Goon Pod

Released 69 years ago this week, The Cockleshell Heroes was a heavily fictionalised account of the real-life WW2 Operation Frankton, in which a group of marines, headed by Herbert ‘Blondie’ Hasler, covertly entered Bordeaux

Although The Cockleshell Heroes was a hit with audiences and looks gorgeous in Technicolour it doesn’t tend to get talked about as much as other similar WW2 films of the period and perhaps this was partly down to the almost anti-climactic third act. However, thanks to shameless plugging by David Lodge on a frequent basis some two decades later as part of Spike Milligan’s Q

Joining Tyler is Warren Cummings, host of The Cinematic

It’s a great chat with tons of fascinating factual

"In the little Essex hamlet of Great Bardfield, a tiger with influenza is mounting guard over a mysterious white box. What is the secret of the box of Bardfield—does it contain the dreaded International Christmas Pudding or is it really full of priceless Essex snow?"

So ran the Radio Times listing that week for the show we are discussing, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the International Christmas Pudding but has everything to do with selling snow to Sudan.

It's Tyler's favourite Goon Show of all, the third he ever heard and one which had been 'trailed' to him in a way by his father as he was growing up. His dad would occasionally mention the plotline of The White Box of Great Bardfield without naming it specifically; he merely considered it a quite genius idea for a comedy plot.

Joining Tyler to try and unpick it all is returning guest Molly McDade who thinks it's a show you should never expose to a newbie and was looking forward to seeing Coogan in Strangelove - which, by the time this goes out she will have done!

A little taster of this month's edition of Goon Pod Film Club, Guest House Paradiso, starring Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Simon Pegg, Bill Nighy & Fenella Fielding.

With our very special guest Jeffers from Podcasto Catflappo!

www.patreon.com/GoonPod

Everyone at Goon Pod Towers is very excited this week as this is the first time we've ever covered a Best Picture Oscar winner on the show, and this one features everybody's favourite beadle Harry Secombe who's in fine voice for this tremendous 1968 film based on the hit Lionel Bart stage musical!

Joining Tyler are those incorrigible urchins Chris Webb & Robert Johnson from Still Any Good podcast and among other things they discuss:

Plus much much more!

Consider yourself entertained!

STILL ANY GOOD: https://stillanygood.buzzsprout.com/

In 1975 David Dimbleby conducted an interview on television with Spike Milligan, and as the Fates would have it Spike was in the perfect frame of mind for such a probing and personal interrogation.

They talked about his childhood, the war, his career, his mental health, the breakdown of his marriage in the fifties, his hopes and regrets and even touch on (then) contemporary events - the boy he shot in his garden and the fallout which resulted in him being dropped from several animal charities.

The conversation is punctuated by a series of filmed sequences in which people who knew Spike well give their views on the ex-Goon, such as his fellow ex-Goon Peter Sellers, writer and collaborator John Antrobus and old friend and mentor Jimmy Grafton.

As indicated, Spike takes it all largely in his stride, with only very occasional flashes of annoyance or irritation and the odd bemused frown and it remains one of the most insightful and honest portraits of the great man we have.

Our guest this week is actor & writer Lee Moone who previously has adapted Milligan's Phantom Raspberry-Blower of Old London Town for the stage.

Young Ned Seagoon, walking the streets of London during a particularly thick 'pea-souper,' accidentally knocks over a Miss Selina Clutch. Her strange behaviour mystifies young Neddie until a chance meeting with Dr. Rheingold Fnutt puts him on the track of an underground terrorist organisation led by the reckless 'Overcoat Charlie' intent on wrecking the capital's commercial life by blanketing London with an artificial foreign fog that makes people think nothing but the best of each other. Professor Crun is called in by the Government to find an antidote to 'Forog' but not before Professor Moriarty and Commercial Attache, Grytpype-Thynne, nearly succeed in bringing London life to a standstill.

So runs the synopsis to this week's edition but as is usually the case the actual show itself bears little relationship to Spike Milligan's fevered precis. Instead, we find an increasingly manic Ned Seagoon hell-bent on solving London's fog problem, conversing with statues and getting all xenophobic over atmospheric conditions.

Joining Tyler this week is James Page who loves Forog... but can our host say the same?

"There once was a beautiful moon,

"It was up in the sky, chum,

"When he said “What’s the time?”

"They replied ‘What?’

"And the horse departed leaving spon."

With poetry like that it's no wonder we lost the Empire. And it stands out as one of the most memorable bits of a Goon Show episode which is rather unfairly overlooked: The Moon Show from January 1957.

Neddie is a tramp poet, who buys a poetic licence from those chiselling spivs Grytpype Thynne & Moriarty and through further trickery believes himself to be the rightful owner of the moon. Then he realises that the moon is a forgery and pursues the villains across Europe.

A little taster of this month's edition of Goon Pod Film Club, featuring Andrew Trowbridge & Lisa Parker from Round The Archives podcast! We're talking about the 1966 Hammer horror homage Carry On Screaming, starring Harry H. Corbett, Kenneth Williams, Fenella Fielding and Peter Butterworth.

Go to patreon.com/GoonPod for the full 90 minute show! Free trial available.

Take three Pythons, a Goon, the father of modern satire, some Mel Brooks regulars, a Young One, a rock legend, a couple of stoners and a host of familiar British character actors and put them all into a comedy pirate film and what have you got?

Arrrrrnswers on a postcarrrrrrd please.

Joining Tyler this week to discuss Graham Chapman's ambitious if undercooked 1983 film is writer and performer Adrian Mackinder: http://www.adrianmackinder.co.uk/

"... Sellers is very funny. Unfortunately, the movie’s general approach to hippiedom is what we’ve come to

Despite the misgivings of the exalted Mr Ebert, I Love You Alice B. Toklas is a pretty good film generally. This week's guest, the writer John Williams, and Tyler both had fun watching it and talking about it, and were particularly impressed by Peter Sellers' winning turn as lawyer Harold Fine who undergoes a mid-life crisis and embraces the

With solid support from the likes of Joyce Van Patten and Leigh Taylor-Young, the film is a fine showcase for Sellers' talents and despite dated fashions more or less holds up. So turn on, tune in, drop out and enjoy Goon Pod this week!