Parkinson Meets Peter Sellers & The Goons

This week's guest is John Williams, who joins Tyler to examine a couple of classic telly interviews from the seventies hosted by Barnsley's favourite son Michael Parkinson. In 1972, fresh from their triumphant return in The Last Goon Show Of All, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers joined Michael Parkinson for a special show, with Spike Milligan on VT and Ray Ellington providing the music. A couple of years later, shortly before his big comeback as an international superstar via The Return of the Pink Panther, Sellers joined Parky again and chatted about his life and career for over an hour. Both shows were subsequently issued on LP and are considered among the very best of Parkinson's interviews. In this week's podcast we discuss: * The many iterations of the solo Sellers show: the original broadcast was 1974, with an edited tribute repeat in 1980, a further truncated repeat in 1996 and the LP version. Does the original still exist? * The ubiquitous German army helmet * Sellers' list of ex-wives * Warrington Minge * Harry Secombe's nervous energy * Fred Roper and his Midgets * The Spirella Corset Factory * Ghostwatch! * Sellers' childhood touring the theatres * Spike in Australia * "I seen him! I seen him!" * Impersonating officers in the army mess * Michael Caine * Who else appeared with Parky on the cover of Band On The Run * The Goon Show Scripts * Derek & Clive * Thora Hird ... And much much more!