According to Peter Sellers: “It all started because Spike Milligan and I once said we wanted to experiment in visual humour. We got as many friends together as we could and went and found a field. That was all we had – friends, a field, a roll of film.”

What resulted was 'The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film' (1959), directed by the up-and-coming Richard Lester, a friend and collaborator of Sellers and Milligan.

The short film soon became a word-of-mouth hit and was even nominated for an Oscar. It helped pave the way for Lester to work with the Beatles several years later and Spike Milligan claimed that it was one of the very few true visual representations of Peter Sellers' sense of humour.

Although accounts vary it has become accepted that the total budget for the film was £70 (including the rent of a field) and the entire cast was made up of - as Sellers says - friends. So we see Graham Stark, Leo McKern, David Lodge, Mario Fabrizi, Bruce Lacey and Johnny Vyvyan, as well as the two Goons themselves.

This week film academic Dr Adrian Smith joins Tyler to talk about this highly influential 11 minutes of mayhem.

A darkly comic satire about an increasingly deranged leader of a Western power, tensions with Russia and the threat of World War 3 breaking out – sound familiar? That’s the premise of Whoops Apocalypse, the 1986 feature film very loosely based on the sitcom of the same name, created by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall. Sadly where the film fails to imitate real life is the presence of a female President in the White House and she’s the (relatively) sane one, while her British counterpart (played by Peter Cook) believes unemployment is caused by pixies and is quite happy to encourage those without jobs to leap to their deaths off Beachy Head. The film also features Loretta Swit (M*A*S*H), Richard Wilson, Michael Richards (pre-Seinfeld), Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Ian Richardson, Herbert Lom and John Sessions.

Last December for Goon Pod Film Club Tyler spoke to Renwick & Marshall at length about Whoops Apocalypse and how it all came about and he decided to share it with the general Goon Pod listeners as a bonus episode before world events rendered its plot totally tame and entirely plausible. Andrew and David talked warmly about the film and revealed how it was chiefly the lousy scheduling of their earlier television show End Of Part One which compelled them to write the Whoops Apocalypse sitcom, which in turn led to producer Brian Eastman proposing a big-screen repurposing, involving a new storyline and characters. They discussed the writing process, the challenges of casting, the difference between what made critics laugh and audiences laugh and things they wish had worked a little bit better.

Goon Pod returns in late March. Goon Pod Film Club can be found here: patreon.com/GoonPod and you can sign up free for a seven day trial. Shows include Kind Hearts & Coronets, A Hard Days Night, Bedazzled (1967), Monty Python & The Holy Grail, Guest House Paradiso (aka the ‘Bottom movie’),Carry On Screaming, Billy Liar and, most recently, It’s Trad Dad.

In 2024 we asked Goon Pod listeners to nominate their all-time favourite British comedy film. It didn't have to have a Goon in it - no, we wanted to put together a comprehensive Top 20 chart which covered all the bases.

This week as we wind up the show this series Simon Meddings from Waffle On podcast joins Tyler to count down the list from Number 20 to Number 1.

While there will be films you'd expect to turn up in a list like this there's also a number of surprises and even omissions.

Will your favourite have made the final 20?

Waffle On: https://waffleon.podbean.com/

A special Christmas bonus edition! As part of Goon Pod Film Club - www.patreon.com/GoonPod - every month Tyler and a special guest discuss a British comedy film and in August this year Tim Worthington came to talk about his favourite: Billy Liar from 1963. Here's the full episode for Goon Pod listeners to get a taste.

As you’d expect from Tim the conversation takes many twists and turns – as well as analysing the film itself, its themes and ideas, its stars, its production, its position in the pantheon of British New Wave cinema, there are also nods aplenty towards popular culture connected with the film, including Ken Russell, the Four Yorkshiremen sketch and Saint Etienne!

Tom Courtenay is the titular Billy Liar, or, more accurately, William Fisher, a grammar school boy on a scholarship from a working class environment who finds himself constantly at odds with distant parents, girlfriends expecting greater commitment, a mocking colleague and a rather foolish boss. He is a provincial dreamer with aspirations to better himself but is somewhat lacking the drive. Prone to lapsing into fantasies in which he is a big wheel in a fictional state called Ambrosia, Billy’s doing a job he hates working as a clerk in a funeral directors firm. However, he almost finds a way out of it all,  a chance to escape and spread his wings and soar, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shake off the cloying ordinariness of his Northern town and leave it all behind.

