This week a slight departure as we go back forty years to the alternative comedy landscape of the 1980s and Tyler chats with Rowland Rivron, that difficult-to-define Swiss army knife of a man who has done a bit of pretty much everything: musician, comedian, actor, writer, voice-over artiste, panel game captain, television presenter, dancer and at least a dozen other things.

Rowland was partly responsible for one of the funniest hours of British television: The Comic Strip Presents Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, starring Rik Mayall & Adrian Edmondson. Tyler was keen to discuss this in particular with him in a conversation which also covered:

• Interviewing Spike Milligan
• Sharing a flat with Rik Mayall
• Raw Sex and The Idiot Bastard Band
• Money for old rope voiceover work
• Interviewing Tony Blackburn in the middle of the Thames
• The Groovy Fellers and Set of Six
• Working with French & Saunders
• Winning Let’s Dance For Sport Relief doing Weapon Of Choice
• Getting drunk with Kevin McNally
• Shooting Stars & Jack and Jeremy’s Real Lives
• Caravanning around Europe

… And a whole lot more!

This week Tyler talks to Robert Sellers, author of a new book detailing the entire history of the Pink Panther/Inspector Clouseau film series from Peter Sellers to Steve Martin.

There's loads of interesting stuff discussed - did you know:

• Peter Sellers was once upstaged by Richard Burton & Elisabeth Taylor at the premiere of Return Of The Pink Panther?
• The creator of Asterix tried to claim authorship of the plot of The Pink Panther Strikes Again?
• Blake Edwards broke his neck diving into a swimming pool?
• Carole Cleveland was almost totally cut out of a Panther film?
• Dudley Moore was supposed to play 'The Ferret'?

Robert is also the author of many other books on comedy and popular culture and they also talk sitcoms, Oliver Reed and why 1971 was the greatest year in film.

This week we fire up a Wurlitzer and crack open an oyster as we celebrate one of the aspects of the Goon Show that made it so unique: the sound effects.

Joining Tyler to talk about some of our favourites are Chris Smith and Graeme Lindsay-Foot and the idea for the show first occurred to Chris when he heard a news item on the radio several years ago. According to Chris:

"They covered the recent creation of a "sounds archive", dedicated to preserving sounds previously very familiar butwhich are fast fading in popular memory, such as a steam train or bakelite telephone dialling tone (or its ring for that matter), or cine camera or film projector. The point being that the "lifespan" of familiar sounds is becoming shorter as technology and equipment changes - leading tothose sounds literally fading away from popular memory."

Taking this as a starting point, they consider what effects in the Goon Show would totally baffle younger listeners today, before running through some of the greatest (and some fairly obscure) FX and GRAMS inclusions throughout the show's run, including many listeners' favourites such as Tom the piano-playing penguin, someone knocking on the door with a duck and the otherworldly Radiophonic Workshop effects used in 'The Scarlet Capsule'. There's also a salute to those unsung lads who made the magic happen!

We revisit some beloved children's television series from the seventies and eighties this week as Chris Diamond returns to talk about those occasions when Spike Milligan would pop up as a special guest in shows such as Super Gran, The Sooty Show, Pob's Programme, Jackanory, The Muppet Show, Number 73, Tiswas and The Ratties (which Spike narrated).

Wiping a nostalgia-fuelled tear from his eye, Chris regrets the lack of original children's programming which has cut-through these days and warmly reminisces about other shows from the period such as The Wombles, The Smurfs and The Trap Door (with Willie Rushton).

There's also time for a game of 'Which Major Celebrity Of The Eighties Didn't Guest Star In Super Gran?' and an attempt by Chris to remember the lyrics to that show's infectiously catchy theme tune.

With huge thanks to the exceptional Roger Langridge for this episode's artwork!

"Ah, here is is Christmas Eve and still no offers of pantomime!"

