Part 8 – Enter Eric . . .
This is the eighth of a ten part series by John Repsch, telling some of the stories from the history of the Goon Show. This article first appeared in Newsletter 128 in October 2009.
WHEN Eric Sykes first met Spike, his head was swathed in bandages. It was 1951 and Eric was in hospital recovering from mastoid surgery. He had written to the writers of Crazy People to say how much he enjoyed the first episode, and encouraged them to change the name: “Why should anything which did not conform be labelled ‘crazy’?” A few days later Spike and Larry Stephens arrived in the ward and had just enough time to introduce themselves before being told to get out. Matron.
Eric was already well established as A comedy writer. The ex-RAF wireless operator had seen action in World War II, and his pen had since been seeing action writing funny stuff for Frankie Howerd on the top-rated Variety Bandbox, and for Max Bygraves, Alfred Marks, Harry Secombe and Norman Wisdom.
Spike and Eric were to keep in touch over the next three years. Then in 1954 Spike climbed five rickety stair flights above a greengrocers shop at 130 Uxbridge Road, overlooking Shepherds Bush Green. There he accepted Eric’s offer to share rooms at his office.
In what was probably their first collaboration, they scripted the one-off Archie in Goonland. It was based on Educating Archie, a 12 million audience per week radio comedy, starring at ventriloquist’s dummy and being written by Eric. According to the Radio Times: “Peter Brough and Archie Andrews enter Goonland via a mousehole and are immediately involved in a fantastic adventure involving the destruction of London – and mice!” Right now, at the time of writing, the fantastic adventure is to find a copy of it because no recording has yet come to light.
Then, teaming up with fellow comedy scribes Ray Galton and Alan Simpson – soon to hit the heights with Hancock’s Half-Hour and later Steptoe and Son, they all set up Associated London Scripts. This was at non-profit-making workers’ cooperative, cutting out 100% of 10%-syphoning literary agents.
As business started hotting up, ALS needed a secretary. Alan Simpson brought along at prim 21-year-old girl for an interview. But faced with the four writers looking more like whimsical drop-out, amongst piles of paperwork, and showbiz types breezing in and out discussing scripts, to the sound of the constantly ringing phone, she found it all bewildering. To top it all, instead of questions about her secretarial credentials, Spike was asking. “What makes you laugh?” and “Do you make good tea?” When he asked her how much money she wanted, she grasped at the unusually high figure of £10, hoping they would turn her down. To her dismay, they accepted. Beryl Venue would stay for the next twelve years, later becoming a leading TV producer.
In Humphrey Carpenter’s book, Spike Milligan – the Biography, he asks Ray Galton how he found Spike from day to day: “Good – on occasions. Some days quite normal, and then sometimes he would get the black dog, and you’d watch his eyes glaze over. He’d be all right one minute, and then he’d get some bad news – it would be quite trivial, maybe something to do with his house, the taps not working or something like that – and his eyes would glaze over, and he’d walk back to his office, turn the key, and we wouldn’t see him for a week. Well. It would seem like a week.”
Meanwhile, the Goon Shows were getting better and better. The 5th series has been described as the ‘classic’ season. It was the first to stick to full-length stories throughout, and Spike kicked it off with what became some of the most popular ones of the lot: The Whistling Spy Enigma, The Dreaded Butter Pudding Hurler, The Phantom Head Shaver and The Canal.
The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler whisks us back to 1941, when a lunatic is on the lurk. In an obvious tribute to Spike’s war-time service, PC Seagoon is sent to the normally sleepy seaside town of Bexhill to track down the unspeakably fearsome flinger of batter puddings. The terrorizing of the town’s goodly folk during black-outs reaches such an extreme that Seagoon has to enlist the aid of Major Bloodnok. Fortunately Neddie has been provided with damning evidence: an Army boot found inside a batter pudding. Now all he needs is a one-booted soldier and he will have his villain:
SEAGOON: I tell you. Major Bloodnok, I must ask you to parade your men.
BLOODNOK: Why?
SEAGOON: I’m looking for a criminal.
BLOODNOK: You find your own – it took me years to get this lot.
It turns out that they are all barefooted anyway. Meanwhile, a certain Minnie Bannister has been hit twice by puddings, the second time with a cold one. She thinks the hurler’s love for her may be tuning cold too. Seagoon thinks the hurler’s gas has been cut off. Then one night:
MORIARTY: Pardon me, my friend.
SEAGOON: I turned to see the speaker – he was a tall man wearing sensible feet and a head to match. He was dressed in the full white outfit of a Savoy chef – around his waist were tied several thousand cooking implements – behind him he pulled a portable gas stove from which issued forth the smell of Batter Pudding.
