The White Box of Great Bardfield

Released 69 years ago this week, The Cockleshell Heroes was a heavily fictionalised account of the real-life WW2 Operation Frankton, in which a group of marines, headed by Herbert ‘Blondie’ Hasler, covertly entered Bordeaux Harbour in kayaks (or ‘Cockles’) to sabotage German cargo vessels. The film starred actor/director Jose Ferrer and Trevor Howard, with Anthony Newley and… drum roll… DAVID LODGE providing solid support as Marines Clarke & Ruddock respectively.   Although The Cockleshell Heroes was a hit with audiences and looks gorgeous in Technicolour it doesn’t tend to get talked about as much as other similar WW2 films of the period and perhaps this was partly down to the almost anti-climactic third act. However, thanks to shameless plugging by David Lodge on a frequent basis some two decades later as part of Spike Milligan’s Q series the film is still regarded affectionately by some people, particularly listeners to this podcast, and it seemed a nice idea to put it under the scrutinising gaze of your host and his special guest this week.   Joining Tyler is Warren Cummings, host of The Cinematic Sausage podcast and someone with a very direct link to the true events which this film depicts – his grandfather served alongside the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ in WW2.   It’s a great chat with tons of fascinating factual information about Operation Frankton and how the film reflected the true events, plus there’s a long-deserved tribute to David Lodge, without whom this podcast would be poorer.

"In the little Essex hamlet of Great Bardfield, a tiger with influenza is mounting guard over a mysterious white box. What is the secret of the box of Bardfield—does it contain the dreaded International Christmas Pudding or is it really full of priceless Essex snow?" So ran the Radio Times listing that week for the show we are discussing, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the International Christmas Pudding but has everything to do with selling snow to Sudan. It's Tyler's favourite Goon Show of all, the third he ever heard and one which had been 'trailed' to him in a way by his father as he was growing up. His dad would occasionally mention the plotline of The White Box of Great Bardfield without naming it specifically; he merely considered it a quite genius idea for a comedy plot. Joining Tyler to try and unpick it all is returning guest Molly McDade who thinks it's a show you should never expose to a newbie and was looking forward to seeing Coogan in Strangelove - which, by the time this goes out she will have done!

A little taster of this month's edition of Goon Pod Film Club, Guest House Paradiso, starring Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Simon Pegg, Bill Nighy & Fenella Fielding. With our very special guest Jeffers from Podcasto Catflappo! www.patreon.com/GoonPod

Everyone at Goon Pod Towers is very excited this week as this is the first time we've ever covered a Best Picture Oscar winner on the show, and this one features everybody's favourite beadle Harry Secombe who's in fine voice for this tremendous 1968 film based on the hit Lionel Bart stage musical! Joining Tyler are those incorrigible urchins Chris Webb & Robert Johnson from Still Any Good podcast and among other things they discuss: The magnificent Ron Moody The novel vs the film Harry hits it out of the park That villainous Bill Sikes The wonderous Oliver! set Jack Wild's tragic life Max Bygrave's nice little earner The songs they dropped Carol Reed's Flap! Fagin puts in his 10,000 hours Leonard Rossiter's drunken turn Corrie does Oliver! Bullseye the dog in makeup Mark Lester's gift to Jacko Brucie as Fagin? Catflap's nod Plus much much more! Consider yourself entertained! STILL ANY GOOD: https://stillanygood.buzzsprout.com/

In 1975 David Dimbleby conducted an interview on television with Spike Milligan, and as the Fates would have it Spike was in the perfect frame of mind for such a probing and personal interrogation. They talked about his childhood, the war, his career, his mental health, the breakdown of his marriage in the fifties, his hopes and regrets and even touch on (then) contemporary events - the boy he shot in his garden and the fallout which resulted in him being dropped from several animal charities. The conversation is punctuated by a series of filmed sequences in which people who knew Spike well give their views on the ex-Goon, such as his fellow ex-Goon Peter Sellers, writer and collaborator John Antrobus and old friend and mentor Jimmy Grafton. As indicated, Spike takes it all largely in his stride, with only very occasional flashes of annoyance or irritation and the odd bemused frown and it remains one of the most insightful and honest portraits of the great man we have. Our guest this week is actor & writer Lee Moone who previously has adapted Milligan's Phantom Raspberry-Blower of Old London Town for the stage.

