Christmas present

[Tony Press]

Discuss last night's edition of the Goon Show? Why, it was almost identical to the previous 50 shows... a name change here, a slightly different foreign Johnny to mock there, as fresh as a dripping tap...

I know there were those who were old before their time who didn't get The Goons- you probably didn't approve of Monty Python- each to his own.

You would have also disliked Tommy Handley's  ITMA with the endless repetition of the bibulous Colonel Chinstrap (I don't mind if I do), the formidable charlady Mrs Mopp (can I do you now sir), the dubious vendor Ali Oop (you likee pretty postcard, verry nice low price)- much of it very non PC. 

[Ruairidh Dunford]

I enjoy the Goons, and Monty Python, but I have more of this man’s work on 78s than any other:

https://youtu.be/F2TOF4LPeGI

Happy Hogmanay from the Highlands, Daisy will pipe the New Year in later…

[Steve Bryant]

I love those shows and especially Spike Jones. Happy New Year to you.
Stephen

[Tony Press]

And Fawlty Towers  

To bring it back to Christmas Presents - some years back I was given a VHS tape of Hancock's Half Hour for Christmas! 

I still have a working VHS tape deck 

So a happy new year to you all for 2023 and may it be better than the last three years.

[Ruairidh Dunford]

Doesn’t everyone??

   

[Tony Press]

But my Betamax has long gone (although I think I still have a Beta tape) 

[Duncan Grimmond]

I was intrigued and much entertained by the Goons as a 12 year old in 1962. I still know the EP by heart (almost anyway) I recognise it was a wonderful tangential and skilled piece of comedic entertainment which was hugely influential on many writers and see it as a tribute to the genius of Spike Milligan but I find it stale beyond measure today. It's still available (endlessly) on R4 Extra and I can't get to the off button fast enough.
There are so many brilliant young comedians today (some of whom acknowledge their indebtedness to the Goons) but there is also a limit to the number of times I can laugh at Able Seaman Staines or Private Hugh Jampton or even "He's fallen in the water". The villains were always foreign, often German or Japanese, and the out-and-out racism which was current in the 1950s is anachronistic. The plots were thin and endlessly repeated, something that TW3, At Last the 1948 Show, Monty Python, et al managed to leave behind.

[Ivor Hawkins]

excuse me, I nodded off there zzzz....

[Tony Press]

I didn't say I still listened to the Goons