were all involved in previous productions – plus musician Jim Wynn.

Producer/Director Dave Freak, from Birmingham Comedy Festival, said: “We had initially planned to do this, back in 2020, around the publication of Julie’s book – It’s All In The Mind: The Life And Legacy Of Larry Stephens. But the lurgi got in the way. So we tried again in 2021 for The Goons’ 70th anniversary (and the festival’s 20th). And again, that damn lurgi got in the way. But with this year marking Larry’s 100th birthday, and with us all now being inoculated against both The Spon and The Nadger plagues, the opportunity represented itself, so we decided, why not?

“Larry’s role in the development of British comedy deserves to be better known.”

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Birmingham Comedy Festival presents: The Goon Show is at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on Sunday 8 October 2023, at 7pm. For tickets and more information, see:
bmusic.co.uk
bhamcomfest.co.uk

We often remember the significant anniversaries of the talented people who contributed to the making of the Goon Show. Today it’s a pleasure to acknowledge one man who’s still with us and can celebrate his birthday.

Happy birthday to John Antrobus, 90 years old today (born 2nd July 1933, and living well in Chelsea, sometimes in Nice but, seemingly, always working).

As a scriptwriter, John collaborated in 1957 with Spike on two Series 8 Goon Shows, The Spon Plague and The Great Statue Debate. Later on, he and Spike co-wrote the stage play The Bed Sitting Room and the radio programme The Dinosaur. He wrote, and performed in (along with Spike) the series The Milligan Papers.

John Antrobus was interviewed by the GSPS in 2007. Read the article here. Also, check out his book Goon But Not Forgotten.

The most recent GSPS newsletter has an article describing what John has been up to in recent years.

The Goon Show Preservation Society is delighted to wish our monarch King Charles III our warmest congratulations both on his accession to the throne and upon the occasion of his Coronation.

We are proud that as Prince Charles he has been the society’s patron for many years. He remains a strong supporter of The Goon Show and was a personal friend to Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine.

We delight in taking this opportunity of wishing His Majesty the King a long, happy and successful reign.

May 4th 2023 is the centenary of that fine Oldham born comedian, actor and scriptwriter Eric Sykes.

Eric shared offices with Spike for many years and they shared the scriptwriting duties during series 5 of the Goon Show. He and his wide array of talents will always be fondly remembered.

He granted us this interview in 2006, and there’s more about his involvement with the Goons in this article.

A blue plaque honouring a man with Goons connections has been unveiled. It’s on the former Marylebone home of Marcel Stellman, who passed away in 2021.

Among the many, many credits in his long career as a record executive, writer and producer are Goon songs such as I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas and the Ying Tong Song.

Marcel gave an interview to the GSPS in 2007 in which he recalled those recording sessions. You can read it here.

We hear that one of the iconic buildings in the history of the Goon Show, and much more British comedy besides, has changed hands.

In 1959 the scriptwriters co-operative known as Associated London Scripts moved into 9 Orme Court, in London’s leafy Bayswater district. It was its third home. ALS had developed from an initial sharing of an office by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, above a greengrocers shop at 130 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, where they wrote series 5 of the Goon Show in 1954. It went on to include writers such as Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Johnny Speight, John Antrobus, Terry Nation, and many others. And let’s not forget the staff, which included Norma Farnes and Beryl Vertue.

The news was broken on Twitter by Jane Milligan:

Farewell 9, Orme Court, offices of Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, Associated London Scripts, and many special wonderful folk, since 1959. Got Dads plaque from his door before it all belongs to the 🇽🇰 Kosovo Embassy from 5.00pm tomorrow. #smpl #endofanera #comedygold #goonshow pic.twitter.com/n7ujUgWFJw

— Jane Milligan🦸‍♀️ (@goonchild4) March 30, 2023

As Jane says, from 31^st March the building is entering the process of becoming the embassy of the Republic of Moldova. Hopefully the blue plaques which adorn the building, one for Spike, one for Eric, will remain for time immemorial, and the new owners will enjoy the echoes of laughter which must surely still pervade those offices.