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PODCAST

Goon Pod

A podcast where we talk about classic comedy with particular focus on the work of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe & Michael Bentine. You"ll also hear us discuss the likes of Monty Python, Hancock, Blackadder, the Carry On films, Peter Cook, Steptoe & Son and countless other comedy figures & fixtures from the postwar era. Please follow on Bluesky @goonpod.bsky.social and Twitter @goonshowpod

tv & film tv reviews

All Episodes

01:27:10

Jet Storm (1959)

Goon Pod ·

2026/09/30

Jet Storm, also known as Jet Stream or Killing Urge, is a British thriller directed and co-written by Cy Endfield and starring Richard Attenborough, Stanley Baker, Patrick Allen and Virginia Maskell. It is an early example of what would become the aviation disaster-film genre, preceding films such as Airport by more than a decade. Released in October 1959, it centres almost entirely on a transatlantic flight from London to New York and the psychological and moral crisis that develops among its

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01:32:33

Steptoe & Son Ride Again (1973)

Goon Pod ·

2026/09/16

“You’re worth more dead than alive!”We’ve talked a lot about Steptoe & Son – and its principle artistes – recently on Goon Pod and the sister show so it feels appropriate this week to air this interesting chat.It is July 1973 and the second feature film based on the hit BBCTV sitcom about a pair of rag-and-bone-men has just come out. Unfortunately its release coincides with a much more popular film in the shape of Roger Moore’s maiden Bond outing Live And Let Die and most people go to see that

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01:30:02

The Last Laugh Before TV-am (C4, 1985)

Goon Pod ·

2026/09/09

Broadcast on Channel 4 on 2nd December 1985, The Last Laugh Before TV-am was Spike Milligan’s attempt to bring his particular vein of humour to a new generation... although very little about it suggested that Milligan had changed his approach since the early Q series.The show assembled a familiar Milligan blend of sketches,visual jokes, corpsing, unfinished ideas and rehearsed improvisation. The recently late Chris Langham, Emil Wolk and a young Mark Steel were among the supporting performers, while

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01:30:27

The Last Laugh Before TV-am (C4, 1985)

Goon Pod ·

2026/09/09

Broadcast on Channel 4 on 2nd December 1985, The Last Laugh Before TV-am was Spike Milligan’s attempt to bring his particular vein of humour to a new generation... although little about it suggested that Milligan had changed his approach since the early Q series.The show assembled a familiar Milligan blend of sketches, visual jokes, corpsing, unfinished ideas and rehearsed improvisation. The recently late Chris Langham, Emil Wolk and a young Mark Steel were among the supporting performers, while the

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01:23:58

The Seagoon Memoirs

Goon Pod ·

2026/09/02

Field Marshals are queuing up to draw their pensions – it’s the first time they ever really wanted to go to the front. But Gunner Ned Seagoon, former Ablutions Orderly at Alamein, has other ways of making a mint. He’s writing his memoirs and reckons they’ll earn him a fortune. For – shock horror – they reveal the truth about the hygiene of the General Staff and the secrets of the military laundry.Written by himself and Maurice Wiltshire, this was the last Goon Show script Larry Stephens ever worked

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01:42:24

The Royal Variety Performance 1963 (with Steven...

Goon Pod ·

2026/08/26

An annual tradition dating back to the year the Titanic went down – a useful metaphor to describe some of the subsequent acts who sank without trace – the Royal Variety Performance brings together entertainers from around the world to perform in front of faintly bored members of the Royal Family for charity. Arguably the most memorable and significant show was in 1963, when a group from Liverpool took to the stage and belted out four numbers for the Queen Mum. This was the height of Beatlemania, yet

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01:44:36

The 1963 Royal Variety Performance (with Steven...

Goon Pod ·

2026/08/26

An annual tradition dating back to the year the Titanic went down – a useful metaphor to describe some of the subsequent acts who sank without trace – the Royal Variety Performance brings together entertainers from around the world to perform in front of faintly bored members of the Royal Family for charity.Arguably the most memorable and significant show was in 1963, when a group from Liverpool took to the stage and belted out four numbers for the Queen Mum. This was the height of Beatlemania, yet

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01:26:35

Soft Beds, Hard Battles (1974)

Goon Pod ·

2026/08/19

The first half of the 1970s was not a particularly fruitful period for Peter Sellers, at least in terms of critical and commercial success. He made a slew of films which failed to take off or, in some cases, weren't even released. Some of his worst films date from this period, chiefly the execrable Where Does It Hurt?, which we previously covered on Goon Pod with Paul Litchfield and Jeremy Limb.Those two return this week to tackle Sellers' 1974 wartime 'comedy' Soft Beds, Hard

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01:22:39

Sellers & Milligan Mixtape

Goon Pod ·

2026/08/12

This week, special guest Richard Moore joins Tyler for what we're going to call Sellers & Milligan Mixtape. Richard has pulled together a number of rarities and curios from the recording careers of the two ex-Goons and created a couple of fantasy compilations: Sellers From The Cellars and Miscellaneous Milligan.To try and describe some of these tracks would rather give the game away, so we'll restrict ourselves to saying that some will be familiar to diehard Goons enthusiasts, but we

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01:24:02

The Silent Bugler

Goon Pod ·

2026/08/05

The Silent Bugler is a good example of Spike Milligan revisiting earlier material, with the later Vintage Goons remake refining rather than reinventing the original. The original story from Series 4 opens with a Cold War setting and digs at Senator McCarthy, Winston Churchill and the world of secret agents before introducing Seagoon as MI5's Agent X2. The Vintage Goons remake necessarily tweaks some of the more topical material. Much of the enjoyment comes from the performances rather than the

