by Duncan Gray
While thinking about the coming 75th anniversary of the first Goon Show broadcast, I explored the script from that first Crazy People show in my copy of Encyclopaedia Goonicus. I found this closing line:
Continuity Announcer: Peter Sellers is now appearing in Variety at the London Palladium and Michael Bentine, also in Variety, at the Empire Theatre, Glasgow. We regret that Margaret Lindsay, who was billed in The Radio Times, was unable to appear.
Bentine at the Glasgow Empire? I hope that went well.
Wait… Margaret Lindsay? Who? What? Why? At least I knew when… But, did the list of female-type ladies who appeared in the Goon Show almost have a fourth member to be included with Charlotte Mitchell, Cécile Chevreau and Lizbeth Webb?
The first stop was to check the Radio Times archive. It confirmed that the cast listed for that first episode of Crazy People, were four comedians; Secombe, Sellers, Bentine and Milligan, and their guest Margaret Lindsay.
Next, I asked Google about Margaret Lindsay. It said she was a Warner Brothers actress of the 1930s and 1940s who appeared with the likes of Jimmy Cagney and Doris Day. This didn’t seem likely to be our Margaret Lindsay, even though that lady was known for doing a very good English accent.
Searching further into Radio Times, I found that Margaret had appeared in a few other BBC Radio shows. In January, 1949, she was in an episode of Third Division, which also featured Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine. Then she’d become a regular on Doris and Elsie Waters’ Petticoat Lane, alongside Peter Sellers who was billed as the ‘voices man’. Other notable performers in it were Benny Hill and Max Wall. By 1951, she was a regular on We Beg to Differ, and lasted in this programme until the end of July, same year. It was a panel show discussing ‘subjects upon which the sexes may disagree’. It was chaired by Roy Plomley, and well known names among the panellists over the years included Joyce Grenfell, Celia Johnson, Wynford Vaughan Thomas, John Betjeman and, inevitably, Gilbert Harding. This was a long-running programme, lasting from September, 1949 to August, 1966!
Finally, after sifting through lots of material about the American starlet, I found a little, but not much, about our Margaret. An edition of We Beg to Differ had been recorded at the Eastbourne Winter Gardens on Sunday, 20th May, 1951, (one week before the first Crazy People recording) and the local Gazette newspaper had published a report. It described her as a scriptwriter, actress and ex-BBC secretary.
As an aside, Peter Sellers also appeared on the Winter Gardens stage that evening. The Gazette’s verdict was that he had gone down well with the audience, but might have done even better if he hadn’t been repeating the jokes he told on the same stage the previous year.
The question remains, how did Margaret Lindsay come to appear on the Goon Show cast list? Had she been a regular at Graftons, been close to the crew as they developed the Goon project, performed to the assembled regulars? Maybe.
One definite connection is that in all of her radio appearances, the producer was always Pat Dixon. He was, of course, the driving force who got the Goons on the airwaves. Had he made a space on Crazy People for this actress whom he’d regularly employed? Quite possibly. After all, he’d done that for a certain Dutch harmonica player he admired, but who was otherwise struggling to make a living.
And why didn’t our Margaret Lindsay actually appear in that first edition of Crazy People? The only source I’ve found is Alfred Draper’s 1976 book, The Story of the Goons. It simply says that the actress who was booked to appear couldn’t, because of illness.
Looking through the original script for the show, it doesn’t appear there were many lines for her anyway. The last section of the show was the obvious bit.
Andrew Timothy: Hygiene. In the department of sanitation Britain stands … alone. Despite the fuel shortage and the exhortations of Cabinet Ministers, the average Briton remains wedded to his weekly bath night.
GRAMS: (bath water running and splashing)
Fred Bogg (Harry): (sings)
Marie (off): You in the barf, Fred?
Fred Bogg: Yarst. Why?
Marie (off): Well, I want to clean your boots.
Fred Bogg: Oh blimey! Now I’ll have to take ’em orf.
Orchestra: (Land of Hope and Glory… softly held under)
Michael: And so Britain has struggled valiantly on through the post-war years, fighting for a better standard of life for the pursuit of happiness for freedom … Fighting for her very existence! Until today the Motherland can still raise her proud face to the skies and say …
Harry: Heellllpppppp!
Peter Sellers played the remaining female parts and, of course, with the exceptions mentioned earlier, that’s what we’ve heard ever since. I wonder though, if Margaret Lindsay hadn’t been unwell, could Goon Show history as we know it have been different?
Peter Embling found a little bit more:
In February, 1951, the Aberdeen Evening Express carried a nice comment about Margaret being in Crazy People, although the show wasn’t properly identified:
Inside information: Trial has been recorded tentatively called “Junior Crazy Gang,” including Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan, Ray Ellington Quartet, Max Geldray and his Harmonica, and the Stargazers. Producer was Pat Dixon. From all accounts a huge success, decision rests with Home Service planners whether it will come as a series. When “We Beg to Differ” returns shortly look out for new names – perhaps Griffith Jones, Margaret Rutherford, Margaret Lindsay (the “hit” of the show if I know her aright) and Robert Henriques.
The show, We Beg To Differ, was a panel show with two teams, comprising two men and four women. In the chair to ‘keep some sort of peace’ was Roy Plomley, inventor of Desert Island Discs.
Here’s an example of the questions that were asked of the panel:
‘Foreigners whom we wish to attract to these shores tend to find British resorts dull and unattractive. What should be done to make them more attractive to visitors, or would the British prefer that the visitors stayed away?’
Margaret Lindsay, ‘script writer, actress and ex-BBC secretary’ answered that she ‘would like to see on our beaches places where parents could leave their children for a few hours while they went sight-seeing or shopping – somewhere where the children could be entertained and looked after, with a responsible person appointed for the job.’
AN article from 1951 described Margaret as: ‘tall, blonde, and 26, used to be a BBC secretary. At 15 she wrote a play, “A Man’s World,” which was produced on radio with Celia Johnson and Owen Nares in the company. She helped Michael Howard to write his BBC show “Here’s Howard,” and after became an actress with him in “Petticoat Lane.” And added: ‘Now she is cast for a new programme on “Crazy Gang” lines.’
The promise of her being a guest on Crazy People continued right up to the day of broadcast, however, there was no explanation to be found regarding why she didn’t appear.
Margaret Lindsay’s last mention in Radio Times was in the 1980s. If anyone knows more about her, we’d be interested to hear about it.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 