The Goons House

I remember Harry Secombe saying he met Spike Milligoon (pun) in the army..he was washing his white flag out in a waddi at the time.

After hearing Spike Milligan and the first airing of 'Crazy People on the BBC Radio in 1951… Eric Sykes finally met the great man - 'The Raging Moon Mad Milligan’ - at his Longbridge Road office where Spike simply couldn’t stand still… He was simply bursting with comic ideas!

This meeting of minds sparked a comic collaboration, a lasting and renowned friendship, and of course - shared accomodation.
It was at 137 Uxbridge Road that Eric found some rooms to rent, five floors above a greengrocers.

The only problem with these digs was the food rationing that was still in force. It seems Eric, Spike and the chaps on more than one occasion were held hostage in their own homes after oranges were delivered. They were in such short supply and as the demand was so high, they literally could not get out of the building for people desperate to get their hands on the fruit.

So…...The house of fun really did exist. It was the home of a quite unique writers’ co-operative called Associated London Scripts – based in west London half-way up the Uxbridge Road on Shepherd’s Bush Green – and, to begin with, it contained the following quartet of unparalleled comedy talents: Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Packing those four together was like squeezing Plato, Galileo, Newton and Einstein into the same scruffy Ealing bed-sit, only with better sound effects and slightly fewer fights.

As if providing a safe haven for this stellar comic quartet was not impressive enough, the building itself would also come to serve as a home-from-home, meeting place, rumpus room and/or occasional labour exchange to a truly extraordinary crowd of up-and-coming writers – including Johnny Speight, John Antrobus, Terry Nation, Dick Vosburgh, Eric Merriman, Dave Freeman, Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The scripts that went out of that house would help further the comedy careers of Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, Arthur Haynes, Arthur Askey, Warren Mitchell, Dick Emery, Benny Hill, Bill Fraser, Harry Worth, June Whitfield, Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Ted Ray, Joan Sims, Charlie Drake, Clive Dunn, Terry Scott, Harry H. Corbett, Bruce Forsyth, Ronnie Barker, Hattie Jacques and Morecambe and Wise – to name but a few.

They also helped shape and sustain such major series on radio and television as ‘The Goon Show,’ ‘Educating Archie,’ ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour,’ ‘Beyond Our Ken,’ ‘Sykes And A…,’ ‘Round the Horne,’ ‘Steptoe and Son,’ ‘Comedy Playhouse,’ ‘The Army Game,’ ‘Bootsie and Snudge,’ ‘That Was The Week That Was,’ and ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ (as well as generate such stage plays as ‘Son of Oblomov,’ and ‘The Bed-sitting Room’ and such movies as ‘The Rebel,’ ‘The Wrong Arm of the Law,’ ‘The Spy with a Cold Nose,’ and ‘The Plank’). In addition to all of this, the house gave birth to the Daleks for ‘Doctor Who.’