Starring Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan
Announcer: Andrew Timothy
Music by Max Geldray and The Ray Ellington Quartet
The Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
Script: Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens
Producer: Peter Eton
Recorded: Sunday 25 October 1953
First Broadcast : Friday 30 October 1953 on the BBC Home Service
There is no known recording of this show.
This episode had two sketches:
- In the first sketch, Fearless Harry Secombe is persuaded by Moriarty to volunteer, and be paid 100 pounds, to be a human guinea pig for experiments in curing the common cold. Unfortunately for Secombe, he fails to catch a cold during the entire eight years that Eidelburger and Yakamoto confine him to a cell. He’s released without any compensation for his troubles (“no cold, no money!”), but catches cold as soon as he’s released.
- The Gibraltar Story occupies the remaining two-thirds of the show. It is June 1944, and the RAF is bombing Berlin. Remembering the British legend, “If ever the monkeys leave Gibraltar, the British Empire will fall,” the German High Command order the U-boat commanders in the Mediterranean to kidnap all of the monkeys on Gibraltar. Captain Seagoon and Bluebottle, in British Intelligence, intercept the order and relay it to the commander at Gibraltar, Major Bloodnok. Alas, too late – the Germans have captured the monkeys, and they must be replaced before dawn. The Americans offer to airlift replacement monkeys, and the British plan to send some as well. Seagoon gets a fresh supply of monkeys (and their head keeper, Eccles) from London Zoo and its curators, Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister. He flies to Gibraltar, only to find Bloodnok floating offshore in a dinghy. It seems that the British have been driven off of Gibraltar – by the 50,000 monkeys that the Americans dropped
The Goon Show Preservation Society 