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01:24:37

Only Two Can Play (1962)

Goon Pod ·

2026/07/29

The wan Don who thinks he’s Don Juan – a Welsh librarian gets the seven-year-itch.This week writer Paul Whitelaw makes his first faltering steps into Goon Pod territory to talk about a favourite film: Only Two Can Play, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Peter Sellers, Virginia Maskell and Mai Zetterling. Released barely a year before Sellers breasted the tape of international stardom with The Pink Panther, it is a delightfully quirky, darkly amusing tale based on a Kingsley Amis novel. Amis

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01:32:22

Puckoon (1963)

Goon Pod ·

2026/07/22

“Caw!” said the crow. “Balls!” said the Milligan.This week, we look at a book that Spike Milligan claimed took either five years - or ten years and fifteen secretaries - to write, and which “damn nearly drove me mad.” But just how much of Spike himself and his life bled into the narrative? And how did a marriage proposal expedite its completion? Puckoon was, for a long time, Spike’s only novel, and it proved both a commercial and critical success. Set in the fictional Irish village of Puckoon, a

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01:29:44

How I Won The War (1967)

Goon Pod ·

2026/07/15

Following on from last week’s conversation with Samira Ahmed about A Hard Day’s Night we continue the Richard Lester theme with a look at his 1967 anti-war satire How I Won the War - a film often lazily regarded as a John Lennon vehicle, but in reality a far stranger, darker, and more ensemble-drivenpiece of cinema.The film stars Michael Crawford as Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody, a hapless officer leading a doomed platoon through a series of absurd and increasingly brutal Second World War missions

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01:13:05

Samira Ahmed on A Hard Day's Night

Goon Pod ·

2026/07/08

Writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed joins Tyler this week to talk about her new book on A Hard Day’s Night and its roots in the world of the Goons, from the Fred shows to The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film.Also:Richard Lester’s creative vision and Alun Owen’s pitch-perfect scriptWhy Beatlemania was distinctly black and white and how the film mirrors thisWilfrid Brambell – and why the film wouldn't be the same without him.Ringo and David JansonFavourite scenes: from the ad agency to

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01:25:57

World War One (aka '_________!')

Goon Pod ·

2026/07/01

Join us as we march off to war wearing squeaky socks and woolly underpants, before surrendering to the twisted logic of Spike Milligan (“better looking than Peter Sellers”).This show, one of the highlights of the Goon Show’s eighth series and released on BBC LP in 1981, has a plot of sorts: 1917 and England is at war, France is at war, while Eccles is at lunch. Grytpype and Moriarty sell German army shares to Neddie. They claim that the Germans are bound to win any war they enter. Seagoon discovers

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01:29:42

Digby The Biggest Dog In The World (1973)

Goon Pod ·

2026/06/24

"He's only got to lift his leg and he'll drown 50 kids!"This week: Digby, The Biggest Dog in the World, a 1973 British family comedy in which an Old English Sheepdog accidentally drinks an experimental growth formula and raises the woof! Leading the cast is Jim Dale as Jeff Eldon, an animal psychologist at a NATO research facility; when Spike Milligan (playing a shameless German stereotype) moves in next door he is all for having him impounded as he mistakenly believes Jeff thinks

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01:18:06

Fool Britannia (LP, 1963)

Goon Pod ·

2026/06/17

"Round the back for the old cherry brandy!"Recorded in New York on 6 August 1963, this satirical comedy album brought together Peter Sellers, Anthony Newley, Joan Collins, Leslie Bricusse, Daniel Massey and Michael Lipton at the height of the Profumo Affair.The midnight session accommodated Newley and Massey, whose Broadway shows had only just finished. The idea had been conceived less than two weeks earlier while Newley and Bricusse were holidaying in Montauk and they were keen to

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01:31:47

Invasion Quartet (1961)

Goon Pod ·

2026/06/10

This week we look at Invasion Quartet (1961), one of the most significant, if forgotten, films in Spike Milligan's career. Set in a military convalescent hospital on the English south coast during 1942, the story follows three disabled service officers and an ageing military veteran who decide to launch their own private invasion of occupied France to destroy a German super-gun known as "Big Hermann", whose shelling is disrupting both the war effort and their cricket matches. The

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01:30:03

Marty Feldman - One Pair Of Eyes

Goon Pod ·

2026/06/03

“I don’t find myself funny… it came as a surprise to me that I didn’t really learn anything by watching myself.”In June 1969 BBC2 broadcast a documentary in which comedian and writer Marty Feldman tried to discover the essence of comedy by speaking with some of its leading lights such as Eric Morecambe, Dudley Moore, Denis Norden and... Peter Sellers. According to a critic on The Daily Mirror: “Given the low state of comedy on the box right now – well, there’s Father, Dear Father and The Gnomes of

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01:33:19

The Goon Show At 75

Goon Pod ·

2026/05/27

It's 75 years since the first Goon Show (billed as Crazy People) was broadcast and to mark the occasion Tyler welcomes listeners from all over the world - Ian Richards, Colleen Dawson, Martin Eggleston, Fred Velez, Colin Fee and Ted Webb - to share their Goon Show stories and memories in a special episode. Topics include where they first discovered the show, the importance of Harry Secombe, the show's legacy, favourite music in the show, how it has directly impacted on their lives, obscure

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