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 and Eric Sykes
Producer: Peter Eton
Recorded: Sunday 12 December 1954
First Broadcast : Tuesday 14 December 1954 on the BBC Home Service
It’s Christmas Eve, and Neddie Seagoon is out of work and starving on the Limehouse waterfront. He is about to be moved along by Constable Willium, when Moriarty intervenes and invites Willium to join the River Police – by throwing him in the water. Moriarty sends Neddie to become a clerk at the bank run by Grytpype-Thynne. Grytpype puts Neddie in charge of the gold vault, knowing that Neddie will steal it. As Seagoon is absconding with the loot, Grytpype joins him. To escape the police, Grytpype, Moriarty, and Seagoon set sail for the Mediterranean on a yacht. Grytpype convinces Seagoon to jump overboard by telling him that Moriarty has absconded with the gold in a rowing boat. In fact, Moriarty is still on board. The two villains divide the loot. Meanwhile, Seagoon flounders in the Indian Ocean, but finds his way to shore, where Henry and Minnie find him unconscious. Seagoon ends up at the notorious Burrapow Sewer Club, where he watches a foreign beauty (Eccles) perform the sensuous Dance of the Seven Army Surplus Blankets. To clear his name and get back his self-respect, Seagoon decides to join the Army. The Red Bladder is raising the tribes in rebellion, and has received new shipments of arms, financed with a shipload of gold smuggled to him by two crooks. Seagoon volunteers for frontier duty to avenge himself against Grytpype and Moriarty. Eccles and Bluebottle accompany him. The Red Bladder and his 50,000 bladders attack – Seagoon is outnumbered. He sends Bluebottle to ride, with dynamite in his saddle bag, to the crest of a crag to signal Major Bloodnok. But to get there, the horse must jump a deep chasm. It fails to make the jump and Bluebottle is hurled into the dreaded canyon. There he meets Moriarty, and convinces him to try one of his nice big long red cigars with a wick on the end. He lights the dynamite and runs off, but Moriarty reports the cigar has gone out. When Bluebottle rushes back to re-light it, the dynamite explodes. Neddie fights the Red Bladder but, alas, is killed. On that spot is now a little white stone, on which Minnie lays flowers once a year. The stone bears a simple inscription in Hindustani. Henry hasn’t the heart to tell her that it says, “Bombay forty-four miles”.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 