The Goon Show/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • It's damn difficult to pick a single moment out of The Goon Show's surreality - the series was consistently funny, but "What time is it Eccles?" would be up there.
  • With this one right behind:

Bluebottle: Oh, a cocktail. Good health. [Gulps]
(FX: Huge rumbling explosion - the kind where you hear bricks & bits of timber falling in the distance)
Bluebottle: You rotten swine! You have nearly deaded me - look, my kneecaps have dropped four inches. Who made that cocktail?
Gravely Headstone: Molotov.

Jonathan Ross: I have a letter to read out to you from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

Spike Milligan: Do I kneel down for this?

Jonathan Ross: "As someone who grew up to the sounds of The Goon Show on the steam-driven wireless, I must confess that I've been a lifelong fan of the participants in the show and particularly of Spike Milligan..."

Spike Milligan: Oh, the little grovelling bastard.[1]

  • In "The String Robberies", we are primed to expect an appearance by Eccles:

[Knocking at a door]
Bloodnok: Who is that there, who is it? Only a lunatic would be out in such a storm!

    • -- but instead of just one Eccles, we get a whole chorus of them, all singing "Good King Wenceslas" with great feeling.
  • For a while, there was a great Running Gag in which Eccles made his first appearance in each episode singing a Paint Your Wagon song with...different lyrics: "I talk to the trees/That's why they put me away..."
  1. They were friends in real life.