Goon Bandage: An Evening with Harry Secombe tours Wales throughout October
A new play from Welsh creative team explores the life of one of Wales favourite sons.
Have you heard the one about Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and a gun?
Dug-in in a trench in Tunisia during the North African campaign, Harry was nearly run over by a gun which had run backwards after it was fired. From over the top of his trench appeared the face of Spike Milligan, who asked him: "Has anyone seen a gun?" "What colour?" Secombe replied.
From this first gag sprang a lifelong friendship and arguably the most influential radio programme in comedy history. Over time Harry became the `Goon Bandage’, and the Goon he bandaged the most was Spike. Milligan once tried to kill Peter Sellers with a potato knife for no real reason other than... "Sellers was being his usual selfish self and I was, unluckily for him, at the end of my tether".
During Spike’s many bouts of manic depression, Harry came with the grapes and the sympathy and even paid some of his hospital bills.
Having played Harry to great acclaim in Ying Tong, Roy Smiles’ play about Spike Milligan, Alltwen based Christian Patterson was determined to put Harry’s story centre stage. Teaming up with Swansea writer and actress Helen Griffin, and with Taliesin Arts Centre as a willing producer, he has done just that.
This is very much a home grown production – a Welsh creative team, with funding from Wales Assembly Government and the Arts Council of Wales.
Brecon based director Phil Clark was Artistic Director and Chief Executive at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff for sixteen years, after cutting his dramatic teeth as a founding member of Theatr Powys. Writer Helen Griffin won a BAFTA Cymru award last year for her first feature film Little White Lies, and has appeared in BBC Wales’ Doctor Who and the film Twin Town. Writer and actor Christian Patterson lives in the Swansea Valley. He is proud to be an Associate Actor with Clwyd Theatre Cymru and has just completed a national tour of Guys and Dolls. Christian met Sir Harry at his graduation ceremony from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, he explains:
“Sir Harry was being made a fellow in recognition of his substantial contribution to the Arts. His very beautiful wife, Lady Myra Secombe, introduced me to the great man. She called Harry over, gestured towards me and said ‘This lad is from Swansea’. He smiled and shook my hand ‘Swansea boy are you?’ ‘Yes Sir Harry’ I said shaking his hand, ‘Are you a singer?’ ‘I trained as an actor Sir Harry, but I do sing’, he looked me up and down and said ‘You’ll be alright – a big lad like you’. Let’s hope he’s right!”
From Oliver, to Pickwick, to eight Royal Command performances, Highway and Songs of Praise, Sir Harry Secombe’s star shone brightly; the St Thomas boy really did make-good. According to Sir Geraint Evans, Harry could have been a fine comic operatic baritone, and he once offered him the part of Bardolph in Verdi's Falstaff. Had things been different, maybe we would remember him as a star of the stage more than the screen and radio.
What must it have been like to be the sane goon? How did Ned of Wales keep smiling amid all the madness, megalomania and chaos? Did Harry really keep laughing through it all? This one man show finally gives Harry the chance to speak out.
Goon Bandage: An Evening with Harry Secombe premieres at Swansea’s Taliesin Arts Centre on Thursday 4th October for three nights before touring to Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, Blackwood Miners’ Institute, Borough Theatre, Abergavenny, Theatre Hafren, Newtown, Ucheldre centre, Holyhead, Wyeside, Builth Wells, Ammanford Miners’ Theatre, Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan, Clwyd Theatre Cymru, Mold, Theatr Ardudwy, Harlech, Theatr Brycheiniog Brecon, and St Donats’ Arts Centre, Vale of Glamorgan.
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