HELLO FOLKS! This site isn't a complete resource, just a brief introduction with audio clips to give you some idea of what to expect if you're encountering the Goons for the first time.
There are more detailed resources, fan pages, and audio stream / download sites listed in the links page.
Introduction
Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan's revolutionary radio show ran on the BBC from 1951 to 1960: a unique combination of memorable characters and daft plots, surreality and twisted logic, establishment bashing, satire and parody, music hall gags, catchphrases and random silliness. It broke new ground in its use / abuse of sound effects - both as pure audio gags and in helping to make physically impossible situations instantly believable. Milligan wrote most of the scripts, helped at various times by Larry Stevens, Eric Sykes, Maurice Wiltshire and John Antrobus.
Each show centres around a core of characters, although the exact details of each character vary according to the episode's plot. Most of the characters were played by Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, with the occasional guest; Michael Bentine was in the first two series. The show has influenced writers and performers from Monty Python onwards, and while it may have dated in terms of some of its themes, references, and its 'political correctness', it still works due to the sheer infectious joy of three entertainers at the height of their powers making themselves and an audience cry with laughter...
"I was 12 when the Goon Shows first hit me... Their humour was the
only proof that the world was insane...
Hipper than the hippest and madder than "Mad", a conspiracy against
reality. A 'coup d'etat of the mind'!"
- John Lennon, in his review of Spike Milligan's
book The Goon Show Scripts, in The New York Times (1973)