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 Larry Stephens
Producer: Pat Dixon
Recorded: Sunday 4 March 1956
First Broadcast: Tuesday 6 March 1956 on the BBC Home Service
In the jungles of Burma, Colonel Neddie Seagoon, Major Bloodnok, and their regiment (The 4th Armoured Thunder-boxes) have been fighting the Japanese for fourteen years. They’ve had no food or pay since Bloodnok received what he considered to be a fake telegram in August 1945 stating that World War II had ended. General Yakamoto, commander of the Japanese in a nearby tree, runs out of ammunition and is forced to surrender his troops and stores – 2000 cans of saké and 1000 cans of nitroglycerine. Seagoon telephones England with the news. Meanwhile, Grytpype-Thynne, Chief Cashier of the Army Pay Corps, and his confederate Moriarty are counting their embezzled cash when the word from Seagoon arrives. The 4th Armoured Thunder-boxes had been assumed missing and their back pay has been spent. With accrued interest it comes to £33,000,000. Grytpype’s plan – he tells Seagoon that all Japanese stores must be returned to the War Office or the troops will forfeit their back pay. Seagoon must drive the 1000 cans of nitroglycerine back to England on a lorry. They load the nitro onto one lorry and the saké onto another, along with the tree containing the Japanese. The nitro lorry explodes – with Bluebottle aboard, of course, although he is not deaded. Bloodnok is drinking the saké en route, but Yakamoto reveals that he’s really drinking nitroglycerine that he had substituted. Grytpype’s plan has failed. To prevent bankruptcy of the Exchequer, the government arrange for Japan to declare war on the 4th Armoured Thunder-boxes, but Seagoon succeeds in driving the war back to England. By then, Bloodnok has drunk all the saké and Grytpype refuses them the back pay. Seagoon and Eccles shake Bloodnok vigorously upside-down over a bucket to retrieve the saké, but of course he has been drinking nitroglycerine and there is a big explosion. Bluebottle and Greenslade together announce that Bluebottle was not deaded this week
The Goon Show Preservation Society 