Thinks!

Mainly because it is a bank holiday, and raining, and the poetry group challenge was something with the world "Think" in it, which as "Thinks!" (near enough, I think), made me think of Bluebottle, and the Goon Show. The Goon show had actually finished (in 1960) when I was too young to really appreciate it, but thanks to cassette recordings I came to discover it in the late 1970s at University.

That is probably the best age to discover the Goons and their surrealist brand of comedy, and of course, Monty Python and Spike Milligan's own TV shows had been around earlier in the 1970s. A group of us used to prepare posters for visiting speakers, and at the same time, we listened to the Goon show while we worked. Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, and even the narrator Wallace Greenslade are an unforgettable memory from those days.

There is something about radio which really lends itself to surrealist comedy in a way that television just can't do. Television has to show, whereas radio, like books, expand the imagination, and no more brilliantly than in the Goon show. Now the days of cassettes and cassette players have more or less gone, but CDs of the Goons are still available, and every week, Radio 4 Extra still broadcasts the shows. Goon forever? I think not.

Thinks!
(with apologies to Spike Milligan, and the Goon show)

Thinks! What does I thinks, I ask?
I am a Bluebottle with a task
Which Neddie Seagoon gave little me
For a nice pineapple, almost for free
Go to a Bonded Warehouse in Bond Street
And take the juice pineapple just to eat

My name, dear listener, is Grytpype-Thynne
Count Moriarty and I always like to win
Have a gorilla. You silly, twisted boy, you.
I have a cunning plan. Needle nardle noo!
An exploding pineapple, no more, no less
Oh, Neddie. My a steamroller will make a mess
And diplomatic plates mean I am free
Hidden in a Bond Street, you cannot see

Hello folks! Eccles here! Needle-nardle-noo!
Thought I'd pop up just to surprise you
Major Bloodnok here: gad, it is all lies!
Throwing batter puddings at German spies
Making Elephant soup with squodge spuds
And shooting it, with bangs and thuds
Now Neddie, pull up a chair and sit down
Take off that silly grin, glue on this frown

Thinks! Bluebottle here again. New thinks!
Hand written in my bestest pen and inks
Which Eccles keeps in his spare socks
My pineapple was ticking, now no tocks
Exploded with a bang! You deaded me
Thinks! What dirty rotten swine you be!
High up in the highest air I go
Ying tong iddle I po!