Fiendish Quiz – part the last

We finish with some general knowledge questions, loosely connected to the Goons.

1. Who was Prime Minister when the very first episode of Crazy People was broadcast in May 1951?

2. Who was President of the United States when the very last episode of the Goon Show was broadcast in 1960?

3. Bobby Jones won the US Golf Amateur Championship on 29th September 1925 – which Goon was born in this month and year?

4. The Whistling Spy Enigma, broadcast in September 1954, had a football match against the Hungarian national team as part of the plot. Who won the FIFA World cup in 1954?

5. Michael Bentine claimed to have been one of the youngest Intelligence officers in the RAF during World War II. Which actor – who described himself as “tall, dark and gruesome” and was a cousin of Bond creator Ian Fleming – was also a very young intelligence officer in the RAF and specialised in decoding German cyphers?

6. The final episode of the 5th series of The Goon Show ‘The End’ was announced as ‘Confessions of a Secret Senna-pod Drinker’. Where do Senna-pods originate?

7. Which member of the Goon Show team was born in the same month and year as the following historic events? There was a food riot in Amsterdam, Boston Marathon was won by Camp Devens relay team, the People’s Council of Latvia proclaimed the independence of the new country of Latvia, and The Royal Air Force was officially created from the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps. Name and year please…

8. Goon Show favourite Sabrina was born Norma Sykes in Stockport, Cheshire in 1936. Which item of clothing – steady now! – was Stockport famous for? At the peak of production, Stockport was producing around 6 million.

9. ‘China Story’, first broadcast in January 1955, featured the Tea-house of the August Goon. Tea is made from the leaves of which evergreen shrub?

10. In 1957 Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine co-starred in ‘Yes, It’s The Cathode Ray Tube Show’. But who invented the Cathode Ray Tube? Was it:
(a) Dr. Hans Eidelburger
(b) John Logie Baird
(c) Karl Ferdinand Braun

11. Harry Secombe was born in the St Thomas area of Swansea in 1921. Which 30 mile stretch of river flows closest to the district?
(a) The River Wye
(b) The River Tawe
(c) The River Swan

12. The word Goon is said to have originated in the Popeye cartoons. One of Popeye’s chums was the burger chomping Wimpy who inspired a chain of restaurants celebrating their 70th anniversary this year. At which legendary London tea shop on Coventry Street did the first Wimpy Bar open?

13. Goon Show singer Ray Ellington got married to actress and TV presenter Anita West in 1956. Anita went on to become the second female presenter of which long-running children’s television series?

14. Happy was a number 16 chart hit in 1991 for which rock band formed in Stourbridge in 1987? They took their name from a ninth series Goon Show episode.

15. Which member of The Goon Show team was born in February 1916, a month that also saw Charlie Chaplin sign a contract with Mutual Films, the beginning of military conscription in Britain, and Italian tenor Enrico Caruso record “O Solo Mio” for the Victor Talking Machine Company?

16. In 1978 Goon Show band leader Angela Morely – formerly known as Wally Stott – composed and arranged the score for animated film Watership Down. In which county is the real Watership Down?

17. Graftons, now The Grafton Arms, is where The Goons met and first began performing together. At one point in its long history the pub became an Irish theme bar named after a novel by James Joyce. What was that novel?

18. Peter Sellers was born in Southsea, Portsmouth. Which literary giant of the 19th century was also born in a suburb of Portsmouth and once lived a mere stone’s throw from where The Camden Theatre would eventually be built?

19. Spike Milligan famously helped restore the 900-year-old Elfin Oak, which had been carved and painted to look as though elves, gnomes, fairies and small animals are living in its bark. In which London park is this carved stump located?

20. The original pilot script for what became Crazy People and subsequently The Goon Show, is known by at least two titles – a point for either, two points for both.

back to the quiz page,
where the answers are to be found.