MORIARTY: Could I borrow a match? You see, my gas has gone out and my Batter Pudding was just browning.
SEAGOON: Certainly. Here – no – keep the whole box – I have another match at home.
MORIARTY: So rich. Well, thank you. M’sieu – you have saved my Batter Pudding from getting cold. There’s nothing worse than being struck down with a cold Batter Pudding.
SEAGOON: Oh yes.
MORIARTY: Good night.
SEAGOON: I watched the strange man as he pulled his gas stove away into the darkness. But I couldn’t waste time watching him – my job was to find the Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler.
Cutting a short story sideways, Neddie and the Major eventually trace their man. It is the mysterious arch-criminal Moriarty, whose whole raison d’etre seems to be in scheming against Seagoon, and who is now enjoying his finest hour having a bath in a gas stove, By the remarkable power of deduction, after only thirty days adrift at sea, they discover that Moriarty has been sharing the same lifeboat as them. Neddie arrests him, but the story’s ending is left as open as the oven door, where the incriminating evidence awaits – unless they pay their starving stomachs the courtesy of eating it. “Never.” says Seagoon. “We must.” says Bloodnok.
The pitch-black comedy The Canal sewed up another feast for the ears. Stealing the show, as he had a habit of doing with most of the episodes in which he appeared, is the man with the grave-deep ‘sherry voice’, Valentine Dyall. His spine-chilling tones were to descend upon many a menacing plot. As Peter Eton appreciated at the GSPS’s Cliftonville weekend in 1976: “I brought Valentine in – when I was trying to make them slightly more dramatic. I had been doing ‘the Man in Black’ as a play producer, actually with Val. I introduced him to Spike, and Spike loved the voice, and so he started writing for him. He always had a thing about Val.”
In The Canal, Neddie returns to the ancestral home to find it empty, apart from a few sinister characters. Searching for his father, an ominous sound introduces him:
F.X. DOOR OPENS. GONG.
LORD VALENTINE: Neddie!
SEAGOON: Father! You – you are Father, aren’t you?
LORD VALENTINE: Do I have to undress?
SEAGOON: No, it’s just that you’ve changed so. (Aside) And, dear listener, changed he had – he looked tired, weary – his eyes were sunk back in his head, they were bloodshot, watery and red-rimmed – what had caused this?
LORD VALENTINE: Neddie, we’ve bought a television set. But what are you doing back from school?
SEAGOON: My schooling is completed.
LORD VALENTINE: Nonsense, you’ve only been there forty-three years.
SEAGOON: Nevertheless, I came out top boy in the entire kindergarten.
LORD VALENTINE: Really? Then it’s the diplomatic service for you.
FLOWERDEW: (approach) I’m a daisy – a beautiful daisy – please, brown cow, do not eat me – nor my friend the pansy – where are you, Ivor?
SEAGOON: Good heavens – wasn’t that Uncle Rupert?
LORD VALENTINE: Yes. He’s better now. Neddie, now that you’re home, promise me one thing.
SEAGOON: Very well. Father, I promise!
LORD VALENTINE: Thank you. See that you keep it.
SEAGOON: Ying tong iddle I po.
LORD VALENTINE: Good. Promise me one more thing. Never – never – go near – the canal.
SEAGOON: Why not?
LORD VALENTINE (flaming) Just never go near the canal, that’s all.
Neddie is locked in his room, and passes the time cutting the grass under his bed and feeding the monkeys. At night he listens to the sound of digging in the cellar. Then Father enters.
F.X. DOOR OPENS
LORD VALENTINE: In here, gentlemen.
YAKAMOTO & EIDELBURGER: Zank you. Yerserkah.
LORD VALENTINE: Neddie, I’ve brought two freshly-released physicians to see you. Dr Yakamoto – and Dr Justin Eidelburger.
SEAGOON: But there’s nothing wrong with me.
EIDELBURGER: Zat’s why we’re here, hmm, hmm, hmm – za German joke. Dr Yakamoto? Treatment!
YAKAMOTO: At once, honourable sir. Would the honourable Neddie Seagoon put both honourable feet into this delicate three-ton iron container?
LORD VALENTINE: Do as the little oriental says, Neddie.
SEAGOON: Very well, Father.
EIDELBURGER: Good. Now we pour in ze concrete mixture, zo!
F.X. CONCRETE GOING IN
LORD VALENTINE: (talking over it) You see, Neddie, the doctors say – when the concrete blocks set on your feet, you won’t be able to run away and play near the canal. ha ha.
ORCHESTRA: HARP ARPEGGIO (MINOR) WITH BASS CLARINET (PLAY LITTLE TUNE).