Other films covered on GPFC this year include A Hard Days Night, Carry On Screaming and Guest House Paradiso!

For a free 7-day trial of Goon Pod Film Club head over to patreon.com/GoonPod

The man behind the Goon Show Compendiums, audio engineer extraordinaire Ted Kendall returns to answer your questions in this Christmas edition!

“For a shortened version of this programme, please read A

On 24th December 1959 the tenth and final series of The Goon Show got off to a thoroughly festive start with a show VERY loosely based on the classic Dickens story, in which Scrooge (played by Henry Crun) entrusts Eccles with a Christmas pudding full of gold threepenny bits. This attracts the attention of Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty and all manner of chaos ensues.

This really was the last hurrah for the Goon Show as Series

Leading up to the start of the series the BBC publicity department announced: “Christmas is expected to get off to a disastrous start in the Home Service on Christmas Eve. For at exactly 7:30pm announcer Wallace Greenslade will announce over the ether “This is the Goon Show” and for the

The show lacked any structure or discipline and yet contains

Joining Tyler is Andy Bell whose Welsh-language podcast is

Who were the key figures in getting the Goon Show to radio? Which people were pivotal to the Goons' success? Join Tyler and Roger Stevenson as they rank those within the Goon Show's orbit in order of importance and show their working.

Roger took the brief seriously and put a lot of thought and care into his choices; Tyler slightly misunderstood the brief and went more down that 'Who was the Fifth Goon?' route. What resulted was an interesting mix of names, and increasingly desperate attempts by Tyler to justify his ranking system.

Among the names bandied about are such worthies as Dennis Main Wilson, Valentine Dyall, Jimmy Grafton, Larry Stephens, Dick Emery and John Snagge.

This month I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to two of the

The film was inspired by the events surrounding the Falklands War and the ongoing tensions between East and West and starred Peter Cook as increasingly deranged British premier Sir Mortimer Chris, Loretta Swit as US President Adams (no relation), Michael Richards (pre-Seinfeld) as international terrorist Lacrobat and a whole host of familiar faces such as Richard Wilson, Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Ian Richardson, Herbert Lom and John Sessions.

On 4th December 1994 Jonathan Ross hosted the British Comedy Awards in front of an invited audience of the great and the good and Noel Edmonds.

It was a good year for the likes of Steve Coogan, Michael Barrymore and the Drop the Dead Donkey team but almost from the off Ross was beset by problems, including announcing the winner of the wrong award, having to deal with an out-of-control Meatloaf whose sole intention, it seemed, was to reduce Wossy to a quivering mess, and, most notably, attempting to wrest back control of the room in the wake of Spike Milligan calling the future King of England a 'little grovelling bastard'. The reaction and fallout was to dominate the redtops for days and raised Spike's profile so sufficiently that his chatshow bookings and requests for interviews quadrupled overnight.

Joining Tyler to talk about all that and examine the winners (and losers) of the evening are co-host of The Sitcom Club podcast Gary Rodger and the man behind Behind The Stunts, Jon Auty. There's clips aplenty and personal reminiscences from Clive Anderson and Jane Milligan.

It's a fun stroll down memory lane and a useful reminder that there was a time when Michael Barrymore was the biggest name in showbiz and the likes of Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris were still considered 'the new boys'.

A rare straight acting role for Peter Sellers in 1960, Never Let Go starred Richard Todd as a man for whom life outside of uniform has never been easy, as he struggles to put food on the table and his problems multiply when his new car is stolen.

The vehicle has been stolen to order by teen tearaway Adam Faith, who supplies local garage owner and all-round nasty piece of work Lionel Meadows (Sellers) with hot wheels which are subsequently re-plated and sold on.

John Cummings (Todd) is determined to get his car back and in doing so risks his own life and that of his family.

Sellers was rightly lauded for his portrayal of the sociopathic Meadows, although life off-screen was hardly harmonious for his wife and kids as he took the character home with him every evening after filming.

Joining Tyler to discuss this important film is Scott Phipps, co-host of the Reel Britannia, Stinking Pause & Talking Pictures TV podcasts.