Tele-Goonography...

  Introduction...

Twenty six of the original Goon Show scripts were shortened and re-worked by Maurice Wiltshire, to provide the basis for a series of fifteen-minute puppet films entitled The Telegoons. The original musical interludes were deleted, and Wallace Greenslade's announcing parts were mostly taken over by Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (see Puppets section). Taking advantage of the visual nature of television, frequent snippets of visual humour were added in place of the Goons Show's mind pictures.

The first episode of The Telegoons hit the British Broadcasting Corporation's television airwaves on Saturday October 5th, 1963. The New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation followed suit on Monday August 17th, 1964. The UK BBCtv broadcasts were telecined from 35 mm film prints. I believe it's possible, however, that the New Zealand and other overseas broadcasts of the series may have been telecined from 16 mm prints.  

Not much happened with The Telegoons after the initial broadcasts. UK fans of the show were left with two more years of the comic strip in TV Comic, a couple of Mountain Films 8 mm home movies, and for those fortunate to live within hailing distance of Leeds, rental of 16 mm film prints. The North East branch of the Goon Show Preservation Society of Great Britain (GSPS), under the guidance of Bill Horsman, were regular customers of the film rental company's 16 mm Telegoons episodes. Some of these film showings involved the GSPS North West branch as well. One such occasion was the GSPS Second North West Annual Convention, held on the evening of June 2nd, 1984, where two of the episodes were screened�said to be one of the high notes of the evening.

YORCON, the 1979 convention of British science fiction fandom, held in Leeds over the weekend of 13th - 16th April 1979, screened two episodes of The Telegoons in the 'shorts' category (probably from the same film rental company). Lest you think that The Telegoons sounds a bit far removed from science fiction, they made up for it by also screening several Sci-Fi standards, including 2001. 

A few years later, in 1986, the film rental company in Leeds that had The Telegoons films was acquired by another larger rental company. Soon afterwards, Bill Horsman got a phone call from his contact at the original company, who said that the precious Telegoons films might end up being dumped, due to a catalogue reshuffle, and would he like to buy them. A large bank overdraft later, all twenty-six of the films were acquired, and eventually made their way into the archives of the GSPS. Thus the rumours that the GSPS now owns 16mm film copies of all 26 of the episodes, bought by the Steam Count (a.k.a. Bill Horsman), apparently legitimately, are in fact true. (Note: A contact inside the BBC recently informed me that the BBC's archives still retain eighteen of The Telegoons episodes on 35 mm, making the GSPS 16 mm holdings larger, even if not as pristine, nor as high-quality due to some loss of resolution in the process of printing down to 16 mm for distribution.)

Although not using the original soundtrack, the BBC television show, Telly Addicts, apparently showed a video clip from The Hastings Flyer (T.G. s01e09) episode of The Telegoons, sometime in late 1987.

Another Telegoons film was screened at the October 1997 annual convention of the GSPS (Son of a Weekend Called Fred), which was held in Brighton, of Phantom Head Shaver fame.

A further The Telegoons episode, China Story, was screened 5th July 2003 at the GSPS GREAT Grandson of a Weekend called Fred convention held in Egham, Surrey.

The Telegoons -- 1st Series
Radio Times schedule: BBCtv (405 lines) at 1740 on Saturdays.

Broadcast

Original Goon Show

The Ascent of Mount Everest
s01e01

Main plot:
To win �10 million, Ned Seagoon must sing "Rule Britannia" with piano accompaniment, on the top of Mount Everest, but can't remember the words. 

Sub-plot:
Members of the 1953 Everest expedition, Grytpype (presumably Hillary) and Moriarty (presumably Tensing), make the dramatic discovery that someone has beaten them to it. Just two minutes from the summit, they find a tent containing one upright grand piano, one large gas stove, one marble washstand, one iron mangle, one six foot brass bedstead, one corrugated iron airing cupboard, and one galvanised zinc bath, left there in 1901 by intrepid Telegoons mountaineers, Neddie Seagoon, Bloodnok, Henry Crun, Bluebottle, and Eccles. Grytpype and Moriarty agree to keep news of their discovery from the world. 

Points of Interest: A production still from this episode, in colour, is presented in the Film Production section. 

