There is no need to be nostalgic about the Telegoons. All 26 episodes can be found in DVD sets advertised on a 'well known Internet auction site'. Someone in the UK sells them, legally I hope, for about £5. This is fantastic value for six and a half hours of wonderful entertainment.Nothing like this will ever be made again. The show is in black and white. Some of the film quality is poor and there are occasional sound hisses, but it doesn't matter. Plenty of information about the Telegoons is easily found by anyone who can type nine letters into a reputable search engine.Each episode is 15 minutes. Original radio Goon Show scripts were edited and re-voiced by Messrs Milligan, Sellers and Secombe. There are fewer sound effects and none of the musical interludes of the radio programmes.Shows begin with introductions of about two minutes, usually unrelated to the story that follows. The makers have introduced some excellent visual gags. You see Eccles felling and whittling trees to become the world's worst pole-vaulter. Henry Crun totters downstairs in a lighthouse to answer a phone that stops ringing just as he arrives. And so on.After the warm up, the main theme starts, be it Scradge, The Hastings Flyer, Napoleon's Piano, Fort Knight or whatever. The puppets are marvellous characterisations of Seagoon, Gritpype-Thynne, Moriarty, Eccles, Bluebottle, Bloodnok, Henry Crun, Minnie Bannister, etc. The radio Goon Shows were classics but the Telegoons were and are even better.I haven't laughed so much for ages, partly in remembrance of times past but largely because of the surreal humour that remains fresh after almost half a century.

Even one sketch, where, after the creation of the world as a mass of lava, Man (a puppet caveman) descends from the heavens, scorches his feet, screams and jumps back up again! Notable trivia, though, an episode of the Telegoons had to be cancelled in November 1963. The programme that had followed it the previous week was so popular they cancelled the Telegoons to re-run the first episode before the first showing of episode two of.......... Dr Who!

My whole family were enthralled by The Telegoons. We watched every episode that we could. For me, as a 14 year-old, the Telegoon puppets *were* the Goons, and brought to life the radio characters as only television can for those of us who are members of the television generation. I have never forgotten the memory of seeing Eccles exploded, covered in black soot, sitting up on the power lines. As part of research I am conducting into The Telegoons, I have managed to contact several of the people who worked on the series all those years ago. Their unsung story is at last getting some air time. Since it is not within the rules to place a url in this comment, use a good search engine to search for the name of the TV series, and you'll find what you have seeking for all these years. (I am webmaster of the Official Goon Show Preservation Society Telegoons website).

So somebody else remembers the Telegoons! For years I thought I had merely imagined the pictures that went with those amazing voices. I am too young to remember the original on radio but Neddy Seagoon, The Famous Eccles ('Ello dere) and Bluebottle's attempts to foil the dastardly schemes of Grytpype-Thynne and Moriarty led on through 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' and others to Monty Python and beyond. God bless you Milligan, Sellers, Secombe and Bentine.