The Goon Show/Funny

• It's damn difficult to pick a single moment out of The Goon Show's surreality - the series was consistently funny, but "What time is it Eccles?" would be up there.
• With this one right behind:

Bluebottle: Oh, a cocktail. Good health. [Gulps] (FX: Huge rumbling explosion - the kind where you hear bricks & bits of timber falling in the distance) Bluebottle: You rotten swine! You have nearly deaded me - look, my kneecaps have dropped four inches. Who made that cocktail? Gravely Headstone: Molotov.

• I has taken a look at da quotes here an I tink I likes dem.
• Meta-example: Spike Milligan at the 1994 British Comedy Awards, at the age of seventy-six, after being given his lifetime achievement award ("It's about fucking time.").

Jonathan Ross: I have a letter to read out to you from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Spike Milligan: Do I kneel down for this? Jonathan Ross: "As someone who grew up to the sounds of The Goon Show on the steam-driven wireless, I must confess that I've been a lifelong fan of the participants in the show and particularly of Spike Milligan..." Spike Milligan: Oh, the little grovelling bastard.

• In "The String Robberies", we are primed to expect an appearance by Eccles:

[Knocking at a door] Bloodnok: Who is that there, who is it? Only a lunatic would be out in such a storm!

• • — but instead of just one Eccles, we get a whole chorus of them, all singing "Good King Wenceslas" with great feeling.
• For a while, there was a great Running Gag in which Eccles made his first appearance in each episode singing a Paint Your Wagon song with...different lyrics: "I talk to the trees/That's why they put me away..."
  • Eddie Braben of Morecambe and Wise claims this was a suggestion he sent in in a fan letter and was never credited for.