History

Go Ask Eccles & Bluebottle...

The Telegoons were billed as BBC Radio?s world-famous Goons in a new puppet series for television. The Radio Times television section was quite up-beat about the series, as indicated by the following preview of the episode entitled Napoleon?s Piano (T.G. 1^st series, #4), broadcast October 26th, 1963:

?The dauntless Ned Seagoon and his eccentric friends are bent on grand larceny today. Their objective is the world?s most famous and closely guarded treasure house, the Louvre Museum in Paris. Their plan? To make away with one of France?s most prized national possessions?none other than the ?Personal Grand Imperial Piano? of the great Napoleon Bonaparte

?As before, Spike Milligan is the historian of this epic adventure, and he and fellow goons Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers supply those outlandish voices while Tony Young?s puppets go through the ridiculous motions of the plot, whose foredoomed end is utter chaos. But at least the Goons unearth one hitherto unknown fact about France?s Man of Destiny??Boney? was a rotten pianist.? (BBC Radio Times, October 24th, 1963)

Nevertheless, the BBC?s audience research department gave The Telegoons a disappointingly low rating. Spike was so let down by this cool reception that he has consistently refused to endorse all subsequent proposals (of which there have been several) to bring the Goons to the screen in animated or puppet form (Norma Farnes: The Goons The Story,1997, p.174). This more than any other reason is probably why the BBC has not repeated The Telegoons since the original runs, nor transferred them to home video. Therefore, despite early sales to the television systems of several Commonwealth countries, in addition to several film libraries in the UK, the complete series was broadcast once, never to be heard of again.

Seven years after The Telegoons completed its run on UK television, the BBC notified Grosvenor Films that the non-returnable minimum guarantee paid by them for overseas rights to the ?Goon Puppets Films? as part of their contribution to the cost of the films had still not been earned in respect of overseas sales. Nothing happened subsequently to change this situation, and despite the good money now being made by the BBC?s home video division, no such version of The Telegoons has ever been produced.

Bill Horsman (long-time chairman of the Goon Show Preservation Society), writing in the society?s newsletter, ventured an explanation for why The Telegoons were not very popular with (as he put it) the "heavily oiled, gin encrusted Goon addicts" of the time, namely that the series was broadcast too soon after The Goon Show had ended and also while The Goon Show was still being repeated on radio. Bill further says, ?The die-hards insisted, and still do..., that the Goon humour does not translate successfully to visual--?it's all in the mind you know?.?

Nevertheless, this author has found ample evidence that the generations born after the Goons own generation have a very different point of view. Today?s ?forty-something-year-old? Goon fans, who were in the 9-and-up age-group way back when The Telegoons were shown on television, have many fond memories of the puppets. Nevertheless, due to the absence of television re-runs, there are now more than two generations of Milligan fans (many of whom are familiar with recordings of the Goon Show, Q, and other works of Milligan), who have not had the opportunity to see The Telegoons. Those hardy few who have had that privilege (mostly on 16 mm cine, or more likely a videotape borrowed from the GSPS) seem to have been favourably impressed. GSPS video archivist Paul Norman (who was born around the same time as The Telegoons), after watching video copies of The Telegoons films, exclaimed, ?...these programmes are seriously amusing!!? (GSPS newsletter #71, Jan. 1993). Surely, therefore, The Telegoons films are worthy of commercial video release!

That The Telegoons managed to get their own two-page cartoon strip in the (now defunct) TV Comic children?s weekly (drawn by children?s comic strip artist Bill Titcombe, with scripts by Dick Millington) is further evidence that the original television version of The Telegoons must have been very popular (with children, at least) throughout the British Isles. In fact the comic strip version of The Telegoons lasted for several years after the television series ended, running for a total of 170 weeks. Since TV Comic regularly conducted polls of its readers, a long run time such as this a strong indicator of popularity. Although The Telegoons comic strip never made it into the colour pages of TV Comic (that was reserved for Popeye, Supercar, and later Space Patrol), at least one TV Comic Annual (1966) dressed them up in full glorious colour.

To better understand the sustained popularity that The Telegoons enjoyed among the younger age group back in 1963, there is probably no better place to start than the following eye-witness account (GSPS newsletter #29, Jan. 1982)

?It is difficult for me to judge just how successful the two [Telegoons] series were as I was only 9 at the time they were shown. I can, however, comment on the effect they had on myself and my friends. At school, the show quickly became something of a cult. The playground soon began to echo to the sound of Goon-type impersonations, as no doubt it had done ten years earlier, when the radio show first began to take a grip on the nation.?

That this is at odds with the apparently poor audience research ratings given The Telegoons, suggests that the BBC polled the parents of the program?s viewing audience and not the actual (predominantly younger) viewing audience itself. Although The Telegoons was intended for an adult audience, it was the 9- to 17-year olds that appreciated it the most, something that seems to have completely escaped the BBC?s notice. Therefore it is a great pity that when Spike was faced with the official audience ratings, he did not go and visit the schoolyards of England. If he had, he would have heard the shrill voices of hoards of would-be Eccles and Bluebottles, echoing Goonish phrases that that they had learned from television the previous Saturday evening. And now, thirty eight years later, I get many e-mails from this formerly ragged band of schoolboy Telegoons fans (no former schoolgirls yet), all asking why the powers that be have not seen fit to either re-run the series, or make it available in the home video format.

"I was but eight when The Telegoons 'hit' me. I was knocked out by the humour. So keen was I, that I used to record the shows onto my dad's old Philips tape recorder so I could listen again. Now at the age of 45 I can still recite almost entirely The Hastings Flyer episode, and various bits of other shows. Eccles was, and continues to be my absolute favourite. At junior school I was always drawing him, and even attended a fancy dress party clad in sacking, mad vertical hair and a large red nose constructed of papier-m?ch? over a small balloon. I didn't win--but boy was it fun being an idiot.... Later I became hooked on the radio shows too--but The Telegoons were a massive influence for me."
Dave L.

"Being born in 1953 I am only a young 'un when it comes to remembering the Goons on the wireless, so for me it was always The Telegoons which caught my attention. I used to watch every episode on the TV, and then when it came out in the TV Comic I asked my parents if I could change my regular weekly comic order at the newsagents for this new magazine. They didn't mind, as it was the same price as my old comic, about 6d. if I remember (in old money)."
Les Drew

...and a plea from the
school yards of England...

"Having been a huge Telegoon fan when I was a schoolboy--it was all the bread and butter puddings my old mum used to make--I was spondificated to find a web site dedicated to their memory.

What I cannot understand is why the Beeb in its infinite er occasional wisdom have never released a video. I have seen the occasional rare clip on the 1000 greatest bits from the beeb type programme, but little more!

I've had the theme galloping around in my brain since those magic days and it was wonderful to hear it reincarnated on your site in glorious MP3.

Long live Spike, the Goons and their televisual counterparts" Tim Hannah

A Short History of The Telegoons...

Go Ask Eccles & Bluebottle...