PETER Sellers was the first of the Goons to die, in 1980. Born in 1925, he cultivated his interest in the world of entertainment during a childhood spent touring the vaudeville circuit with his parents.
His big break came after the Second World W
ar when he rang Roy Speer, the producer of the BBC radio programme Show Time, and posed as a popular radio star to recommend himself.
The ruse worked and Sellers ended up on the BBC radio show Crazy People, which later became The Goon Show. With his talent as an impressionist and his ability to improvise, his characters, including Major Bloodnok, Bluebottle and Henry Crun, became an integral part of the show.
After The Goon Show ended in 1960, Sellers pursued a career in film.
After appearing in a series of British films, he found success in the United States in 1959 with The Mouse That Roared, followed by The Millionairess alongside Sophia Loren the following year.
The 1964 film Dr Strangelove earned him an Oscar nomination, but it was Sellers’s appearances as the hapless Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series of films which earned him a new generation of devotees.
He was married four times, including once to Britt Ekland, and fathered three children, but had a reputation as a difficult, rather self-obsessed personality.
Sellers’s second Oscar nomination came in 1979 for the film Being There, but he died of a heart attack the following year. He insisted that the song In the Mood - which he hated - was played at his funeral.
SIR HARRY: THE RASPBERRY-BLOWERBY THE time of his death in April last year, Sir Harry Secombe had become one of Britain’s best-loved family entertainers, but it was The Goon Show which made him a household name.
Like his fellow Goons, Sir Harry served in the Second World War and it was there he met Milligan for the first time. Dug in alongside a howitzer battery in Africa, he was nearly run over by a gun which had run backwards after it was fired.
Over the parapet of his trench appeared the face of Spike Milligan, who asked him: "Has anyone seen a gun?" "What colour?" Secombe replied.
Born in a Swansea council house in 1921, he grew up in a tough docks area and quickly learned to act the fool to deter the bullies. He met the other members of the Goons after the war.
As Neddy Seagoon and Sir Cumference, Sir Harry became a key part of the show, with his falsetto giggle and trademark raspberry. And having a good tenor voice, he was also developing a reputation for his singing. From 1956 to 1966, he made regular appearances at the London Palladium. Some people claimed his singing could move them to tears - although Milligan maintained he had always assumed his friend’s singing was a joke until informed otherwise.
Married with four children, Sir Harry was a tireless worker for charity, and in 1963 he was made a CBE for his work on behalf of the Army Benevolent Fund. In 1981, he was knighted for services to entertainment and charity.
In his later years, he was best known for the Highway programme, but in 1999 he suffered a stroke which impaired his speech.
BENTINE: A FACE NOT MADE FOR RADIOFOR MICHAEL Bentine, the Goons was his big show-business break, but it was on television he really shone.
Born in 1922, Bentine developed a reputation as a comedian of the bizarre and surreal. His grandfather was the vice-president of Peru and when Bentine went to Eton, he claimed his fees were paid out of his mother’s bridge winnings.
After the war, he worked at the Windmill Theatre and was chosen for the 1949 Royal Variety Performance despite being still relatively unknown. He joined up with Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers in 1951 on the Crazy People BBC radio show, which later became The Goon Show, but, with his wild shock of black hair and black beard, Bentine was better suited to a visual medium and he only stayed with the Goons for two series. In the early 1960s, he switched to television, where he found some success with It’s A Square World.
Bentine regularly poked fun at his BBC employers and the BBC Television Centre was a frequent target for his comedy. On one occasion, he pretended to attack it with torpedoes, while on another, it was subjected to an assault by Red Indians. The BBC, however, did not see the funny side and the management dashed off a memo which read : "Under no circumstances is the BBC Television Centre to be used for purposes of entertainment."
In the 1970s, Bentine presented the Potty Time children’s programme, followed by Madabout in the 1980s. He was the second of the Goons to die, in 1996.
