Goon Show episodes and archiving

"The Goon Show" was a popular and influential British radio comedy series, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC from 1951 to 1960 on the BBC Home Service. This article discusses and lists the episodes that survive, as well as the history of their broadcast.

Availability of "The Goon Show" Episodes Today

Lost episodes

Many of the earliest radio episodes no longer exist. No episodes from the first series survive. Only Episode 1 and 3 from the second series (1951-2) survive. Only one full episode and one ten minute extract from the third series survive. Only some of the episodes from the fourth series were selected for preservation in the BBC Sound Archive, and a few others exist only as off-air copies made by fans at the time of the original broadcast.

When the first episodes were broadcast, recording technology was still expensive and primitive, by later standards. Audio tape was not in general use, and any recordings were made directly on to acetate discs. These could be played back, but tended to wear out quickly and did not survive, unless further processed to create a master disc, which was only done for recording intended for sale.

urviving Episodes

Commencing with the start of the fifth series (in 1954), BBC Transcription Services began making copies for overseas sales, and even commissioned re-recordings of some key fourth series episodes for the "Vintage Goons" series, which was mainly intended for overseas markets.

Rather than making copies from the broadcast tapes, the BBC Transcription Services made their own recordings simultaneous with the broadcast recordings in order to obtain the best possible sound quality. These copies were then edited to match the producer's cut of the broadcast tapes.

The BBC Transcription Services versions were then cut to remove topical and parochial material and anything that might be potentially offensive (and "The Goon Show" did feature quite a lot of politically incorrect humour, much of it sneaked under the noses of BBC censors). Later BBC Transcription Services releases had further cuts for timing purposes. For many years these abridged versions were the only surviving copies of many episodes, but in recent years the BBC has done a huge amount of research to find and restore the missing sections, often literally from the cutting room floor.

To date, the BBC has released 25 CD sets of these re-mastered episodes (originally on audio cassette tapes), containing 100 shows, plus The Last Goon Show of All and Goon Again. Another twelve shows had been previously issued by EMI, but for contractual reasons these were all heavily cut to remove musical interludes and other music cues, and to this day they are the only commercially available versions of those particular episodes. The 25th CD set as well as a new Goon Show Compendium, which contains the first 13 episodes of series 5, were released on April 7, 2008. The Compendium's bonus material includes a note by Ted Kendall, audio researcher and restorer, on the sources used for the recordings, which include BBC Sound Archive and Transcription Services master tapes and discs, unofficial copies made by engineers or other BBC staff, and even domestic off-air recordings from which a few cut lines were restored.

Broadcasting

Episodes of "The Goon Show" are still occasionally repeated on BBC Radio 2 or Radio 4 in the United Kingdom. More recently the show has become a regular feature on the digital radio station BBC 7, which features both new material (much of it recognisably in a Goonish tradition) and archives from several decades of BBC comedy and drama.

The ABC Radio National network in Australia has regularly broadcast "The Goon Show" since the 1960s. For many years, the series was broadcast every Saturday afternoon, just after the midday news bulletin. More recently, it was broadcast twice a week, on Friday mornings and Sunday afternoons. The network attempted to retire the series in January 2004, feeling that it might have at last worn out its welcome; but a huge listener response proved them wrong, and broadcasts of the show resumed in the Friday timeslot in June of the same year. The ABC's broadcasts of the series have made "The Goon Show" one of the most repeated and longest-running of all radio programs.

The programme has also been broadcast in the United States. NBC broadcast and "The Goon Show" as early as the mid-1950s.cite web|publisher=Firesign Theatre |url=http://www.firezine.net/issue4/fz4_13.htm |title=Under the Influence of the Goons |work=FIREZINE #4 |format=HTML |year=1997/98 |month=Winter |accessdate=2006-10-14] Terry Gilliam of the Goon-influenced Monty Python comedy troupe recalled first hearing it broadcast on FM radio in New York City in the 1960s.cite web| publisher=Pythonline Daily Llama |url=http://www.thegoonshow.net/tributes/terry_gilliam.asp |title=The Goon Show Site - Tributes - Terry Gilliam |format=HTML |accessdate=2006-06-02] When Vermont Public Radio signed on the air in 1977 (as a single station which has since evolved into a statewide network), the first program ever to air was an episode of "The Goon Show".cite web| publisher=Vermont Public Radio | date=2002 |url=http://www.vpr.net/history/timeline/index.shtml |title=Vermont Public Radio 25th Anniversary Site |format=HTML |accessdate=2006-05-29] The show was described as a "madcap radio comedy classic".cite web| publisher=Vermont Public Radio | date=2002 |url=http://www.vpr.net/history/timeline/70s.shtml |title=Vermont Public Radio ::: 70s Timeline |format=HTML |accessdate=2006-06-03]

List of All Official "Goon Show" Episodes Produced

The following list of episodes of "The Goon Show" includes any "specials" and all episodes made for the BBC Transcription Service unaired domestically at the time (and therefore listed at the date of their recording).

First Series: "Crazy People" (1951)

Fourth Series (1953-1954)

eventh Series (1956-1957)

"Six of these episodes were broadcast prior to the commencement of the Ninth Series, which is the reason why the Ninth Series was shorter."

pecial (1968)

# Tales of Men’s Shirts (8th of August 1968)

pecial (1972)

# The Last Goon Show of All (5th of October 1972)

pecial (2001)

# (29th of May 2001)

Trivia

* Note that until the second series, "The Goon Show" was called "Crazy People".
* The Last Goon Show of All was released on CD with a documentary entitled At Last the Go On Show.

References

Bibliography

*cite book | last=Farnes | first=Norma | title=The Goons: The Story | year=1997 | month=Nov | day=6 | publisher=Virgin Books | location=London | id=ISBN 1-85227-679-7
*cite book | last=Wilmut | first=Roger | coauthors=Jimmy Grafton | title=The Goon Show Companion - A History and Goonography | year=1976 | publisher=Robson Books | location=London | id=ISBN 0-903895-64-1 | pages=Appendixes | chapter=A Goonography