There’s a taste of the history of the Goons in this section of the website.
GREENSLADE: This is the BBC Home Service.
GRAMS: FALLING BOMB FOLLOWED BY EXPLOSION
SELLERS: And it used to be so popular. Well, here it is…
SEAGOON: The highly esteemed talking-type wireless Goon Show!
In total, there were 238 regular and irregular Goon Show broadcasts (Series 1 to 10 plus Vintage Goons) and 14 radio specials. We also know of one unbroadcast radio programme and one television special. There are surviving audio recordings for 166 complete shows and extracts from 3 others. Most are derived and restored from studio recordings, but a few were home recorded off-air by enthusiasts. As this page is being written, the BBC Sounds website lists 103 episodes which have been used on Radio 4 Extra and are available to stream. It’s a great resource, but many of those recordings have been edited down for broadcast, and there are others which haven’t been broadcast at all.
At the Goon Show Preservation Society, we make many more, and unedited, recordings available to our members from our archive.
| A Short History | A failed attempt to tell the Goon Show story in less than 2000 words |
| The Cast | A sort of Who’s Who of the people who made the show. |
| The Characters | Looking at the regular characters who appeared in the shows. |
| The Radio Episodes | A list of all the episodes, with some details about every show. |
| Goon Songs | Info on some of the songs which were released by the Goons |
| The Telegoons | Remembering the 1960s animated TV series based on the Goons |
The Goon Show Preservation Society 