Starring: Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, with Jack Train
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 20 January 1957
First Broadcast: Thursday 24 January 1957 on the BBC Home Service
Major Bloodnok tells a tale of India in 1902. The besieged garrison at Fort Thud, on the frontier of Waziristan, has lost their Union Jack and thus can no longer prove that they’re British. Seagoon is sent to the fort with the plans of the Union Jack. Meanwhile, in the fort, Bloodnok is visited by Colonel Chinstrap and they share a drink. Seagoon arrives with the plans of the Union Jack, but there’s trouble. The fort was built on shifting sands, and Seagoon’s combined extra weight has set the fort going north into Waziristan. The Waziri chieftain, the Wad of Char, attacks the fort. Due to a shortage of cloth, Henry Crun is forced to build the new Union Jack out of wood, which means they can’t hoist it as he had to use the flagpole to build the flag. Fortunately the fort shifts back over the sands into India, where it’s stopped at the border by Indian Customs. They can’t enter the country without paying customs duties on Chinstrap’s 48-gallon flask of brandy. Since they haven’t got the money, Chinstrap volunteers to drink their way out of the predicament. That was all many years ago. To this day a white stone marks the spot where Chinstrap saved the day. The inscription reads, “Here lies Colonel Chinstrap. Drowned . . . from the inside.”
The Goon Show Preservation Society 