Flanders and Swann: At the Drop of a Hat / At the Drop of Another Hat ECC2

Woody Allen: The Nightclub Years (1964 1968)
     ECC3
     (also on CD: CDECC3 [2 discs])

The Goon Shows, Volume 1: Tales of Old Dartmoor & Dishonoured Again (from Parlophone
PMC1108), Tale of Men's Shirts & The Scarlet Capsule (from Parlophone PMC1129)  ECC4
     (also on CD: CDECC4 [2 discs])

The Peter Sellers Collection  ECC5
(20 of the 38 selections are also available on CD:
     CZ323 [1 disc])

The Goon Shows, Volume 2: China Story & The MacReekie Rising of '74 (from Parlophone
PMC7062), Six Charlies in Search of an Author & Insurance: The White Man's Burden (from
Parlophone PMC7037) ECC6

British Comedy Classics Volume 1: Kenneth Williams, Michael Bentine, David Frost,
Morecambe and Wise, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, Spike Milligan, and others
     ECC7

Max Boyce: Farewell to the North Enclosure   ECC8

The Goon Shows, Volume 3: The Missing No. 10 Downing Street & The Red Fort (from EMI
EMC3062), Foiled By President Fred & Robin Hood and His Merry Men (from Parlophone
PMC7132)  ECC9

Max Miller: The Cheeky Chappie     ECC10

Spike Milligan: A Collection of Spikes  ECC11
     (also on CD: CDECC11 [2 discs])

Comical Cuts (The 30s and 40s) Volume 1: Laurel & Hardy, Burns & Allen, Stanley Holloway,
Tommy Trinder, and others     ECC12

Laurel and Hardy (mostly excerpts from their movies)   ECC13

Comical Cuts (The 30s and 40s) Volume 2: Robb Wilton, Will Hay, Sydney Howard, and Billy
Bennett
     ECC14
Hinge and Bracket   ECC15

Stanley Holloway    ECC16

British Comedy Classics, Volume 2: John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Williams, Roy Hudd,
Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine, and others  ECC17

Joyce Grenfell: Joyful Joyce  ECC18

Comical Cuts Volume 3    ECC19

George Formby: Turned Out Nice Again    ECC20

Bill Cosby: Bill's Best Friend / My Father Confused Me...   ECC21

British Comedy Classics (70s and 80s), Volume 3: Benny Hill, Victoria Wood, Ronnie Barker,
Bill Maynard, Barry Humphries, and others    ECC22

The Best of the Stan Freberg Shows ECC23

Spike Milligan: Adolph Hitler My Part in His Downfall / Puckoon  ECC24

Spike Milligan: Bridge on the River Wye / Michael Bentine: It's a Square World  ECC25

The Establishment   ECC26

Cambridge Circus / I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again
     ECC27

The Carry On Collection: Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Frankie Howard, Joan
Sims, Eric Sykes, Charles Haughtry, and others    ECC28

Morecambe and Wise: Get Out of That!    ECC29

Cheap Laughs Great Value Sampler   ECCB30

If you're a British comedy freak like me, it's time to mortgage the house (again) and go nuts. These are put out by EMI Records of England, and include some of the best British comedy recordings of all time (and a few Americans that apparently EMI held the rights to).  Last time I looked, you could special order them ($16 each 2-cassette set; $25 for the 2-CD sets) from
Music Machine, 11459
Cronhill Drive, Suite O,
Owings Mills, MD 21117
(phone [410]356-4567; fax [410] 356-4693).
Check with them before ordering to find the current prices and availability plus information on shipping charges.After including all that information about 30 releases, there isn't much room left! As a general
guide, the reissues of LPs include no new material; the collections each have 30 to 40 cuts. The tapes come in special boxes that won't fit with your other tapes, and they make it easy to drop one of the cassettes on your foot. Recommendations:
1. If you've heard of The Goon Show and want to sample it (the Monty Python gang called The Goon Show a major influence), start with Volume 3.
2. If nothing else, get Spike Milligan reading from his books Puckoon (life in a small Irish town) and Adolph Hitler... (his war memoirs). To me, Spike Milligan is one of the funniest people who ever lived, and Puckoon is one of the funniest books ever written. He was the chief or sole writer for The Goon Show's hundreds of episodes and he performed about half the character voices on the show. His co-star, Peter Sellers, was justly famous for his voice characterizations, but Spike Milligan was fully his equal. So Milligan is fully up to the task of bringing his characters to life on this recordings and his voices add a lot to the already funny prose (there is some help from supporting players as well). In this especially appealing package, you get not only Puckoon, but Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall. Laughingly referred to as Milligan's war memoirs, it takes nearly half the allotted time on the recording for the British Army to "persuade" Spike to join them!
3. I personally never cared much for Benny Hill, but I also realize his is probably the second-best-known name in this bunch (next to Peter Sellers). So I will tell you that Mr. Hill is represented by just three cuts on the 70s & 80s volume: Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West, Making a Commercial, and Interview (featuring Leslie Goldie).
4. If you are a real Flanders and Swann fan (a few of their songs [Spider in the Bath, The Hippopotamus Song, and The Reluctant Cannibal] have appeared on the Dr. Demento show), you would do better to look for the 3-CD "Complete" set rather than this tape set. But, this set does offer their two best albums at a reasonable price.
5. I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again had a run on Public Radio here in the US in the 70s; it was originally produced in the 60s. It is a fast-moving, pun-filled sketch comedy. The jokes never stop (it is like the audio equivalent of a good ZAZ movie); even the obligatory musical interludes are comedy songs. It's a shame that EMI only had one LP's worth of ISIRTA material because Cambridge Circus, while of the same ilk, is not produced as well. Both feature pre-Python John Cleese.
6. Morecambe and Wise sort of remind me of Laurel and Hardy. Their humor is gentle, often playing off their relationship. Boom Oo Yatta-Ta-Ta is a bit about what happens when Eric Morecambe decides to go off on a solo career: he attempts to cut record, but he gets lost when John Wise and their writers show up and offer their services as "backup" singers. Finally, he gets thrown off the record entirely. They also perform as other characters, as in the excerpt in the box above.
7. The older British recordings on the Comical Cuts sets are harder to get "into."
8. There is some cross-pollinating of these recordings. Several cuts from the single-artist sets also appear on the compilations.
Fascinating Trivia: George Martin produced Spike Milligan's sendup of the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai and kept the same title. Just before the record was to be released, the movie people informed him that they would sue if the record was issued with that title. Since the recording was completed, George Martin did the only thing a great producer could do: he took upon himself the Herculean task of going through the entire recording and editing out the "K" each time the word "Kwai" was spoken. Thus was created The Bridge on the River Wye!

      Kimba W. Lion
from 1994 issues of The Off-Center Record newsletter
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