h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: 'Walking Backwards for Christmas' - the Song - A87961288
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

Christmas present

As everyone is writing about Christmas songs at the moment, here's an entry about an otherwise neglected one.

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Thank you

Great introductory paragraph

Neat link to 'Do you hear what I hear?'

"The B-side was called 'Bluebottle Blues' and features the Goon character's attempts to explain how much he doesn't like being killed or 'deaded' in every episode. He also comments on the A-side, too:

Bluebottle: 'Ere, I didn't think much of that. I think my side was better."

Excellent!

Lots of stuff in there I didn't know. Thank you for that!

I only stumbled over "a atonal" - surely it should be "an atonal..."

That's a fair cop, I've added an 'n' now.

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What better to do on 1 April than read about Christmas songs!

This is looking good

Excellent snark sentence "'Walking Backwards for Christmas' was inspired by disaster on an even greater magnitude: the 1956 Musicians' Strike." It would be helpful if you could tweak the order of paragraphs in the next two sections, so that they first set out what the strike was, then how it affected comedy in general, then how it affected the Goon Show in particular, just to give a smoother flow from the 1956 Musicians' Strike to the Broadcast Version.

"the lungs of a Welshmen, the face of a gasping cherub and the lips of a raspberry-blower" - Am I right in thinking this is a Spike Milligan quote?

"silent dead air." - 'dead air' is the technical term to mean silence?

"a spurned Irish immigrantal lad in love with an Irish gal from Galway Bay." - is that a quote from the song?

"unleashed in shops to royalty and the general public alike." - is that a quote as well?

"This song was rushed into shops so quickly that Peter Sellers didn't even have a chance to change his wife." - another superb sentence but perhaps needs a footnote on 'wife' just to explain what the window of opportunity was.

Thanks for the read-through - I've tweaked the paragraphs you've identified.
The sentence 'the lungs of a Welshmen, the face of a gasping cherub and the lips of a raspberry-blower' is more a paraphrase of things said at different times by both Milligan and Secombe himself rather than a direct quotation.

'dead air' is indeed a technical term meaning silence, or more specifically, the unintended broadcast of silence. So if you are the BBC broadcasting the 2 minutes silence for Remembrance Day, that isn't Dead Air, but if there is an error and 2 minutes that sound exactly the same as the 2 minutes silence are broadcast accidentally, then that would be.

The actual song line is 'An immigrantal lad loved an Irish Colleen from Dublin Galway Bay.
He longed for her arms, but she spurned his charms, and sailed o'er the foam away'

"unleashed in shops to royalty and the general public alike" – that is not a quote, but the Royal Family were particularly huge Goon Show fans, especially the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and of course Prince Charles, who Spike affectionately called a 'little grovelling '

Alas, as this was early in Peter Sellers' career, he spent his time then with only the one wife and had not yet even had his first divorce…

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Aha

Excellent tweaking - the flow is spot on now

This is very funny. It's probably even funnier to people who think the Goon Show is funny.

>>one of the few Christmas songs (as opposed to carols) to have been recorded before the 1970s or 1980s.<<

I'm assuming you mean 'in the UK'. Could you say that? Otherwise, everybody's going to yell out, 'Frosty the Snowman! Rudolph! Silver Bells! White Christmas! All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth!' until you're sick of hearing it.

I have actually heard of Harry Secombe. I hadn't realised he was in 'Oliver!'

Sorry, I inadvertently missed this comment, but I've tweaked that now.

Harry Secombe played Mr Bumble in 'Oliver!'

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Yes, I looked him up, thanks.

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