Gloriously rudely scrawled-on 1910s children’s tale in which the trio of Goons have played off each other’s surreal suggestions to create a new and outrageously humorous hybrid book-manuscript, recalling the style of Joe Orton’s legendarily defaced library books. In this extraordinary object the Goons have misused and subverted in the most energetic way imaginable an early edition of popular novelist W W Jacobs’ novel about the inhabitants of the fictional English village of Binchester. Sellars, Milligan and Secombe have covered 140 of the book’s 330 pages, as well as reworking the adverts and blank endpapers to front and rear. The annotations begin on the preliminary endpapers and use marginal commentary, editorial changes to the text as well as liberally inserted cuttings and drawings, usually with speech bubbles and further annotation. Usefully, the Goons have dated the book by adding below the imprint ‘Goonified by Goon S[how] 1957’, probably while recording their 8th Series for the BBC.
Most of the annotations are signed with their writer’s initials, frequently passing an idea to and fro, signing off each joke and counter-joke in a sort of comedic sparring. Much of the comedic value of the book derives from Peter Sellars’ sex-drive. Like most humour these jokes about the Germans, Harry Secombe’s grandmother, Peter Sellars’ ‘Secondhand Schmutter Shop’ and sex and more sex are better viewed than explained. We know of three similar examples of a ‘Goonified’ book, including one at Harvard University.
CONTEXT: The Goon Show changed the face of British comedy between 1915-1960 with its rapid, irreverent and farcical style, winning among others the enthusiasm of the present King of England. The lack of decorum or linguistic restraint is beautifully captured in this ‘Goonified’ book, though emphatically it is not for the faint-hearted.
