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 23 December 1956
First Broadcast: Wednesday 26 December 1956 on the BBC Home Service
Listen to Six Charlies in Search of an Author on BBC Sounds
The show is a performance of Jim Sprigg’s book. In chapter one, Neddie Seagoon meets the bone specialist Grytpype-Thynne and his accomplice, Moriarty. They have a compromising X-ray photograph of Seagoon’s bones and a lady’s. Neddie must pay them £10 by chapter 10 to get them back. But he’s due to marry the beautiful millionairess, Gladys Minkwater, in chapter 8. Chapter 2: Neddie goes to Crun’s pawnshop, to pawn himself. For the dead-weight alone Crun deems him worth 10 pounds. But Neddie can’t leave the shop until someone comes to redeem him. In Chapter 3, Henry locks Neddie in the safe. There he finds Eccles, who has merely pawned his socks but can’t leave because he can’t get his boots off. In chapter 4, Seagoon redeems himself by paying Crun the £10, but then discovers that he no longer has the £10 to pay for the X-ray photo. He discovers that in chapter 7, Grytpype and Moriarty shipped the X-ray photo to an art connoisseur in Paris, Major Bloodnok. Bloodnok wants 10,000 francs for the photo, which Grytpype has locked in a safe in Bloodnok’s room. Only Grytpype has the key, but with aid of a typewriter, Neddie writes in a crowbar. Spriggs, the author, shows up. Neddie and Bloodnok persuade him to write in a character to help them. He writes in a “virile figure” but gets Bluebottle. Spriggs leaves for a rest. Bluebottle uses silent dynamite (only idiots can hear it) to blast open the safe. The audience (and Eccles) hear a loud explosion. Grytpype and Moriarty enter and hold up everyone at gunpoint. Seagoon writes in an empty gun. Grytpype writes in a motor boat in which the two villains escape up the Amazon with the X-ray photo. Bluebottle writes in a speedboat to pursue the villains, but he also writes in Black Claw and his Chinese pirates from the Boy’s Mag. Our heroes are forced to jump out of the boat and swim to the bank. Spriggs shows up and writes them a happy ending on the last page. Seagoon and Gladys Minkwater are married. Bluebottle uses the typewriter to write in a scene where Gladys Minkwater leaves Seagoon and drives off with Bluebottle.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 