Ratings

Gleaned from alt.fan.goons and other sources.
Note: Any discussion threads are indicated by indenting.

	"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 paper mache 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.
	"I don't think much of The Telegoons still exists. They're not as bad as Wilmut makes them out to be--I saw bits at the Son of Fred Weekend." Paul Martin
	"[The Goon Show] didn't go on TV as such but a puppet series called The Telegoons was made and shown on British TV. Quite good, I thought." George
	"Yur, I remember 'em. Every time I read anything about [The Telegoons] they are generally described as a very poor relative of the radio shows...I thought they were very good. I was born after the Goons radio shows finished, but I can still remember the puppets: they made an indelible impression on me as a child, especially Eccles and Bloodnok (then came Do Not Adjust Your Set, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and Monty Python...what chance did a child stand?), and I'd love to see an episode or all again..." Harry
	"Having seen a few episodes [of The Telegoons] (most recently at The Weekend Called Fred) I can tell you that the pictures were better in the radio version." Simon
	"Nicely put. My biggest problem with [The Telegoons] was that the pace was way too fast, and do I recall correctly that there was no audience? Come to think of it, it was rather like the tape I listened to recently of a rehearsal (The Nasty Affair at the Burami Oasis?) in which they zipped right through. The real show with audience reacting spurring them to heights of timing is way more fun and more funny." Dave Yost
	"The Telegoons were only fifteen minutes long so either a lot of the jokes had to go or the pace had to speed up. I don't think an audience is that important. The Starlings works very well without one and doesn't suffer from people laughing at one gag and obscuring the beginning of the next." Andy Davison
	"I beg to differ. The original Goon Show demo tape was recorded without an audience and the programmers rejected it out of hand. Then, when they managed to get Jimmy Grafton to pull some strings, recorded it with an audience, BINGO! The rest, as they say, is geography. Or is that history." Richard P. Grant
	"What I meant was that The Starlings works very well without an audience. It's possible that the original Sellers' Castle pilot failed because the BBC were still incredibly stuffy (even more so than during the Goon Show's run) and hadn't got used to the Goons being popular or perhaps the script wasn't as polished as later ones were. Yes, the Goons' timing was mostly brilliant but the occasional line is slightly obscured. I don't think an audience is essential and some very good comedy has been done without one--the Digby Spode stuff (late 1980's or early 1990's. Brogue Male Productions if I recall. A sort of 1930's ripping yarn starring Sir Digby Spode and his side-kick, Carstairs) springs to mind." Andy Davison
	"Does anyone know if The Telegoons episodes are available on video, and if so, from where? Gad these granite banjos are killing me... I'm also looking for a video of [The Case Of] The Mukkinese Battle Horn --post replies here Jeem!" KOS
	"I was at the second Weekend Called Fred and we did see a Telegoons episode as well as one of the puppets, which was in very fragile shape indeed. I don't know where they got the episode." R. Foresythe
	"I remember [The Telegoons]. Pretty abysmal though, if I recall." Geoff
	"Bluebottle was a reasonable simulacrum of the way he sounded on wireless, but Eccles looked nothing like himself. The signature tune was OK though." Miles Batchelor
	"I think I saw [The Telegoons] before hearing the repeats [of The Goon Show] on the wireless." Humbug
	"This pic is from a TV show called The Telegoons, based on the BBC radio comedy, The Goon Show. I believe it was on the TV in the UK in the 1960's, sadly I never saw it in Australia." Robert James
	"Nice pic. I'm going to guess the left-hand character is Neddy Seagoon, but the right one? Willium-mate? Surely not Grytpype-Thynne? Got any more? I never saw the show either." Andrew C. Taubman [The above-mentioned pic in fact shows Ned Seagoon and Moriarty, in a scene from Napoleon's Piano, 1st Series, #4, see gallery page.]
	"As an ardent Eccles fan, can anyone tell me if The Telegoons ever got onto video and may my kneecaps explode in delight at the prospects, tell this poor lad, where such an ecstasy may be purchased?...bearing in mind that home is now New Zealand. My favourite? Well almost 40 years has passed and I think I only saw them once, but I recall the Albert Monument being pivotal in the space race [The First Albert Memorial to the Moon, 2nd Series, #8] and that sticks in my mind." Ian (Eccles) Mallett
	"I wish I could watch Telegoons. No, wait, maybe I don't. It's a strange dilemma, because listening to the Goons allows me to imagine what the Goons look like, and I would guess the puppet show would limit that image for good. (A Hern with an imagination? That's un-Herned of!)" Dave
	"It did, desperately. A graphics version [of The Telegoons] might have got close to the surrealism of the sound, and the character drawings the cast created (see various ingoonabula) fit them very well, but two puppet prisons being towed through the water in a sea-battle [Tales of Old Dartmoor, 2nd Series, #5] ...too pedestrian for words, my dear. Parlons d'autre chose [tr. Let's talk about something else]." Tim Poston
	"I just saw a clip of The Telegoons on a programme about football called Kicking and Screaming. The clip was from The Whistling Spy Enigma (2nd Series #9) so, presumably, the BBC still have copies somewhere." Andy Davison
	"Does anybody apart from me remember The Telegoons? This was a series of Goons stories presented on television in the '60's using puppets which, as I recall, looked just as you might imagine. Further to this, does anyone know if it is possible to access this series on video? Yours in vain hope, Tim"
	"...I was only ten when [The Telegoons] was aired, but I vaguely remember one episode about exploding boot polish [Scradje, 2nd Series, #1], and another concerning an attempt to build a canal through the air, using a machine that did the work of a hundred men which needed two hundred men to operate it! [The Africa Ship Canal, 2nd Series, #11]" Bill
	"I have an early childhood memory of seeing a TV programme. I remember two strange characters planting dynamite and blowing up a mountain which had been built. It was only years later that I recognized Eccles, Bluebottle, and the scene from The Greatest Mountain in the World and worked out that I had seen at least some of The Telegoons. Happily, I think I survived the experience more or less unscathed and am now living happily with seventy-odd taped shows." Duncan [The actual Telegoons episode name is The Underwater Mountain, 2nd Series #3. The Greatest Mountain in the World is The Goon Show episode from which it was adapted.]
	"My [video tape] Want List: ...Telegoons,..." Susan Billingsley
	"...why can't we have a 'nostalgia channel' that shows all the old (and probably very cheap) TV programmes. What about a TV channel that played...The Telegoons,..." Bruce Simpson
	"Thinks - wasn't there the original cardboard cut out and string Telegoons many years ago? Or is old age dimming my memory, mon capitane?" Peter Ward (Blingebottle)
	"There was Jim, there was Jim, but those naughty old fools at the Beeb Beeb Ceeb trashed them when they cleared out their vaults in the 1970's." PFJ
	"Gonks are (?were) egg-shaped soft cloth toys, between 6-12 inches high, that were first around in the early 1960s (slight embarassement here at admitting to remembering those days so well!)--they were sort of funny characters, without arms or legs (or with floppy arms and legs) --rather like Humpty Dumpty meets the Telegoons puppets (how many people out there remember those???)." Christine Janis
	"...Mum and Dad managed to work in lots of family times together, whether it was a picnic, or reeling with laughter together watching Telegoons on TV..." Steve Bates (a.k.a. Tardus)

KEY:
	Needle nardle noo!
	Ying tong iddle-i-po!
	Fine, fine, fine!
	Fine, fine!
	Fine!
	What what what what what!

Ratings...