Few recordings survived the early years of the Goon Show. GSPS members who have invested in a copy of Encyclopaedia Goonicus at least have access to the scripts of the missing episodes. Here’s a look at one of them.
There’s a well known story of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast in the USA in 1938, which caused terror among some listeners who thought that Martians were actually invading. The Goons created mild panic among a few listeners when they tried something similar.
The Goon Show, series 4, Episode 10, The Flying Saucer Mystery
First broadcast on Friday 4th December 1953
Script by Larry Stephens, produced by Peter Eton.
The Flying Saucer Mystery episode begins with William MacGoonigal (played by Peter) :
This news will cast you doonagle – the shock will turn you white.
Tis this – (sob) I – MacGoonigal … (sob) … am not appearing tonight!! (going) Oooooh!
Then, with a blast of the Dick Barton theme, we’re off on an instalment of The Adventures of Fearless Harry Secombe!
Grytpype and Moriarty didn’t become a regular feature until series 5, so it’s Eidelburger and Yakamoto who are there to take advantage of Secombe (the Neddie Seagoon character isn’t established yet either). Yakamoto is Eidelburger’s butler, and he learned how to make tea from Honourable Lotus-Flower named Gladys – who serve tea in Aldershot NAAFI.
Bill Greenslade makes an announcement:
We must apologise for interrupting the programme, but a mysterious light – alleged to be a flying saucer – has been reported in the sky over East Acton. Will any listener able to confirm this report please telephone the defence board immediately at Milthorpe 0203.
Back to the plot. Harry is enquiring after a job advert “Wanted – Welsh idiot. Experience not essential.” and gets hired by Eidelburger to be an exhibit in a waxworks show.
Harry: Er … will this show run?
Eidelburger: Only if someone turns the heating up.
Harry gets into a taxi driven by Ray Ellington when….
Another interruption, this time Peter is playing a very posh BBC announcer – the flying saucer is now reported to be moving northwards over England.
The plot then jumps to the North Pole where Harry, Spike and Peter are playing American servicemen in the United Nations Weather Station there.
Major Knackenbracker (Harry): You’re pretty young for the North Pole, Lootenant. (kindly) You know son, bet I can guess what you’re thinking of right now.
Harowitz (Peter): You can sir?
Knackenbracker: Yeah. (sentimentally) You’re thinkin’ of Thanksgiving dinner at home … with turkey and cranberry sauce … and the logs blazin’ in the hearth … and Mom and all the old folks around you in the firelight.
Harowitz: Wrong sir.
Knackenbracker: Oh – what were you thinkin’ of?
Harowitz: Women.
After Max Geldray plays St Louis Blues and the Americans discuss how cold it is, Greenslade makes another announcement:
We interrupt the programme once more to bring you the latest bulletin. The flying saucer is now reported to be heading North over Greenland and rapidly approaching the lonely ice-packs of the North Pole, where the men of the UN Weather station are the only people known to be alive. That is – with the … er … possible exception of a small British Military force which mysteriously vanished in that area some years ago … the 2nd/7th Armoured ENSA Concert party.
FX: barking of huskies, wind and blizzard
The scene cuts to a dog sled crossing the Arctic wastes. Minnie and Henry are on it, along with Fred Bogg, who’s practising his singing and calling mush mush at the same time. Ellington is driving another sled. Eventually Minnie and Henry decide this isn’t the Tottenham Court Road at all! They’ve reached the North Pole Weather Station.
Knackenbracker (off): Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?
Henry: Mnk … mnk … ermm … mnk … British.
FX: (shot)
Ellington explains that they’re the 2nd/7th ENSA Light Entertainers. Major Knackenbracker recalls his time stationed at Shepherds Bush.
Knackenbracker: I knew a dame there … Hammersmith Lil they called her – Wow!! What a woman! Smoked cigars – chewed tobacco – drank like a fish! And could she jive! Oh boy!!
Minnie: What does he say, Henery?
Henry: Mnk … the gentleman says he knows mother.
Harowitz goes off to arrange some food before the concert party begins. The cook is –
Eccles: Oh dinner’ll be ready any minute now. I’ve got it all in the pressure cooker.
FX: (explosion)
Eccles: Come and get it! Chow up! Come and get it!
The concert party begins with Fred Bogg as the corniest of compères – no relation to the Irish comedian Pete Bogg – then:
Bogg: here is our first turn … a dramatic monologue by that world famous dramatic monologer … Ernest Bluebottle!
Bluebottle: Thank you. Recitation! Clears throat – places hand on heart … I am a British soldier! I’m not afraid – not I! For there’s a good old saying! Old soldiers never –
FX: (shot)
Knackenbracker: Well – there goes another old saying!
Bluebottle: I am shotten! A bullet has wounded me! Oooh! Alas! Forsooth! The Pain! My brain is seared with suffering! Oooh! The agony! Oooh … I die! For the red white and blue … I die … Farewell! Exits, left!
Next, the Ray Ellington Quartet played The Continental, and then another musical act –
Fred Bogg: Thank you … And now to one of our star turns – that great tenor … Mr. Webster Smogpule.
Smogpule (Spike): I thank you. My first song this evening will be that lovely ballad by Hurlstone: “In an English Garden I Met My Love and Found a Star to Steer Her By.” Thank you.
But, to everyone’s relief, Smogpule is interrupted before he can finish clearing his throat. Harowitz has a report of an unidentified object believed to be flying saucer heading in their direction.
They realise they have no reserve of food or ammunition, and they’re cut off from civilisation by a thousand miles of ice and snow. After an interlude while Harry gets to play yet another part, a mad Austrian meteorologist called Professor Schmoolickbaum, they head for their quarters for the night. Crun complains he can’t get to sleep and, when asked what’s eating him, he says it’s a polar bear.
A tannoy announcement from Greenslade tells us that, according to radar, the flying saucer has landed three miles away to the nor-nor-west. They hitch up the dogs,
Bogg: Fido! Spot! Prince! Towzer! Patch! Rustler! Bonzo! Jacky! Rover! Wuffo! Growler! Rags! Buster! Rex! Lassie! (pause briefly to gasp for breath) GO!!!
They head out into the night with the temperature at thirty six below.
Bogg: Can’t breathe properly … got a tight feelin’ round my chest … an’ I can’t move my arms properly.
Spike: Yeah – it’s exactly the same with me.
Bogg: It is?
Spike: Yeah … you ain’t the only one in this overcoat, you know.
Finally, the strange creature is found. Is it some sort of polar bear, or a shaggy haired walrus? Eccles recognises it, it’s his Daddy!
And with that, Greenslade reads the closing credits and Ray and the boys play Crazy Rhythm.
This article first appeared in Goon Show News issue 194
Abridged and adapted from the original script by Duncan Gray
