DOUBLEPLUSGOON

I bought the LP just so I could own this beautiful Hunt Emerson cover.

 We interrupt this protracted conclusion to Frankenstein Wednesdays - and by "we", I mean "I" - and by "interrupt", I mean "put off" - to notify readers that they have just one day left to listen HERE to a pinnacle of spoofery: 1985 - simultaneously the most accessible and least accessible Goon Show ever recorded. Least accessible, because its employment of 1984 to satirise the BBC (or "Big Brother Corporation") means a third of it is just in-jokes about the broadcasting landscape of 1955*. Most accessible, because the other two thirds contain some of the stongest jokes the show's ever had; idiots just seem funnier in a dystopia, possibly because they're necessary. The Orwellian backdrop also proves a perfect fit for The Goon Show's long-nursed post-Imperial anxieties. A fallen world host to competing and absurdly overrated hiearchies, surreally decorated with disappointing resources; you could draw a line from The Goon Show to Mad Max, with this episode sitting comfortably at the centre. It's the Judge-Dreddiest episode, and the one we quoted in the playground. The chief insipiration for it however was probably the BBC Television adaptation broadcast live a few months earlier, and starring Peter Cushing. I haven't watched it so post it below at this blog's peril, but let's see. There could be anything in it, Ray Ellington singing about "a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store". Anything.

 

"Have you ever thought, in seventy years or so, there'll be nobody alive who could possibly understand this conversation we're having?"

* It's got to be a different Jim Davidson. Right?