One of the best-known Goon Shows ever, Dishonoured - Again went out in January 1959 and before the year was at an end was commercially released (with Tales Of Old Dartmoor) on the LP The Best Of The Goon Shows. It was subsequently repeated more frequently than most Goon Shows and its script was published in a Roger Wilmut book.

A remake (superior in every respect) of a Series 5 episode, due to Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens both being unwell and unable to produce an original script, it positively pops and the cast are clearly having a ball.

Steve Hatcher joins us this week to talk about this very fine episode which somewhat gives the lie to the lazy belief that by this late point in the show's run the team were coasting and looking to their own individual careers and future success.

As well as the episode itself they discuss Harry on stage in Large As Life, Sellers' major film commitments and Spike's rather muddled version of some tragic events.

This week we’re turning our attention to Peter Sellers’penultimate film (if we disregard those pesky ‘flogging a dead Panther’ posthumous farragoes), and the film for which he came closest in his career to carrying off a Best Actor Oscar: Being There from 1979.

Very much a passion project for Sellers, the film, directed by Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude) and based on the novel by Jerzy Kosiński, centres around the character of Chance, a gardener and late middle-aged ward of an elderly man whose death throws Chance’s entire world into disarray, if he didbut know it. Chance has the mental age of a child and is cut off from the outside world; his limited understanding of anything outside his immediate surroundings is entirely informed by what he glimpses on TV. Through a series of incidents, Chance (now rechristened Chauncey Gardiner after a misunderstanding) is thrust into the world of the American political establishment when he is invited to stay at the home of dying billionaire Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas) and his wife Eve (Shirley Maclaine). He meets the President (Jack Warden) and somehow he is assumed to be some sort of oracle, with people believing his every banal utterance to be invested with great truth and meaning.

Podcaster Antony Rotunno (host of Glass Onion podcast) joins Tyler to talk about the film and tries to work out quite why it gets under his skin.

Can you believe that for half a century student bars the length and breadth of the land have resounded to the excruciating cries of "Nii!"?

Yes, the film the Spanish call 'The Knights of the Square Table and Their Crazy Followers' turns 50 and to mark the occasion here's a bonus episode with Tyler and writer, podcaster & performer Tom Salinsky in which they talk at length about the film.

Tom thinks that Life of Brian has more to say but Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the most consistently funny of their films, with barely a moment left gagless, from the inspired opening titles to the demonic camp of Tim the Enchanter.

They discuss highlights such as the cartoonish violence of the King Arthur vs Black Knight sequence; Brave Sir Robin and his minstrel Neil Innes; Gilliam the gatekeeper of the Bridge of Death (later rented out to William Friedkin for Sorcerer?); Dennis the mud-ridden firebrand decrying systems of government; Carole Cleveland as Zoot, Mistress of Castle Anthrax; the weakly insipid Prince Herbert and his overbearing dad; the witch trial; Brother Maynard and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and, of course, Frank the TV historian who suffers a violent slaying.

Tom also talks of his love for the LP and compares the film to the script book – whither Brian the Wild from the final cut? – and reveals that parts of the original script were later repurposed for the fourth series of Monty Python. He also touches on Spamalot and springing from that there’s an interesting overview of the recent Dr Strangelove production starring Steve Coogan.

Also: the coconuts for horses gag – A Show Called Fred got there first! So that ticks the box marked 'Goon Content'!

Tom is co-host of Best Pick podcast: https://bestpickpod.com/

"Do you want a taste of the lash?"

"No thanks, I've just had some cocoa."

In 1974 the BBC issued the first Goon Show Classics LP. On one side was The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea and on the other side was the show we're talking about today: The Histories of Pliny the Elder, Spike Milligan's attempt to pen a sword-and-sandals Goonish epic.

It has become one the most beloved Goon Shows ever, with some highly memorable gags and an end-of-term looseness about it. They all sounded like they were just having a lot of fun.

Joining Tyler is returning guest James Page and as well as discussing the show itself pay tribute to a couple of the backroom boys, examine the difference between Cyril and Lew and give mention to Mark Kermode, Terry Scott and the Asterix books.