Going, going, Goon! Show script for sale
A LOST script for a forerunner of The Goon Show is being sold by the long-time agent of its writer and star, Spike Milligan.
Norma Farnes, 85, worked for the comedian for 36 years and kept several mementos including the words for a radio sketch called Crazy People.
The programme became the basis of The Goon Show. The episode was broadcast in July 1951 and starred Milligan, Michael Bentine and Peter Sellers.
Mixing ludicrous plots with surreal humour and bizarre sound effects, The Goon Show was said to have inspired The Beatles and Monty Python. The script, given to Norma by Milligan in 1968, is being sold by Chiswick Auctions with an estimate of £3,000.
Norma began working as a personal assistant to Milligan in 1966 and remained a friend until his death at 83 in 2002.
She said: “I had just stopped working in TV and was living in a flat with no money to pay the rent and no car when I saw an advert for a PA to a showbiz personality, who turned out to be Spike Milligan. I decided to give it three months to pay off the rent and ended up being friends with him for years.”
The sale takes place on February 28. Script with ‘annotations by Spike Milligan’ FAST AND FURIOUS: The Duke drives a carriage through a water obstacle at Windsor in 2002 and below, steps out of a Harvard Trainer after a flight in 1953
IN August, 1947, three months before his November wedding to the world’s most eligible princess, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN took delivery of a red two-seater MG TC. It was to be his pride and joy and driving the machine at speed around the roads – the narrower the better – was to become one of his escapes from the restrictions of the court life that were about to engulf him.
Princess Elizabeth was not so keen on her fiancé’s love of speed. On one occasion on a mad dash from HMS Royal Arthur at Corsham, Wilts, to London Prince Philip skidded into a tree, damaging a fence and his car and twisting his knee in the process.
An indignant press naturally asked the question: “What would have happened if the Princess had been with him?” And later, when he managed to side-swipe a taxi, with the Princess in the car, the criticism increased.
Philip has always been a daredevil and highly competitive sportsman. His naturally impatient nature and somewhat Germanic determination meant that as long as he was able to do so, he would run everywhere, Editor of Majesty magazine
take steps three at a time and wait for no one. He was attracted to daredevil sports, not for the sake of it, but because he liked the competition of trying and often succeeding in beating everyone else and doing it at super speed.
For the dashing young Philip participation in any sport was not in itself satisfactory. Winning was all important. He was Captain of the school at Gordonstoun, cadet of the year at Dartmouth and one of the youngest lieutenants ever in the Royal Navy – a line of work which led to an interest in sailing as a leisure activity. Although he claims he was not much good at cricket, he became captain of the first X1 in his final year at school.
He learnt to ride at the age of seven on what he describes as “those end-