Starring: Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan, with Kenneth Connor, Valentine Dyall, Graham Stark, Jack Train and John Snagge
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 11 January 1959
First Broadcast : Monday 12 January 1959 on the BBC Home Service
Peter Sellers was absent because he developed throat trouble shortly before the recording. The four other actors were brought in by John Browell at very short notice. They take the various parts written for Sellers, with minimal rewriting: Dyall replaces Grytpype-Thynne, Connor replaces Willium and a few others, Stark replaces Henry Crun and Train (as Colonel Chinstrap) replaces Major Bloodnok.
Moriarty challenges Grytpype to a duel, singing the Miserere at ten paces. Moriarty ends up in the water and is saved from drowning by Ned Seagoon, for which Ned is charged a fee of three shillings. World War I starts. A German spy has obtained the plans and measurements for the Union Jack. He must be stopped before he can build a prototype. Colonel Chinstrap sends Ned Seagoon on a mission to recover the plans. A decoy airship with Eccles aboard takes off, and meanwhile Seagoon travels to France by tricycle. Meanwhile, the airship The Plotless Story, with Eccles aboard, is captured by the Germans. Seagoon arrives in France. His contacts have him swallow an alarm clock. The Germans try to get Eccles to tell them where the British agent is hiding by tying him to a barrel of explosive saxophones. Ned is almost captured by Grytpype and Moriarty as he waits for his rendezvous with Pink Oboe, but they flee when they hear the clock ticking in his stomach, thinking it is a bomb. Pink Oboe (Willium) tells him of Eccles’s danger. Ned tries to rescue Eccles but is blown up by the exploding saxophones. Only the alarm clock is left.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 