LORD VALENTINE: Hello? Lloyds? I want to add to that last policy on my son Neddie. Yes – yes. I want one that covers him in the event of his ever putting concrete blocks on his feet and throwing himself in the canal. Yes, I know it’s not likely to happen, but just in case.
With £40,000 on his mind, Lord Valentine has 40,000 reasons to ha-haaa ham it up, However, it is someone else who gets the lolly, and his Lordship’s financial expectations take an unforeseen plunge.
Spike used to say he wrote his best stuff when his mental suffering was at its peak, this may have been the secret ingredient and probably exhausted him. On the other hand, it has often been suggested that if twice the time had been lavished on the writing, twice the quality would have resulted. The 5th series bursts out as a shining example of this.
After the first six, Spike asked Eric to lend a hand. For Eric, between jobs, the timing was right, as he explains in his autobiography, Eric Sykes, – If you don’t write it, Nobody else will: “As I had abdicated my responsibilities for Educating Archie, I wasn’t too busy at the time; also it was clear to me that Spike was rushing downhill with no brakes. So I agreed.”
Although all but Spike’s first half-dozen are co-credited, many they wrote alone. Which ones? With the help of a little gentle third degree persuasion, Eric has narrowed down some – or all – of those he wrote alone. (See here) The name that took first credit varies, and was either the sole writer or the one who provided the greater input. Eric instantly got into his stride, saying that the characters were all there ready on a plate, and he merely had to ape Spike’s style. He did so with stunningly Milliganesque dexterity, with such masterworks as Lurgi Strikes Britain and The Mystery of the Marie Celese – solved.
However, there was another reason for them sometimes going it alone, as Sykes recalled on Kingtons Anatomy of Comedy (Radio 4. 8.3.05): “When I was working with Spike Milligan on the Goon Show, we used to write them together for a time. And then we had an enormous row which went on for two days over one word in a line, and that one word he wanted and I didn’t want. And he thought without that word this line didn’t have anything.” The climax of the row was the paperweight which Spike slung at him, and which Eric says would surely have killed him if he had tried to dodge it. Instead, he stood rooted to the spot with shock, and it missed by a mile, flying through a window. After retrieving it from the road. Eric deposited it in front of Spike, whose eyes were darting wildly about, and calmly told him. “Remember what day this is.” In order to save the partnership, they split: “I wrote one week and he wrote another. But a whole two days on one word – and the number of words that would go into a Goon Show! That’s how important. It’s rhythm mainly.”
Voted their second favourite Goon Show by 1983’s GSPS. Sykes’s Lurgi Strikes Britain centres on a devilishly contagious disease whose main symptom is uncontrollable ulultations of “Oo Yackaboo” It is worth hearing for this immortal repartee alone, where Moriarty is explain ing lurgi’s history:
MORIARTY: Listen to me while I tell you a tale. In 1296 on the Isle of Ewe…
SEAGOON: Where?
MORIARTY: Isle of Ewe.
SEAGOON: I love you too. Shall we dance?
Having been hoodwinked by Moriany and Grytpype-Thynne into action against the accursed malady. Seagoon attempts to pass on the heart-rending news to a meeting of the British Medical Council. Here he is interrupted by the kind of luxury distraction that the show would be enjoying more and more often:
SEAGOON: Ladies and gentlemen. Before I start, are there any further questions?
MINNIE: What is lurgi?
FX: MINNIE BEING THROWN OUT. DOOR SLAM.
SEAGOON: Any more questions? Now, my plan is to set up Yackabool centres in Blackpool.
MINNIE: I’m asking a civilian question – what is lurgi?
CRUN: That’s another thing I want to know. What is lurgi?
MINNIE: What is lurgi?
CRUN: Shut up!
MINNIE: Shut up!
CRUN: Shut up!
MINNIE: You shut up!
CRUN: What is lurgi?
MINNIE: What is lurgi? I’ve just asked that question, buddy.
CRUN: Why didn’t you say so?
MINNIE: I did say so.
CRUN: If you’ve already asked, there’s no point in me asking again.
MINNIE: Well anyhow, what is lurgi?
CRUN: One question at a time.
MINNIE: It was only one question, Henry.
CRUN: But I’ve already asked that question.
MINNIE: Thank you. Thank you, Dr Crun, thank you, thank you.
CRUN: Goodnight. Goodnight, Dr Bannister.
SEAGOON: Dr Bannister?
CRUN: Yes.
SEAGOON: Gad, he looks different in his singlet.
Later in a hilariously surreal scene at the Houses of Parliament, Neddie succeeds in steering Sir Winston Churchill and other venerable hear-hearers off their debate on who is responsible for the drains in Hackney and onto lurgi matters.
