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: John Browell
Recorded: Sunday 7 December 1958
First Broadcast : Monday 8 December 1958 on the BBC Home Service
Mike Coveney’s commentary on this episode is here
It is 1899 in Winchelsea. Auntie Min and Uncle Hen have kept their Childe Harolde (Seagoon) in a nappy in a pram for 37 years. When they leave the pram unguarded, Harolde makes his escape. He sets off with Bloodnok, who is in the process of finding King Arthur’s lost sword. Min discovers the child is missing and phones the police. She offers a reward of four shillings a pound for the body’s return. As Seagoon weighed 16 stone, that puts the reward at £44 16s. Moriarty and Grytpype set out to find Seagoon. Bloodnok stops by a lake that might well be the one in which King Arthur’s sword drowned, and sends Seagoon off to find food. Ned finds a sword in a stone (left by Grytpype) and sets out to find a blacksmith. Bluebottle meets Eccles, who has a bottle of genuine Bloodnok water. Ned finds Ellington the blacksmith and with his help removes the sword. Grytpype and Moriarty proclaim him King of England and give him his royal robes, which are way too big. To fatten him up to fit the robes, they feed him such delicacies as stuffed elephant, roast mountain, and fried hippopotamus. A call from the Prime Minister reveals that Ned is only king of 23 Ponge Street, Croydon. Bloodnok shows up and discovers that the sword Excalibur is a fake. Moriarty and Grytpype have by this time fattened Ned up to 603 stone. They go to Min and demand the £1688 4s reward. Min claims Ned is a forgery – her boy only weighs 16 stone. Moriarty and Grytpype put Seagoon in a steam bath to reduce him and succeed in vaporising him. They put him in a bottle and take him to Harry Secombe’s dressing room at the Palladium, where Bluebottle and Eccles are waiting to get an autograph. The villains threaten to drink Secombe unless paid £1000. Lew pays the money and gets the bottle, which he gives to Eccles while he fetches a doctor. Eccles gets the bottles mixed up and succeeds in drinking Neddie. In the interests of hygiene, the show ends as they’re about to pump Eccles’s stomach.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 