Young Ned Seagoon, walking the streets of London during a particularly thick 'pea-souper,' accidentally knocks over a Miss Selina Clutch. Her strange behaviour mystifies young Neddie until a chance meeting with Dr. Rheingold Fnutt puts him on the track of an underground terrorist organisation led by the reckless 'Overcoat Charlie' intent on wrecking the capital's commercial life by blanketing London with an artificial foreign fog that makes people think nothing but the best of each other. Professor Crun is called in by the Government to find an antidote to 'Forog' but not before Professor Moriarty and Commercial Attache, Grytpype-Thynne, nearly succeed in bringing London life to a standstill. So runs the synopsis to this week's edition but as is usually the case the actual show itself bears little relationship to Spike Milligan's fevered precis. Instead, we find an increasingly manic Ned Seagoon hell-bent on solving London's fog problem, conversing with statues and getting all xenophobic over atmospheric conditions. Joining Tyler this week is James Page who loves Forog... but can our host say the same?

"There once was a beautiful moon, "It was up in the sky, chum, "When he said “What’s the time?” "They replied ‘What?’ "And the horse departed leaving spon." With poetry like that it's no wonder we lost the Empire. And it stands out as one of the most memorable bits of a Goon Show episode which is rather unfairly overlooked: The Moon Show from January 1957. Neddie is a tramp poet, who buys a poetic licence from those chiselling spivs Grytpype Thynne & Moriarty and through further trickery believes himself to be the rightful owner of the moon. Then he realises that the moon is a forgery and pursues the villains across Europe. Joining Tyler this week is Ian Winick, co-host of the Lord Of Adders Black podcast: https://shows.acast.com/lord-of-adders-black

Take three Pythons, a Goon, the father of modern satire, some Mel Brooks regulars, a Young One, a rock legend, a couple of stoners and a host of familiar British character actors and put them all into a comedy pirate film and what have you got? Arrrrrnswers on a postcarrrrrrd please. Joining Tyler this week to discuss Graham Chapman's ambitious if undercooked 1983 film is writer and performer Adrian Mackinder: http://www.adrianmackinder.co.uk/

"... Sellers is very funny. Unfortunately, the movie’s general approach to hippiedom is what we’ve come to dread. Hippies wear funny clothes, sleep on the stove, don’t wash, read the Los Angeles Free Press, bake pot brownies, put up posters everywhere and operate with a sort of mindless, directionless love ethic. So the movie becomes conventional after all. If they’d dropped Sellers into a real hippie culture, we might really have had a movie here." (Roger Ebert, 1968) Despite the misgivings of the exalted Mr Ebert, I Love You Alice B. Toklas is a pretty good film generally. This week's guest, the writer John Williams, and Tyler both had fun watching it and talking about it, and were particularly impressed by Peter Sellers' winning turn as lawyer Harold Fine who undergoes a mid-life crisis and embraces the patchouli-scented hippy lifestyle. With solid support from the likes of Joyce Van Patten and Leigh Taylor-Young, the film is a fine showcase for Sellers' talents and despite dated fashions more or less holds up. So turn on, tune in, drop out and enjoy Goon Pod this week!

In 1966, at the height of World Cup fever, an unassuming little British comedy film came out and caused nary a ripple despite a stellar cast of well-known faces. Michael Bentine stars as Horace Quilby, the titular Sandwich Man, who walks the streets of London and seems to know everyone he passes. Without anything so distracting as a plot the film meanders somewhat and is essentially a series of sketches loosely linked together, an indication perhaps of Bentine's lack of experience in long-form storytelling, having come off the back of his hugely successful television series It's A Square World. The film features a host of well-known figures from the world of comedy including Norman Wisdom, Terry-Thomas, Bernard Cribbins, John Le Mesurier, Fred Emney, Harry H Corbett, Stanley Holloway and Ron Moody and has possibly the most incongruous ending to a film ever! Joining Tyler this week are Rob & Guy of the podcast Britcom Goes To The Movies, a show in which they examine big-screen spin-offs of small-screen comedy series and characters - ko-fi.com/britcomgoes