Seagoons’ news that all the victims have one thing in common – that none of them played in a brass band – prompts the immediate manufacture of £50 million’s worth of musical instruments. The suppliers, Goosey & Bawkes, also happen to be Count Jim and Hercules, consummating what was the start of a long partnership in crime. The dastardly duo sign off by packing their toothbrush, underwear and millions for their escape to the South of France, leaving Neddie to face the music.
Ye Bandit of Sherwood Forest, by Spike (& Eric?), is the one where Sellers’s fruity impersonation of Sir Winston Churchill upset the BBC bosses for the umpteenth time, and nearly earned Peter Eton ‘a fair trial and a fair hanging’. We are also treated to an even more feminine female than Minnie Bannister, in the shape of Charlotte Mitchell as Maid Marian.
GRAMS: PRISON DOOR SHUTS
MARIAN: Oh, sobs of despair, sobs! – locked in this dark dungeon with nothing but an old straw television set – this is the chamber of torture – oh woe, oh misery, oh fie, oh whatever shall I do…
GRYTPYPE: (close to mic) The part of Maid Marian is being played by Charlotte Mitchell, and a ripe little ham she’s proving.
The benefits of strong characterizations, good pacing and fantastic but tight, logical plots were transparently audible. That was partly thanks to Eric’s troubleshooting appearance on the scene and to the subsequent easing of pressure of deadlines. According to their latterday producer, John Browell, while Milligan scripts were the most “imaginative and fantastic”, the cleverest ones were Sykes’s “because he was an extremely intelligent writer and he could write in Goon idiom, but also bring a sensible storyline to bear and add a more logical conclusion.” Eric insists that it was all down to Spike’s prototype style. He adds that in Educating Archie, “I think I was one of the first people to try to create a mental picture on radio using lots of sound effects. Spike took this idea…. and raised it to another level altogether.”
In Peter Eton’s view, the two writers wrote by entirely different processes: “Spike is unique really, Eric Sykes was a careful writer, but Spike is slap-dash – he puts things down quickly. They don’t use the same style of working at all.”
The direction provided by the militarily disciplined Eton was also a heavy influence. Not one given to laughing at drivel, he would insist on the highest standard of writing and performance. At our Cliftonville weekend, he freely admitted having taken unfair advantage of Spike’s ill health: “He was a sick man most of the time – never robust. If I knew he wasn’t very well, I used to exert more influence. I would bully and chuck my weight around. I did used to have rather a bad temper, and if it was a bad day for me, I’d bully and get what I wanted. I remember firing Peter in the middle of a show. We were recording at the Camden. He did something which put Harry off. In the Max Geldray number, I went behind and told him to stick to the script. We went back for the middle spot and he started fooling about again, and I said. “If you do that again I’ll fire you.” He thought I wouldn’t dare, so he did it again, so I had to fire him. Later he came back and apologized.”
At the same time, Eton recognised Spike’s gift for dreaming up outrageous ideas and, if he felt they were within telescopic range, he would do his damnedest to harness them. He delighted in the way that the right sound could illuminate the vision of the listener’s ear. Coming from the BBC’s Drama Dept, he had grown used to sophisticated sound effects and, landing on the less demanding Variety Dept. he refused to accept their own very acceptable ‘knock on the door and tramps on gravel’ limitations.
Amongst the 5th series‘ clutch of parodies were Under Two Floorboards (loosely based on Beau Geste), The Sinking of Westminster Pier (prompted by a newspaper item) and Nineteen Eighty-Five (1984). The huge response to a TV adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 induced Spike and Eric to put aside their paperweights and pool their talents. As Sykes recalls: “This time we worked together and the script just seemed to slide out.” Nineteen Eighty-five is a pastiche of the oncoming start of commercial television, with the letters BBC standing for Big Brother Corporation, and ITA the Independent Television Army. And all was guaranteed to make certain puffed-up British Broadcasting Corporation chieftains splutter into their port.
Neddie tries to sign up with the ITA, but he is being tricked:
GRYTPYPE: Now then, you want to join the ITA?
SEAGOON: Yes.
GRYTPYPE: Well, what do you know about television?
SEAGOON: I had three years at the BBC staff training college.
GRYTPYPE: What did you learn?
SEAGOON: Nothing.
GRYTPYPE: Good. We’ll make you a director. Now, say after me: “Down with the BBC”.
SEAGOON: Down with the BBC.
But they are the BBC, and 1984’s rat-infested brainwashing scene is mirrored in the torture room where Neddie is taken. In the BBC’s efforts to sign him up, he is forced to listen to the opening strains of Mrs Dale’s Diary and other mild-mannered monstrosities. He succumbs.
Many years later, this strategy would be utilized on Eric Sykes, helping him recall which Goon Shows he wrote alone. It works wonders when combined with bright lights, straps and handcuffs.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 