This episode was the basis for the official children's story and colouring book of the same name, published by Tonwen Ltd., 1964. (See Merchandise section)

This episode was also released as the 8 mm home movie, Ascent of Everest, by Mountain Films Ltd., circa 1964. (See Merchandise section)

The original 3rd-series Goon Show broadcast, The Ascent of Mount Everest, was inspired by the real life Everest expedition which was in progress at the time. The stars of this expedition, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay, reached the summit 31 days later. Of course ten years after that, when the radio script was rewritten for the Telegoon puppets, Hillary and Tensing's success was a well known fact, and a library still of Tensing flying the flags on the summit is actually used in this episode. The Telegoons' discovery of a tent, filled with just about every household convenience one could imagine, addressed the real-life question of whether Hillary's expedition found any evidence of prior expeditions, and in particular the 1924 expedition of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. Mallory and Irvine were last seen a few hundred meters from the summit. The debate as to whether Mallory may have preceded Hillary to the top was fueled by the discovery of Mallory's body in 1999. In a recent interview (Forbes.com, New Peaks to Climb, by James Clash, Oct 1, 2000), Sir Edmund Hillary was asked to cast his mind back to the summit of Mount Everest. He said, "There are two things I remember clearly, even in the short time I was there. One is that I did look around a bit to see if there was any sign of remnants of Mallory. I didn't expect there to be, of course, after all those years. And there wasn't."

The Lost Colony
s01e02

Points of Interest: This episode is a modified (and heavily cut) version of the 33:00 pilot film of the same name. Made three years earlier at a cost of �20,000 in private money, the pilot secured funding from the BBC for production of the series. The puppeteers on the pilot were Ron Field, Joan Field, and Ann Field (all of whom were uncredited in the broadcast version). Only one of the pilot puppeteers, Ann Field, was a puppeteer on the series. 

Continuity for the pilot was done by director Tony Young's wife, Doreen Dearnaley (uncredited). 

One of three "assistants" employed to help with changes to the pilot film for broadcast was puppeteer Joan Garrick, of Space Patrol (UK) fame. Joan contributed her puppeteer skills to the 1:40 Christopher Columbus opening sequence (opening sketch), which sets up the plot and provides a quick laugh or two to warm up the audience. A 10 second linking scene with Grytpype-Thynne in his soon-to-be-familiar role as announcer, manipulated by John Dudley (uncredited), was added at the end of the Columbus sequence. Based on the success of this composite opening sequence, a similar format was used to good effect on all subsequent episodes in the series.

A surviving script of The Lost Colony's complete opening sequence is entitled 'Tales of Manhattan' (Opening Sequence). For reasons unknown this name was either not intended for the modified pilot film, or was dropped. In any case, the pilot's original title, The Lost Colony, was retained for the broadcast episode. 

The title sequence for this episode says that it was produced by Wendy Danielli, in association with Tony Young. This simply reflects that it was Wendy who arranged the private financing of the pilot. However, after funding for the series was obtained from the BBC, all subsequent episodes were produced by Tony Young, with Wendy Danielli as associate producer.

All evidence suggests that the pilot film's soundtrack was in fact the radio Goon Show recording, The Sale of Manhattan (GS s06e11) (which, by-the-way, was announced on that show as "The Lost Colony"). One fairly reliable source, the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy (see Bibliography section), says it is thought that The Telegoons used extracts from the original BBC recordings of the radio Goon Show. Since no amount of listening has shown any commonality, this rumour probably arose from the way that the pilot film was made, and does not apply to the episodes which followed, all of which have newly recorded soundtracks based on Maurice Wiltshire's rewrites of the original radio scripts. In any case, it is unlikely that the Goons would have recorded a one-off soundtrack for the pilot (see discussion in the Misconceptions section), particularly since pilot puppeteer Ann Field remembers director Tony Young planning to "make a killing" by reusing the Goon Show recordings (thereby saving the huge cost of rerecording them). Ann also recalls that the pilot was shot using a dialogue tape with the Goons' voices. She also confirmed that the pilot film was something like 33 minutes long, and that, "The [relatively slow] speed of the puppet movement was the main concern for all," all of which rather clinches the matter. To further strengthen this assumption, I have done a trial edit of the first few minutes of The Sale of Manhattan Goon Show radio recording, and have not been too surprised by how well it matches the film footage in the 1963 broadcast episode.

