Peter And Sophia

Goon Pod is a podcast which takes a look at the various works of the various members of The Goons – good, bad and unspeakably ‘of its time’ alike – and in this edition you can hear me chatting to Tyler Adams about Peter And Sophia, the comedy album that Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren made with George Martin in 1960 after they had starred together in The Millionairess – and had an associated hit with a certain single you don’t particularly hear very much these days.

Those of you who are familiar with Peter And Sophia‘s accompanying chart smash Goodness Gracious Me will no doubt be expecting this to be something of a ‘difficult’ album to discuss now, and indeed some of it is in some respects, not least with regard to the inevitable deployment of a handful of ‘comedy’ accents in places. However, it is also an album that includes sketches actually poking fun at actual racists – as, albeit in a rather unsophisticated fashion, does the song that was released as a single as a follow-up to Goodness Gracious Me – as well as a number of darkly tinged references to the relentless march of urban redevelopment and the threat of ‘the bomb’, a nightmarish monologue that’s pretty much a League Of Gentlemen sketch decades ahead of its time, and some trademark Beatles-anticipating speeded-up vocal silliness and mocked-up archive recordings, not to mention a guest appearance from surrealist brass band The Temperance Seven. It’s also an album that allows Sophia ample room to be funny in her own right rather than just a ‘comedy sexy woman’. Yet it’s also the Peter Sellers album that never gets mentioned anywhere by anyone.

During the course of a wide-ranging conversation we discuss whether it’s fair to dismiss the entire album on the basis of one mildly objectionable song – not to mention the thorny issue of movies like The Millionairess and The Party which are simultaneously both exceptionally good and utterly unsuitable for showing in polite society nowadays – as well as my own frequently underwhelmed background with the various works of The Goons and my associated harmonica skills, whether Monty Python really ripped off Q, the cultural impact of Spike Milligan reading John Antrobus’ Help! I Am A Prisoner In A Toothpaste Factory! on Jackanory, the significance of the television ‘backroom boys’ in the sixties, if it’s possible to properly evaluate a comedy record or a stage show soundtrack when when we don’t have the visuals that went with them, whether either of us actually want to hear ‘Bawdy Songs Goes To College’, the uncelebrated surrealism of Harry Secombe’s Highway and just why everyone in the sixties apparently found gramophones so bloody amusing. This was a challenging subject to cover and I’d like to thank Tyler for engaging with certain of my opinions that I’m more than aware certain fans of vintage comedy might consider to be political correctness run riot, but let them come at me if they want and we’ll see how politically correct I am then…

Download

Peter And Sophia No. 3 by Peter Sellers And Sophia Loren (Parlophone, 1960).

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The Larks Ascending is a guide to comedy on BBC Radio 3, including entries on some little-known appearances by a couple of erstwhile Goons and associates; you can get it in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

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Further Listening

You can also hear me on Goon Pod talking about The Wrong Box, the all-star 1966 comedy crime caper movie featuring Peter Sellers as Dr. Pratt, here and the George Martin-produced 1959 album The Best Of The Goon Shows here, and on Goon Pod Film Club talking about Billy Liar here. You can also find a chat with Paul Abbott on (Music For) The Head Ballet about the records George Martin made with Bernard Cribbins here, and more of my thoughts on how to make ‘problematic’ material suitable for modern audiences in a chat about Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings on It’s Good, Except It Sucks here.