Chris Diamond returns with the second part of our chat about 1957's The Smallest Show On Earth.

We talk much more about the actual film and highlight several delightful moments, such as the scene in which the three elderly staff watch an old silent movie while the kinema is closed, and projectionist Percy Quill's evident elation following a (nearly) faultless film showing. We also ask the question: should sympathetic characters get away with committing arson? Off on a tangent, Arthur Lowe's wife comes in for a drubbing (which I'm sure nobody expected) and even podcast favourite Hylda Baker crops up in conversation.

It's all good fun and there's even a knotty connection question posed for listeners to answer.

The Smallest Show on Earth stars Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles, Leslie Phillips, Francis De Wolff and Sid James.

Chris Diamond returns once again to examine one of Peter Sellers' most beloved earlier films, the 1957 Basil Dearden-directed The Smallest Show On Earth. As well as Sellers the film features winning turns from Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles and Francis De Wolff, with stolid support from the film's nominal stars, husband and wife Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna.

Matthew & Jean Spenser inherit a crumbling old cinema - The Bijou Kinema (aka 'the fleapit') - and as well as the fixtures and fittings soon discover that they've also inherited a trio of elderly, shambling staff: Mrs Fazackalee (Rutherford), the cinema's cashier, bookkeeper and pit pianist; Mr Percy Quill (Sellers), a projectionist with a powerful thirst; and Old Tom (Miles), whose exact role is undefined but encompasses general caretaker and commissionaire duties.

Meanwhile Mr Hardcastle (De Wolff), the owner of The Grand (the town's other cinema which far outclasses the Bijou in terms of size and sophistication), offers the couple a derisory sum to sell the Bijou to him so he can knock it down for a carpark. The Spensers decide to attempt to run the fleapit as a going concern, hoping this will persuade Hardcastle to up his offer.

It's a wonderfully warm film with particularly delightful turns from Sellers and Rutherford and a rather surprising ending.

Chris and Tyler talked so much that it's been split into two halves (part two next week) - in this first part we establish the characters, talk about the gradual decline in cinema attendance at the time, our memories of going to the pictures as kids and even spend a fair chunk talking about a different Sellers film: Heaven's Above!

Mark Cousins returns to look again at the radio career of Peter Sellers, this time concentrating on the 1950s and largely eschewing his Goon Show activity.

Sellers was constantly in demand, and nowhere more so than on the wireless; indeed, it wasn't until the latter half of the decade that he began to wind down his appearances behind the microphone and focus more on the silver screen.

He more or less abandoned radio completely as the sixties dawned, apart from interviews or promotional appearances - and the odd thing like The Last Goon Show of All.

Hear Mark talk about some forgotten - and mostly lost - radio series in which Sellers cropped up such as Finkel's Cafe, Curiouser & Curiouser, Paradise Street, Happy Holidays, Ted Ray Time, Me And My Shadows and many more!

For this 100th edition of Goon Pod writer and podcaster Tim Worthington dons a sailor's tunic with arrows printed on it and returns to discuss the classic Goon Show Tales of Old Dartmoor, which was on the first LP ever issued of Goons episodes in late 1959.

We discuss the show itself and what was happening in the world around the time it was broadcast... and listeners can expect to hear us chat about Monty Python's Election Night special, Vic & Bob, a 96-year-old with a secret, a young Jane Asher, Tim Buckley, the Monkees, the Telegoons, Sabrina, Reginald Maudling, a singing parrot, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Victor Lewis-Smith, The Goodies and Shirley Bassey!

More Tim: timworthington.org

Twitter: @goonshowpod and @outonbluesix

As next week sees the 100th edition of Goon Pod drop, here's a special 100-minute long Easter bumper bonus episode!

Tyler shares clips of some of the many guests he's hosted on the pod over the last hundred shows - the selection is designed to showcase how the show has developed and evolved and (in theory) can be enjoyed by anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Goons, as long as they like fifties, sixties and seventies (and eighties & nineties) popular culture and especially comedy. Typically they'll like the Beatles and have heard of Jimmy Clitheroe - that's the sort of person who listens to Goon Pod.

So you'll hear from the likes of Al Murray, David Quantick, Mike McCartney, Griff Rhys Jones, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Mike Fenton Stevens as well as many others PLUS some never-before-heard material!

(This episode is better than an Easter egg because it's less fattening, won't stain the furniture and even your dog can enjoy it)

Twitter: @goonshowpod

"There was only one man for the job... there was only one man available!"

And so begins The Case of the Vanishing Room, the earliest Goon Show we've covered so far on this podcast, from 1954. It was later remade for the Vintage Goons series and that is the version most people will be familiar with but it stuck very closely to the original script.

This week returning guest Mike Haskins joins Tyler to examine both and try to fathom what this 'murder mystery' was all about! Did Spike lose interest halfway through the writing? Did he like the title and try to write a show around that? Who exactly WAS the murderer? And how did the room vanishing and turning up in Paris actually resolve itself? All these questions and precious few answers!