Nevertheless, the largest modification of the pilot film was not the addition of an opening sequence, nor was it the deletion of more than 18 minutes of footage. Nor was it the changes to the credits. Instead, sometime in early 1963, the old 1960 soundtrack was replaced with a newly recorded one that better took into account the speed of the puppets, also providing uniformity of style with the other episodes. The difficulties of synchronizing the dialogue with the pre-existing film footage (which don't exist if the dialogue is recorded first) were exacerbated by the Goons' tendency to ad lib. For similar reasons it must also have been difficult to match up Peter Sellers' dialogue for the first eight episodes filmed, which due to his delayed arrival at the voice recording sessions, had been done by a stand-in. To Peter's credit, after the dialogue recordings for the remaining episodes were completed, he went back and re-recorded his parts for the first episodes (see the Film Production section). I can only imagine the effect this must have had on the dubbing department! 

Notes: The difficulties of matching dialogue to pre-existing film footage have also been touched on in Part 3 of The Goons The Story, although discussed there out of the correct historical context (see Bibliography section).

The missing footage at the start of the GSPS PAL VHS tape for this episode contains the following dialogue: 

PETER: In this tiny ship...in that great ocean...Christopher Columbus, a poor Italian navigator, made (a discovery which changed the entire course of.)

One of the later episodes of The Telegoons, Napoleon's Piano (s01e04), has an out-of-place scene showing Ned with feathers behind his ears, at sea in a zinc bath (3:37 to 4:49), which clearly belongs in The Lost Colony (at 7:00, just before Ned arrives in New York). Clearly this 1:12 of footage was part of the pilot film, and was cut when the pilot was reduced from its original 33 minute length down to the 15 minutes required for the series. Since the original dialogue in this scene is intact, it would be possible to restore some closer semblance to the pilot by adding back this scene, and removing the opening sequence. (The sound track would have to be reverted too). Also see the points of interest for Napoleon's Piano, below. It is possible that further research will identify other "transplanted" scenes cut from the pilot film.

The Fear of Wages
s01e03

Ned Seagoon's missing regiment is owed �33 million in back pay and interest, but red tape and nitroglycerine prevents them from collecting.

Points of Interest: Some production pictures from this episode are presented in the Film Production section. The same hut prop appears again in The Africa Ship Canal (s02e11).

A copy of the original shooting schedule for this episode is shown at the end of the Film Production section.

Loosely based on Henri-Georges Clouzot's gripping 1953 film noir, The Wages of Fear. which concerns transporting nitroglycerin across dangerous terrain on the back of a lorry. 

Napoleon's Piano
s01e04

Ned is duped into moving a piano from one room to another for �5...only to find that the piano is in the Louvre Museum in Paris, and must be brought back to England!

Points of Interest: The scene (3:37 to 4:49) showing Ned with feathers behind his ears, at sea in a zinc bath, where he meets Eccles in a floating gas stove, who asks, "How far are we from America?" is clearly out of place. Conversely, this 1:12 scene fits perfectly into the broadcast version of The Lost Colony, and was obviously one of several cuts made to the 33 minute pilot film version of The Lost Colony, some of which were reused. 

What makes this scene stand out is that Ned is supposed to be in the English Channel, but the dialogue indicates that he's in the middle of the Atlantic! The very least we could do with this sloppy edit would be to restore it back to its correct position in The Lost Colony, which would improve the continuity of both episodes!!! The correct position to restore it in the broadcast episode of The Lost Colony (s01e02) is at 7:00, just before Ned arrives in New York.

This episode was released as an 8 mm home movie by Mountain Films Ltd., c.1964. (See Merchandise section)

The Last Tram
s01e05

Inspector Seagoon thinks that all London's trams were melted down into melted down trams ten years ago, but there is still one on Clapham Common...

Point of Interest: Based on the real-life dismantling of municipal tramway systems in the UK during the early 1950s. 

The China Story
s01e06

BBC 35 mm film print: footage 1310' (14:33.30 @ 24 fps; 13:58.40 @ BBC-tv 25 fps).
GSPS 16 mm print: footage 520.5' (14:27.50 @ 24 fps) (several splices).
GSPS PAL videotape: 13:56 @ 25 fps.
GSPS mp4, MPEG-2: 14:29.13 @ 24 fps (telecine, 20858 frames, cleaned)

British Ambassador Ned Seagoon has to get a certain rosewood upright piano overland to the Great Wall of China.

Points of Interest: This was the first all-new episode produced for The Telegoons series, and was made immediately after the Tales of Manhattan opening sequence (see notes for The Lost Colony). 

