Tina Hammond reported on the meeting in issue 39 of the newsletter in August 1984.
The June 1984 meeting of The Goon Show Society’s London Branch was unique and a wonderful ‘first’ in the history of the Society for two very simple reasons, the first being it our honour, hinour and hunour to hosts to very distinguished guests, viz Messers Bentine and Milligan, and the second being the astonishing sight of seeing Mr. Bray in something other than his now notorious White Suit.
These extraordinary events took place beneath the Duke of Buckingham public house, just off the Strand, in the Tube Room – really a converted sewer, and the very room in which Spike wrote his song ‘Sideways Through the Sewers of the Strand’.
Spike and Shelagh arrived at 8pm, shortly followed by Michael. It had been Michael’s misfortune to meet Bob Braynless at the Derby the previous Wednesday. Luckily, this piece of bad fortune did not deter this good man from making his journey to meet the rest of the mob.
As soon as Spike and Michael met, the atmosphere was electric – I still have the burns to prove it. There was a constant exchange of quips and repartees between the two of them, and Goon-type conversation after Goon-type conversation flowed one after another, practically non-stop, all evening.
Michael’s journey to the pub had not been without incident. At Waterloo Station he had asked a man the way to the Duke of Buckingham – by pure chance, this man was an expert on the Buckingham family, encouraged by the interest Michael had apparently displayed, and, quoted him the entire history relating to the Buckinghams, including the ancestral home, etc. However, when Michael finally got down to the hard stuff, i.e. “Where is the Pub?”, he was met with the familiar answer, “I don’t know, Matey”.
Spike, when asked whether there was any truth in the rumour that he would be making a film during his imminent trip to Tasmania, replied that he wouldn’t know, he always the last person to be told what was on his working itinerary. After a few minutes of inventing all kinds of ridiculous names for the company that would be making this hypothetical film, he was naturally delighted to be informed that the real name of it was the Toy Film Corporation!
Amongst the multitudinous subjects covered during that evening were the Turin Shroud, and the possible outcome if it were carbon-dated; Professor Osric Pureheart and what a super character he was in the old Goon Show/Crazy People days; the war (of course); UFO’s, and, last but not least, the missing Goon, Neddie Seagoon (it being beyond our scope to entice Peter along to a meeting).
Sometime during the evening, we presented Spike and Michael with a copy of our monthly rag, ‘Goonews’, available at all good lunatic asylums, together with one of the now much-famed GSPS ties, also known in certain concentric circles as the Nugent Neck Stranglers.
All Goon (Curses! That should read Good!) things, as the famous historian and ancient Mr. Crun said, must come to an end. And so, at 11.15, after a quick session of autograph signing and a few photographs later, our highly-esteemed guests took their leave (I believe they had deposited it in the safe keeping of the landlord) from the highly-steaming room, with promises – whilst held at pistol point – to return to another crazy evening in the near future.
Needless to say, it was an extremely successful and enjoyable evening, made better for everybody simply because it was unannounced and therefore unexpected (based on the sound theory that what isn’t planned cannot go wrong). One member has since complained that he was laughing so much that the next day his side use aching. The moral, therefore, to be derived from this story is ‘GSPS Meetings are bad for your health’.
What more can I say?
The Goon Show Preservation Society 