5th Series

Basic Cast :-

  • Peter Sellers,
  • Harry Secombe,
  • Spike Milligan,
  • The Ray Ellington Quartet,
  • Max Geldray.

  • From now on the announcer is Wallace Greenslade.

  • Scripts for shows 1-6 by Spike Milligan
  • Scripts for shows 7-26 by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes.
  • Produced by Peter Eton.

Broadcast Tuesdays, pre-recorded the previous Sunday, except nos. 14 and 20.

    1 28-Nov-54 TLO 62960 The Whistling Spy Enigma
    2 05-Oct-54 TLO 63962 The Lost Gold Mine (of Charlotte) 2
    3 12-Oct-54 TLO 64018 The Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on-Sea) 3
    4 19-Oct-54 TLO 64443 The Phantom Head Shaver (of Brighton)
    5 26-Oct-54 TLO 64692 The Affair of the Lone Banana
    6 02-Nov-54 TLO 65467 The Canal
    (with Valentine Dyall)
    7 09-Nov-54 TLO 65972 Lurgi Strikes Britain 1
    (TS: Lurgi Strikes Again)
    8 16-Nov-54 TLO 67106 The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (Solved)
    9 23-Nov-54 TLO 67320 The Last Tram (from Clapham)
    10 30-Nov-54 TLO 67468 The Booted Gorilla (found?)
    11 07-Dec-54 TLO 68322 The Spanish Suitcase 1
    12 14-Dec-54 TLO 68149 Dishonoured, or The Fall of Neddie Seagoon
    13 21-Dec-54 TLO 69220 Forog
    14 28-Dec-54 TLO 69221 Ye Bandit of Sherwood Forest
    (recorded 19-Dec-54 with Charlotte Mitchell)
    15 04-Jan-55 TLO 70044 Nineteen-Eighty-Five 5
    (orch. cond. by Bruce Campbell)
    16 11-Jan-54 TLO 70045 The Case of the Missing Heir 1
    17 18-Jan-55 TLO 70610 China Story
    18 29-Jan-54 TLO 42842 Under Two Floorboards - A Story of the Legion 10
    19 01-Feb-55 TLO 71797 The Missing Scroll 4
    20 08-Feb-55 TLO 71798 Nineteen-Eighty-Five 5
    (recorded 30-Jan-55: with John Snagge - pre-rec.)
    21 15-Feb-55 TLO 72450 The Sinking of Westminster Pier 6
    22 22-Feb-55 TLO 72538 The Fireball of Milton Street 7
    23 01-Mar-55 TLO 73044 The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street 8
    24 08-Mar-55 TLO 73495 Yehti
    25 15-Mar-55 TLO 74145 The White Box of Great Bardfield 11
    26 22-Mar-55 TLO 74489 The End 9
    (TS: - reissue only: Confessions of a Secret Senna-pod Drinker)
    Notes to the 5th series

    With the beginning of this series, the first to be taken by the BBC Transcription Services, the shows become the familiar and well-remembered full-length stories, featuring by now most of the best-known characters.

    This is the only series honoured by Radio Times with a synopsis and cast list for most shows (although these get progressively more divorced from reality as the series wears on).

    1. Not coherently announced.

    2. Announced as 'Death in the Desert'.

    3. Announced as 'The Terror of Bexhill-on-Sea'.

    4. Announced as 'The Lost Music of Purdom'.

    5. Inspired by Nigel Kneale's television adaptation of Orwell's 1984. The show was such a success that the script was repeated by popular demand: the second appearance is not a recorded repeat, but a new performance of the script, which was re-typed, incorporating all but one of the timing cuts made for the first version. In the second show Snagge (pre-recorded) reads the telescreen announcement near the beginning: in the original this is read by Sellers.

    6. Billed in Radio Times (and Programme Index) as 'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street'; the script was changed at short notice to a story inspired by the appearance of a photograph of the floating pier at Westminster under several feet of water with an 'Out of Order' notice being pinned to it. Greenslade tries to announce the show as 'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street' (insisting that the Radio Times is never wrong): finally Sellers announces it as 'The Port of London Authority's valuable hand-carved, oil-painted, valuable floating pier'.

    7. 'Milton Street' is the name of a village in Sussex.

    8. The title situation for this show can best be described as confusing. The front of the script, Radio Times, Programme Index and the 'Programme as Broadcast' files give the title as 'The Terrible Blasting of Moreton's Bank'. However, the show is in fact 'The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street', the script postponed from 15-Feb-55 (see note 6), is announced as such, and titled as such by TS. Strictly speaking, the title ought to match the official files, but since the 'Six Ingots' title makes more sense, and in fact would have been the official title of the script had not the last-minute change of plan happened, Roger decided to adopt it!

    9. Announced as 'The Confessions of a Secret Senna-pod Drinker'.

    10. Announced as 'Beau Geste'

    11. Announced as 'The Son of Houdini'