Starring Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan
Announcer: Wallace Greenslade
Music by Max Geldray and The Ray Ellington Quartet
The Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
Script: Spike Milligan
Producer: John Browell
Recorded: Sunday 27 December 1959
First Broadcast : Thursday 31 December 1959 on the BBC Home Service
1938 Germany declares war in all directions. British military brass immediately spring to action and start writing their memoirs. In 1942 the German High Command concocts “Operation Burnbaum” – a tasteless, odourless, colourless, but explosive chemical will be sprayed on the tails of British military shirts. The moment the wearer sits down, the heat from his body causes the chemical to explode. The soldier will be neutralised (or worse than that!). The plan is first discovered at Whitehall, where the generals are hard at work on their memoirs. Ned Seagoon, in the Military Forensic Laboratory, investigates. He needs a volunteer to try to make the test shirt-tails explode and consults the man with more experience of shirt-tails than anybody – Major Bloodnok. Seagoon sets sail for the continent on a ship run by Grytpype and Moriarty and piloted by Bluebottle. Grytpype turns out to be an agent for the German Navy. They are captured and put in a Prisoner of War camp full of British soldiers who vowed to die rather than be captured. They discover the whole German plan, escape from the camp, and, remembering the story of how an English officer hid from the Germans in a cupboard, phone Bloodnok to have cupboards airlifted to them. The cupboard arrives – with Bloodnok inside. The show offers two happy endings. In the first one, the American Fifth Cavalry rescues them from the Germans. In the second, Ned Seagoon marries an elephant.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 