Also: Tyler's great new game "From Peter To Piper" which we are confident will never return for a further round.

Plus: dog lovers are well catered for as Huxley the hound makes his podcast debut!

This week's guest is John Williams, who joins Tyler to examine a couple of classic telly interviews from the seventies hosted by Barnsley's favourite son Michael Parkinson.

In 1972, fresh from their triumphant return in The Last Goon Show Of All, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers joined Michael Parkinson for a special show, with Spike Milligan on VT and Ray Ellington providing the music. A couple of years later, shortly before his big comeback as an international superstar via The Return of the Pink Panther, Sellers joined Parky again and chatted about his life and career for over an hour. Both shows were subsequently issued on LP and are considered among the very best of Parkinson's interviews.

In this week's podcast we discuss:

* The many iterations of the solo Sellers show: the original broadcast was 1974, with an edited tribute repeat in 1980, a further truncated repeat in 1996 and the LP version. Does the original still exist?

* The ubiquitous German army helmet

* Sellers' list of ex-wives

* Warrington Minge

* Harry Secombe's nervous energy

* Fred Roper and his Midgets

* The Spirella Corset Factory

* Ghostwatch!

* Sellers' childhood touring the theatres

* Spike in Australia

* "I seen him! I seen him!"

* Impersonating officers in the army mess

* Michael Caine

* Who else appeared with Parky on the cover of Band On The Run

* The Goon Show Scripts

* Derek & Clive

* Thora Hird

... And much much more!

Last year the sky was dark with hats when it was announced that a missing Hancock's Half Hour radio show had been discovered, and for once Hancockians and Goonatics were able to put aside their differences and embrace like sisters because it turned out that this newly discovered episode featured the vocal talents of Peter Sellers!

The hosts of Very Nearly An Armful, the Tony Hancock podcast - Tim Elms, Jon Street, Martin Gibbons and James Griffith - join Tyler this week to talk about "The Marriage Bureau" and Tony Hancock's history with Sellers and Secombe in particular.

One of the biggest revelations was that Sellers had barely fifteen minutes to read and run through the script before recording yet pulled it off like a pro and the episode is now regarded as one of the standout shows from the first series of Hancock's Half Hour.

It's a fun, fact-filled 90 minutes of chat which will appeal to all fans of the Goons, Hancock or radio comedy in general!

http://www.tonyhancock.org.uk/

https://goonshow.org/

Twitter: @goonshowpod @NearlyAn @theGSPS @TonyHancockAS

"He opened the door and there he was standing in just a pair of gold boxer shorts..."

This was how a young BBC Radio producer named Griff Rhys Jones met Frankie Howerd for the first time!

Sometimes on this podcast we like to open it up and talk more generally about comedy - and especially when we get a special guest of Griff's calibre! Rude not to. 

Griff - who will be touring his new show from May and filming Griff's Vietnam Adventure this year - joined Tyler to talk about his career (which does include a prominent role in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's Puckoon) and was more than happy to reminisce about his time on the likes of Not The Nine O'Clock News, Alas Smith & Jones and The Young Ones, as well as university revues, radio, plays and his subsequent documentaries and travel shows over the last twenty years.

Includes chat about:

* Mel Smith and their long comedy partnership 

* Some favourite S&J sketches (including Porno & Bribeasy)  

* The Homemade Xmas Video

* The Two Ninnies and Ronnie Barker's reaction to it 

* Being Bambi 

* Alexei Sayle 

* Douglas Adams 

* John Lloyd

* Chris Langham 

* Beryl Reid flirting with him 

* The post-war generation of comedians

* Almost appearing in Blackadder the Third 

* Restoration 

* Cleaning skyscraper windows in New York 

* Performing in Australia and New Zealand 

* The television landscape

* Reacting to critics

* And working with Frankie of course!

As well as his thoughts and observations on Spike and the Goons in general.

Griff was extremely generous with his time and tickets for his forthcoming tour are available here: https://www.chortle.co.uk/comics/g/34307/griff_rhys_jones

How to salvage London's sunken Westminster floating Pier? Simple. Don't raise the pier - lower the river!

And so begins another (mis)adventure in which the two arch fiends Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty hoodwink the hapless Neddie Seagoon in what was probably one of the most topical shows the Goons ever attempted - The Sinking of Westminster Pier, broadcast the week after that historic landmark had indeed sunken into the Thames in early 1955. Spike was amused by a photograph in the newspaper of an 'Out Of Order' sign sticking out of the river and so, fired by inspiration, wrote this episode to replace the scheduled show, The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street. Much to Wallace Greenslade's chagrin. 

Having previously come on Goon Pod to investigate The String Robberies, Molly McDade returns to talk about piers, oysters, farting mules, Russian frogmen, television police procedurals, David Attenborough, George Raft and even Winston Churchill! Along the way she performs an impressive Willium 'Mate' impression, delivers a heartfelt plea for more Goon-type animation and, most importantly, talks in some detail about seeing the recent Hislop & Newman play 'Spike' a total of three times last year!

Molly is on Twitter @AuthorOfNebulae