Several plastic OBEs and a drip-dry statue of Jane Mansfield

Concluding my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

01/01/61 : The Best Of The Goon Shows No 2 - The Goon Show

This will be quite an interesting one - my dad used to love The Goon Show but I can't say I've ever listened to any of it.

Lordy - it's considerably more surreal than I was expecting from  a BBC radio show from the 50s. The album consists of two long (twenty minutes plus) sketches ("Tales Of Men's Shirts" and "The Scarlet Capsule") which have a general overall theme, but meander from the path rapidly and relentlessly. It's all quite cleverly done though, oftening linking back to what we've heard earlier and has some interesting sound effects. And it's also much funnier than I was expecting - in a year of comedy albums (well, three of them anyway) this one definitely gave me the most chuckles. It all feels very influential - there's an obvious bloodline through to Monty Python, Kenny Everett and Eddie Izzard, but I suspect a lot of comedians over the years owe them a debt, without necessarily knowing they do. I imagine that working with both Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan must have been an absolute nightmare though...

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their final week of a six week run, which was their fourth run of five, with it peaking at #8 in three random weeks between November '59 and January '61. The top five this week were Elvis, South Pacific, Cliff, George and Ray and there was one new entry for Messiah (#12 - Handel's I assume) by "soloists with the London orchestra" (which seems somewhat generic).

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album but the entry for the show is extensive and includes this beauty - Famously, Milligan first encountered Lance Bombardier Secombe after Gunner Milligan's artillery unit accidentally allowed a large howitzer to roll off a cliff, under which Secombe was sitting in a small wireless truck: "Suddenly there was a terrible noise as some monstrous object fell from the sky quite close to us. There was considerable confusion, and in the middle of it all the flap of the truck was pushed open and a young, helmeted idiot asked 'Anybody seen a gun?' It was Milligan. Secombe's answer to that question was "What colour was it?".  It also taught me that the show created the word "lurgy" - apparently in the show one of the symptoms was the uncontrollable urge to cry "Eeeeyack-a-boo".

"Customers also listened to" - unfortunately I'm not able to tell you because I got the sketches from other albums, but I'm pretty certain that the answer would simply be other Goon Show albums. And I may well check some of them out becauseI found this very enjoyable - it's cleverly done and really quite funny.

And with that, 1961 is done (and I can't say I'll miss it!)

08/01/61 - Nice enough, but not required listening
1961 - Not the best year