Archive events set

Rare Goon Show material is going on display next month at an event to mark 75 years since the anarchic radio comedy first hit the airwaves.

The one-off event in York comes as Spike Milligan’s daughters Jane and Sile also mark the anniversary with a number of personal tours of his archive in London.

They are offering small groups the chance to see some of the archive kept at Stephens House and Gardens in North Finchley, which is home to much memorabilia as well as a statue to Spike – who lived locally. They run every three weeks, with the next on September 26. 

Jane told Chortle: ‘We would now love to reach a wider audience and share this wonderful legacy with those who still love and remember his work.’

Tickets, priced £20, are available here.

Meanwhile, the Goon Show Preservation Society will be hosting an event with York University’s Borthwick Institute for Archives – which holds an extensive collection of material from the groundbreaking show,  including scripts, recordings, photographs and personal items – on October 17.

The afternoon also includes a Q&A, and a production recreating two classic episodes on stage. Tickets cost £10, from goonshow.org. It is part of the York 50-Plus Festival and supporting AgeUK York.

In the Birmingham Comedy Festival production, Mark Earby, Jimm Rennie and Richard Usher play Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers respectively. They will be recreating  Seagoon Memoirs, from 1958, in which Neddie is encouraged to document his questionable wartime exploits, and The Phantom Head Shaver (Of Brighton), in which a mysterious fiend sets about ‘balding’ hundreds of sleeping Sussex men.

The Goon Show was first broadcast on May 28, 1951 and ran until 1960.

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Published: 1 Sep 2026