There's a song that I recall my mother sang to me.
She sang it as she tucked me in when I was ninety-three.
Fans of The Goons, or The Goon Show, should recognise those inimitable lyrics from
The Ying Tong Song.
They are sung, on the recording of the hit record, by a tenor and the rest of the recording
is chaos and very funny.
The Goons influenced all rebellious, alternative, dangerous and silly comedy that came
after them. From Monty Python to The Young Ones. It's hard to think of anything that
came before them with the possible exception of Spike Jones – not the film director
who, I believe, spells his name with a Z.
It is a silly kind of dangerous clever of comedy.
And what is that? It's when all the clever bastards start laughing and the thicks remain
looking bewildered - then the thicks suddenly see the funny side just as the clever
bastards have moved on.
Someone once told me, when I was at drama school, that I didn't understand
Monty Python – well I did and you know why? It made me laugh and wasn't that the idea?
My parents hated The Goons and The Strange World of Gurney Slade which was a
good enough reason for me to love them; so I was bad as the clever bastards, wasn't I?
I have to admit, though, they loved Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore and never
missed their TV Series Not Only But Also and I loved that show too.
There have been many funny men and some of them are geniuses - or even genii -
but the two most mentioned pioneers are Peter Cook and Spike Milligan –
Spike from The Goons, which is where we started.
Hey! What's Prince Charles doing at the top of the page?
Strange that Peter Cook's partner, Dudley Moore and Spike Milligan's partner
(or one of them), Peter Sellars, both became Hollywood movie stars.
So back to The Goons:
One day in the 1950s – shall we say 1955 or 1956; it would be about then.
A tenor singer from St Paul's Cathedral Choir, who also freelanced as a session
singer, was told to report to a recording studio for a job.
I have every reason to think that this was the famous Abbey Road Studios in
St John's Wood, London as that's where George Martin worked and he was
famous for recording comedy records before being The Beatles producer.
When he arrived (the singer not George Martin; he was already there)
he was given the above lyrics which he sang in his beautiful tenor voice.
The other people in the studio were The Goons: Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe,
Spike Milligan and others.
The singer sang the four lines and here we are 58 or so years later and that
tenor singer is still alive and recently celebrated his 93rd birthday.
His daughter wrote to The Goons number one fan – Prince Charles –
and told him who her father was and that he was still alive and, more to the point,
was coming up to his 93rd birthday; the age he had sung about all those years ago.
Apparently the Prince sent a bouquet of flowers and a letter – now isn't that nice!!
Here is a link to the Ying Tong Songs for you to click on.
This will test you sense of humour:
No comments:
Post a Comment