On the 28th May 1951 at 6:45 teatime, the very first edition of the Goon Show, then known as Crazy People, was broadcast on the BBC Home Service (except for those in the Midland, North, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and West regions….!)
It had been recorded in the Aeolian Hall the previous evening and featured our usual heroes, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan. Max Geldry and the Ray Ellington Quartet provided music, along with the Stargazers. The announcer was Andrew Timothy, and it was produced by Dennis Main Wilson.
The show had five sketches: Yuckabakaba, The story of the BRM, Dick Barton, The Quest for Tutankhamen and The Festival of Britain.
The Birth of the Goon Show
compiled by Peter Embling and Duncan Gray
This is the cover of the first Radio Times to carry the listing for the brand new show.
The caption underneath the listing of the programme and four portraits of the stars ran as this short introduction:
The series is based upon a crazy type of fun evolved by four of our younger laughter-makers. The members of this entertainingly eccentric quartet are old friends: they met during the wartime perambulations of the ‘Stars in Battle-dress.’ Since then, Secombe and Sellers have joined the successful company who can top-the bill. Ex-Etonian Michael Bentine has won his spurs in the West End and Spike Milligan is making a reputation both as a comedian and writer (it is he who has compiled the ‘Goon Show’ material). Now it remains to be seen what will happen when their differing brands of comedy are fused in one show.
Reviews of the first shows are a bit thin in the ground. A brief mention in the Kensington Post said:
With “Take It From Here” off the air for the summer the comedy outlook was bleak, but “Crazy People” (Home, Mondays, 6.45) started off brilliantly and promises well.
The Sunday Dispatch meantime, was predicting that the Goons would soon be one of the top shows on the air.
The shortage of reviews perhaps reflected that Crazy People was only being broadcast in a limited range of regions. The Aberdeen Evening Express noted that the Scottish Home Service had declined to take the new comedy show which had made listeners sit up and listen. It wasn’t until the second series in 1952 that the show was broadcast all over the country.
Despite that, the Goons were rapidly gaining traction. By the end of June, The Stage was reporting:
Crazy People has been extended for a run of a further six programmes, and from the week following the Sunday recording on July 29 the show will be on Thursday nights at 8 p.m., with an additional repeat on Saturday mornings at 9.30.
This, the Daily Mirror told us, was a coveted spot which would become available when the ‘Rays a Laugh‘ series ended.
Want to read more about this period in Goon Show history, try The Case of the Missing Lug-Holes – a ten part series telling stories from those days.
Back in 2011 we celebrated the 60th Anniversary at the birthplace of the Goon Show, the Grafton Arms. The events were filmed by Ann Perrin (of Telegoons fame). Included was a performance of the script for that first Crazy People show.
You may have caught the mention in the Radio Times snippets above, or at the end of this performance, that Margaret Lindsay had been scheduled to appear but was unable to perform in the original recording. Who was Margaret Lindsay? Here’s what we know.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 