The swine – he's fired Christmas puddings!

Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts.

29/11/59 : The Best Of The Goon Shows - The Goon Show


Last time we met this lot, I was surprised at both how surreal and funny it was - I've no reason not to asume we're in the same place here.

Yup - surreal and funny is where we are again, with a surprising number of chuckles across the couple of long-form sketches (which don't outstay their welcome at all). A lot of the jokes were timeless - you could imagine Tim Vine coming out with them now and they'd get the same appreciative groans now. It's also interesting that Harry Secombe never got as much attention as Peter Sellers or Spike Milligan (as far as I'm aware, anyway), but he carries both sketches with Peter and Spike just rocking up when they felt like doing a silly voice (which the audience loved!).

We're all the way down at #9 in the chart this week on their second week of a five week run - it had five further runs through to mid '61, but never got any higher than #8. The top five this week were South Pacific, Cliff, Gigi, Peter Sellers and Mario Lanza and there are no new entries and still no named women in the chart.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album so I'm just going to repeat this quote from the last time we met them - 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?".

"Customers also listened to" Peter Cook, Tommy Cooper, Sophia Loren and Pinky & Perky - I'm pretty certain I used to own a Pinky & Perky album (I reckon I could manage about ten seconds now before having to switch it off). I didn't mind this at all - it's funny how it hasn't dated in the way that Peter Sellers's offering has. I think that's because this wasn't trying to make any points - it was just a load of silly fun and sometimes that's all you need.

22/11/59 - Surprisingly enjoyable
06/12/59 - Unsurprisingly dated

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