Continuity for The China Story was to have been Doreen Dearnaley (dir. Tony Young's wife, who had previously done continuity for The Telegoons pilot film) but when an opportunity came along to do continuity on a bigger project (probably Wolf Rilla's 1963 movie, Cairo), she bowed out and recommended her friend Doreen Soan for the position. Doreen Soan accepted the job and went on to do continuity for all episodes.

TG film credits SM only

The Canal
s01e07

The story told using stills from the film

Ned Seagoon, adopted son of one of the adopted wives of famous amateur brain surgeon Lord Grytpype-Thynne, returns home after forty-three years at college.

Catch-phrase: "Neddie, promise me...never go near the Canal"

Point of Interest: Ann Field, one of the puppeteers, made Neddie's scarf for The Canal. She also made him wet, and changed his clothes for all his scenes in this episode. Nowadays these tasks would probably be done by a 'dresser'.

The Hastings Flyer
s01e09

Points of Interest: Some production pictures from this episode, several of which are in colour, are presented in the Film Production section. 

This was the first episode filmed with Ron Field's electronic puppet lip-synch system.

The Mystery of the Marie Celeste-Solved
s01e10

Point of Interest: Despite over-use of "Ahoy!" and "Pull up a bollard", this episode is loosely based on the historical mystery, which to this day has still not been solved.

The International Christmas Pudding
s01e11

Point of Interest: On this same evening, in the time slot preceding The Telegoons, Doctor Who (episode title: The Survivors) first comes face-to-face with his principal adversaries, The Daleks.  

The Telegoons -- 2nd Series
Radio Times schedule: BBC-1 TV (405 lines) on Saturdays,
at 1715 (#1-6), 1700 (#7-12, 13 & 15) and 1725 (#14).

Broadcast

Original Goon Show

TG credits SM only

The Booted Gorilla
s02e02

The story told using stills from the film

Sooner or later, the booted gorilla's footwear will need repairing. So Ned Seagoon, determined to catch the monster, sets a trap in the form of a collapsible shoe repair shop run by Mr. Crun.

Tales of Montmartre
s02e10

Point of Interest: A copy of the original shooting schedule for this episode is shown at the end of the Film Production section.

One of the few episodes to include the voice of a woman (OoooOoooohhh! Where's my old medical charts!?), probably lent by associate producer Wendy Danielli, who held an Equity card, and was fluent in French. (The radio Goon Show original of the same name, had also featured a woman's voice, that of actress Charlotte Mitchell. So Tony Young was maintaining a venerable Goon Show tradition.)

TG credits SM only

The Africa Ship Canal
s02e11

Points of Interest: Electronic puppet lip-synch.

Inspired by the real-life Suez Crisis of the mid 1950s, in which giants struggled to control the world's most strategic sea route.

The Affair of the Lone Banana
s02e12

In the grounds of the British Embassy in a South American republic, three heroes are dug in round the lone banana tree--the last symbol of waning British prestige.

1964-06-20

The Nadger Plague
s02e14

A tale of olde and not so-merry England in which Lord Seagoon tries to escape the dreaded Nadger plague, only to end up as an 8-day chiming clock on a mantle piece!

Point of Interest: Electronic puppet lip-synch.

The Siege of Fort Knight
s02e15

Brigadier General Lord Seagoon's story of a struggle at Fort Knight in the foothills of Wadi-El-Yu-Want, where the defenders have ample food, but nothing to cook it on.

The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu-Manchu
s02e13

After losing to the British Empire in a rigged international saxophone playing contest, fiendish Fred explodes his enemies' trouser buttons, destroys all metal saxophones (27,001 of them!), and with his bamboo instrument becomes undisputed world saxophone champion. 

The 2nd series was immediately followed by repeats of six of the first series;
BBC-1 TV, Saturdays at 1700 (first two), 1715 (next three), and 1745.
Additional PasB information is given, where it is known:

TG film credits SM only

The Telegoons
Further Repeats from the 2nd Series
Broadcast by BBCtv

Broadcast

Original Goon Show

TG credits SM only

The Telegoons -- Regional NZ Broadcasts
Note: The order differs somewhat from the UK, and
varies between the four regional transmission centres.
Broadcast by NZBC (625 lines).
Dates and times as published in the NZ Listener.

The Telegoons -- Regional ABC Broadcasts
Broadcast by ABC (625 lines).
Dates and times as published in TV Week

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