The Goons conducted ‘A Survey of Britain’ as part of episode 11 of the third series, broadcast on 20 January 1953. As the listing on page 24 of the Radio Times announces, Dick Emery was in place of Spike Milligan again.
On page 9 of this Radio Times issue there is a brief interview with Eric Sykes lamenting the effect that radio is having on comedy writing, namely that material has to be fresh every week and can’t be recycled endlessly as comedians tour through small venues across the country. So how does he cope? Talking about his work on Educating Archie, he says:
The first step is to devise a set of credible comic characters. Then you imagine how they would behave in any ordinary sort of situation you care to think of. The comedy should come naturally from the situation and not by way of a series of laboured, unrelated jokes.
(Eric Sykes, from ‘Both Sides of the Microphone’, Radio Times issue 1523, 16 January 1953)
On this day in 1959, the film I’m All Right Jack was released in the UK. It featured Peter Sellers as a union representative, Fred Kite, and gained him major recognition.
Sellers won the BAFTA Best Actor Award in 1959, his first major film award. He was later nominated for the same award in 1962 for his role as John Lewis in Only Two Can Play, and again in 1964 for The Pink Panther and his trio of roles in Dr Strangelove. He was nominated for the fourth time in 1980, the year of his death, for his performance in Being There.
Also on the cast list for I’m All Right Jack is Richard Attenborough, self-confessed Goon fan and inventor of dinosaurs, and Dennis Price, who made a brief appearance on the Goon Show in ‘Robin Hood’ (Series 7 special episode) as King John.