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 11 November 1956
First Broadcast: Thursday 15 November 1956 on the BBC Home Service
Neddie Seagoon is in an attic, practising to enter the World’s Long Distance Bass Drum Race from John O’Groats to Land’s End. Grytpype and Moriarty offer to raise the money to buy a really fast racing drum if he will participate in their naughty game. They sew Neddie into a mattress and deposit him in the vault of Crun’s Bank. They then hire Eidelburger and Yakamoto to hover over the bank in a zeppelin and lower four sky hooks. Neddie is released from the mattress by the bank guards, Eccles and Bluebottle. He persuades them to help him attach the hooks to the corners of the bank. Eidelburger winches the bank up into the air and the zeppelin flies off with it. When police inspector Bloodnok hears of the robbery, he launches a police zeppelin, hauls up the police station with sky hooks, and sets off in pursuit of the criminals. Meanwhile, Grytpype and Moriarty have hidden the loot from the bank robbery in a bass drum, which they give to Neddie at John O’Groats. Neddie sets off in the race. While the police pursue the zeppelin north, the money will be heading south to Land’s End. Eccles and Bluebottle greet Neddie at Land’s End, where he comes in last in the race. He earns the traditional privilege of the last man in – he gets a cheque for eight pounds ten and they burn his drum on the bonfire. Then Grytpype and Moriarty arrive. The show ends with a news report of two men admitted to Brooke Street Hospital with scorched fingers from trying to retrieve a bass drum from a bonfire.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 