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: Peter Eton
Recorded: Sunday 30 October 1955
First Broadcast : Tuesday 1 November 1955 on the BBC Home Service
This is one of the more complicated Goon Show plots. At the annual meeting of the South Balham Gas Board, an outstanding debt of four pounds, nine shillings and sixpence is discovered. It is owed by President Fred of Argentina. Gas meter inspector Ned Seagoon is dispatched to South America to collect the debt. How is it that the South Balham Gas Board supplies gas to Argentina? In 1939, Major Bloodnok shipped a cylinder of gas there. Seagoon visits the Major, who arranges for someone to guide him to President Fred’s headquarters, which is under siege. The guide is Eccles. Neddie decides to use the sewers to reach Fred’s headquarters. Down there they encounter Bluebottle who, in return for a quarter of liquorice allsorts, agrees to lead them to President Fred. Bluebottle wraps them in a brown paper parcel labelled ‘Explosives’ and pushes them through President Fred’s letterbox. Grytpype and Moriarty unwrap the parcel. They convince Seagoon to go downstairs to read the meter again. While Seagoon is away, the rebel leader, General Aston Villa, attacks and takes over the headquarters. Seagoon, realising that the new tenants couldn’t have put on more than a therm or two, goes down to read the meter one more time. Moriarty leads a counter-attack that drives the rebels off. Seagoon comes upstairs again, recognises them as the original crew, and demands the three pounds, twelve shillings, and ninepence. They send him to President Fred’s room, where he finds Bloodnok, disguised as President Fred, who gives him a photograph of a four pound note. Seagoon being got rid of, Bloodnok and Moriarty divide the fifty million in a red sack that President Fred paid to smuggle him out of the country. Bloodnok shoots Moriarty and leaves with the red sack. Grytpype enters and Moriarty gets up—it was all a trick. Bloodnok has a red sack full of forged bank notes; Grytpype has the real money in a blue sack. Moriarty leaves to buy two air tickets. Eccles, who had packed the sacks, turns out to be colour-blind – he thinks Grytpype has the red sack. Grytpype leaves to find Bloodnok. Bluebottle enters – Eccles tricked Grytpype into leaving them with the blue sack with the real money. Meanwhile, Bloodnok removes his President Fred makeup just as Neddie enters. The four pound note is a forgery. Neddie leaves. Moriarty enters and shoots Bloodnok. Grytpype enters and shoots Moriarty. Neddie enters and informs Grytpype that the sack with the real money is with Eccles. Grytpype leaves. Eccles enters and tells Neddie that he’s not colour-blind at all—that was just a trick to fool Bluebottle—the blue sack Neddie is holding has the real stuff. But Neddie is holding a red sack—he leaves to find Bluebottle to recover the Gas Board’s four pounds. Bluebottle enters. Now they have both the red and the blue sacks. Bluebottle, having first made sure that Eccles isn’t colour-blind, convinces Eccles to take the nice red sack while he keeps the rotten, stinking old blue one. After he leaves, Eccles says, “Goodbye, Redbottle.” Back in Balham, Neddie begs for his old job back, but it’s taken – by Major Bloodnok disguised as President Fred.
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