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 23 January 1955
First Broadcast : Tuesday 25 January 1955 on the BBC Home Service
Neddie Seagoon and his brothers, Eccles and Bluebottle, return to their ancestral home, High Towers, after completing university. Their uncle Grytpype gives them a copy of Beau Geste to read, and gives each of them a ticket to Marseilles for a bookmark. Neddie reads to his brothers the story of the three brothers who, having come down from Balliol School, attend a ball where their mother’s diamond is stolen and, rather than speak on each other, join the Foreign Legion. At the ball that evening, Lady Seagoon’s diamond necklace, the Blue Shower, is stolen. Neddie uses his bookmark and travels to Marseilles, where Major Bloodnok recruits him into the Foreign Legion. On arrival in Africa, he fails to keep up with the pace of his troop’s march and is lost in the desert. There he encounters Minnie and Henry, who are looking for the seashore. It turns out that they are detectives in search of Ned Seagoon, but since he isn’t wearing the Blue Shower they don’t recognise him. Some weeks later, Ned arrives at the fort, and soon after, so does Eccles, who, when he tried to join the Legion, had been dressed in Arab clothes, pushed out of the fort, and told, “good luck”. Lady Seagoon and Grytpype are with Eccles. It seems that after he stole the necklace, Grytpype hung up his jacket to do the mambo and then discovered that the pocket containing the Blue Shower was gone. At that moment the Arabs attack the fort with rock cakes and the Legionnaires are forced to retreat across Africa, through British Customs, down the Southend road, and up the Guildford bypass to High Towers. There, Bluebottle has been gloating over his prize, the Blue Shower, and over the fact that he is the heir to the estate now that everyone else is in the Foreign Legion. Seagoon stops the battle and Bluebottle is forced to give up the Blue Shower. In compensation, Eccles gives Bluebottle a rock cake, a strange one—it has a pin in it. The grenade explosion launches Bluebottle into the air, and he lands on Greenslade as he’s making the final announcement.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 