This incredibly proficient and slick production with music and sound effects has lots of clever changes of scene and an entrance from a cupboard is original and barely gives you time to breathe between one laugh and the next.  It is so well put together.  Spike’s sessions of creative writing see him typing away to the sound of the Flight of the Bumble Bee. 

The whole show is introduced by Margaret Cabourn-Smith as Janet the BBC Sound Assistant who demonstrates the various improvised and anarchic sound effect devices from the coconut shells for horses’ hooves to a metal comb and a ribbed hot water bottle for a door opening. Each Goon episode ended with a large explosion with Spike remembering his war experience in Monte Cassino and with Janet working on perfecting the sound of a mortar explosion.  Janet presents her armoury with obvious delight! 

We loved the three pretentious critics with their black and white fringed scarves as they cogitated about the comedy programme.  The characterisation of the three Goons, Bentine was long gone onto other projects, is charming.  Secombe unruffled by anything sings and chuckles at his jokes, Sellers a tad more serious and allegedly very attractive to women will disagree with Spike.  I loved John Dagleish’s Spike with such a range of facial expression.  I remember seeing him as Ray Davies in the musical about the Kinks, Sunny Afternoon. 

You don’t need to have listened to The Goon Show to appreciate all that SPIKE  has to offer.  I didn’t listen to the radio programme but knew the voices of the cast from other television programmes and of course the song “Ying Tong Ying Tong Yiddle  Eye Po!” which we’d sing at university.  So many of the play details are witty from the drawn backdrops for the various pubs the cast go to for their after show relaxation, to the windows at balcony level, which reveal cast members illustrating something being described onstage.  The radio studio too is perfectly fitted out. Complete of course with music, songs and Janet’s sound effects, SPIKE can expect a visit from Prince Charles one of the biggest fans of the Goon Show and deserves to transfer to London.