Transcript from the GSPS meeting in May 1996, known as An Evening Called Fred.
In part 2 – John Browell recalls the difficulties of producing The Last Goon Show Of All.
John P Hamilton: It wasn’t just a straight jolly reunion, who’s idea was it?
John Browell : Oh the Beeb’s. You would have thought that if the BBC was coming round to its 50th anniversary, and they pick the Goons as their major comedy show to celebrate that, you’d think that everybody would be rather pleased about that. Sellers was, he was absolutely delighted, and he had to organise a visit to the country, because he had to keep out of the country for tax reasons. I got Max Geldray, who was in a Seventh Day Adventist church in Canada, Dick Katz was brought out of where ever. Harry was delighted, he wanted to do it. Harry was a great support to me. I’ll never have a word said against Harry, marvellous fellow.
However, Spike was less that delighted really, or said he was. You all know the story, we’d got the Royals coming, Phillip, Margaret, Anne. Charles was at sea. Viscount Snowdon was there taking photographs all the afternoon. He got one of me spraying under my arm!
About a fortnight before the show I rang Spike and asked him “How’s the script going?”. He said “It isn’t. I haven’t a clue what I’m going to write, don’t bother me”. So I left it for another week and there’s the usual bit, I’d get the script on a Monday. I got the script on the Monday and I read it, and it was totally impossible. I went to Con Mahoney, who was Head of Variety, and I said “read this, I’m not going away until you’ve read it”. And he agreed. Then we took it over to Radio 2, Douglas Muggeridge (he was Malcolm’s nephew). We decided that the script was not acceptable, so I rang Spike and I said “it’s not acceptable, want another one please”. He said “That’s the script. You don’t change a word of it or else I don’t appear”. This was ultimatum time!
I can be very devious at times, so I rang Harry and I rang Peter and I said “I want to show you the script and see what you think about it”. Which I arranged to do, and they read it, and they were horrified. The main reason, of course, was that Secombe was down to play the Queen, not to imitate the Queen but to play the part of the Queen. Now if you remember, back in those days, this is before Spitting Image and Charles and Di, and things like that, we did not take the mickey out of royalty, nor out of senior government figures, nor out of vicars and things like that. We had our own limits of how far we would go, that’s as far as we would go and no further. So, it wasn’t on. I got Harry and Peter to agree that they would work on Spike. Now Peter was a great friend of Spike’s, and Spike really looked up to Peter quite a lot. When they said that, I knew that something would be done. What was done was that, when we arrived at two o’clock at the Camden, we all went into the back room and Harry and Peter issued their ultimatum to Spike: “We alter this script or we don’t do it”. You can imagine the uproar that would have happened.
So we sat down for two and a half hours, rewriting the script to our liking, my liking I suppose. Eric Young was my studio manager at the time. He handled all the music rehearsal for me. Everybody rallied round, really marvellous, and left me just to deal with the script problem. Eventually, it was rewritten.
I went out to do the warm-up and, just as I went out, Eric Young sent me a message that someone had kicked out all of the microphones on the left hand side of the stage, and would I stall? Now I mean, you go out and do the warm-up and …stall…?
It wasn’t a very good script. I think you’ll agree that The Last Goon Show of All was nowhere near as good as the usual run of Goon Shows. However, we did it.
The audience was marvellous, because they wanted to see the Goons, and everything was lovely, and they put on a good performance. We went upstairs afterwards, Royalty was up there, and the Goons put on a little show for them, and catering had laid on pink champagne and sandwiches. Then somebody said to me “Princess Margaret does not drink wine, she only drinks gin and tonic”. Why they came to me with that information…?
Fortunately, there was a pub next door. I got a secretary or someone, I can’t remember who, and I brandished a fiver and said “go and get two double gin and tonics, quick”. A bit later on, she waved gently her gin and tonic, and came and spoke to me. She said “Snowdon tells me you’ve had a bit of a day”. Do you know, that was the first time I laughed that week.
An Evening Called Fred
continue to Part 3 >
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