The Goon Show
Overview
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy
Radio comedy
Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve sitcom elements, sketches and various types of comedy found on other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some...

 programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service
BBC Home Service
The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.-Development:Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme...

 from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme
BBC Light Programme
The Light Programme was a BBC radio station which broadcast mainstream light entertainment and music from 1945 until 1967, when it was rebranded as BBC Radio 2...

. The first series, broadcast between May and September 1951, was titled Crazy People; all subsequent series had the title The Goon Show, a title inspired, according to Milligan, by a Popeye character
Alice the Goon
Alice the Goon is a fictional character in E. C. Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre and in the Popeye cartoon series derived from it.-History:...

.

The show's chief creator and main writer was Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...

. The scripts mixed ludicrous plots with surreal humour
Surreal humour
Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...

, puns, catchphrases and an array of bizarre sound effects.
Quotations

Needle nardle noo!

Ying tong iddle i po. ;Bluebottle

Enter Bluebottle, wearing doublet made fom mum's old drawers.

Waits for audience applause, not a sausage. (Applause) Ooh! Sausinges!

You rotten swine, you!

You have deaded me!

Silence! I have drunk my fill of the clapping. ;Eccles

I'm the famous Eccles.

Haaallooooo ;Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

You silly, twisted boy, you. (to Neddy)

 
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