The following transcript was made by Debby Stark (debby@swcp.com [as of Oct, 1994]), with
fixed adobe abode in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Corrections and particularly additions of new
material will be welcomed. Errors made in transcription are probably the fault of the transcriber
but may also be due to the quality of the tape.

note: some notes are found in []. If word/phrase not understood it may be designated [?] or
surrounded by brackets with a "?".

Enjoy!

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The Case of the Missing CD Plates
(Announced as 'A Strange Case of Diplomatic Immunity')
Air date: 18-10-55
Script by: Spike Milligan


Greenslade: This is the BBC.
Sellers: We present the extraordinary talking-type wireless Goon Show!
FX: Simple dance hall-type music
Seagoon: So much for the mysterious horn-equipped, hand-operated phonograph. And
now, Greenslade, stop scraping that heavily soiled sheet and read the inscription thereon.
Greenslade: Very good, sir. We present Baroness Orkesy's masterpiece, Baron Orkesy, or "A
Strange Case of Diplomatic Immunity", in which a strange case of diplomatic immunity is
recounted. Chapter One, a Strange Diplomatic Case of Immunity, or A Diplomatic Case of
Strange Immunity.
Secombe: Chapter Two!
Voices: Hooray!
Seagoon: Chapter Three. Me. One morning in the year needle-noddle-new I had decided to
spend the holiday abroad. How I love Rome with all her fountains! Ah, Rome! There's no place
like Rome! Hah-ha! [clears throat self consciously]. So I thought as I sat eating a small string pie
in Trafalgar Square. I spent the next hour pleasantly washing my overcoat in the fountain.
Major: [sings] The man from Laramie... He had an elbow on each arm... and one upon his
shoulder... I say. You with the pink cardigan, are you English?
Seagoon: Only by descent.
Major: By descent?
Seagoon: I came down by parachute!
Major: You ought to be ashamed of yourself. In the most beautiful fountain in Trafalgar Square
you have the audacity, and the adicity to wash an overcoat, thus fouling the water. You might
have waited until I finished my bath!
Seagoon: To tell you the truth, sir, I thought you were a statue.
Major: I have enough decency, sir, not to move when I'm naked.
Seagoon: Haven't you got a bath where you're staying?
Major: Of course I have!
Seagoon: Where are you staying?
Major: Here!
Seagoon: What made you choose Trafalgar Square?
Major: You like pigeon pie?
Seagoon: [to audience] Disgusted by his old-world courtesy, I strapped on my nickel-plated
bagpipes and strode into Regent Street. A dreadful mistake!
FX: sound of machinery
Voice: Look out!
Seagoon: [screams]
FX: bagpipes scream, die
Greenslade: Dear Listener: The sound that you've just heard was the sound of a 100-ton
steam roller passing slowly over Neddy Seagoon and his nickel-plated bagpipes. Of course, to
record this sound the BBC naturally did not actually run over Neddy Seagoon with a steam roller.
Instead, the steam roller was driven over Eccles. Thank you.
Voice: See here, what [inaudible] on the, the--
Seagoon: Constabule! I demand that you arrest the driver of that hundred-ton, androcite-
filled, reciprocating engine steam roller!
Constable: Let's hear the charge.
Seagoon: I'll play it for you
FX: trumpet charge, explosion
Constable: Thank you.
Seagoon: Now I want you to arrest the driver of that steam roller!
Constable: Oh, well, well, right, where's the driver?
Moriarty: Sapristy knuckles! Yaka-baka-boo! Who want's to know? I am the man.
Constable: Now then, this gentleman here says that you're the driver of that steam roller, sir.
Eccles: So do I.
Seagoon: [There's two of them?]. Constable, arrest the driver, I have witnesses!
Moriarty: Who are they?
Seagoon: You and me.
Moriarty: You can't arrest me!
Seagoon: And why not?
Moriarty: [laughs]
Seagoon: [laughs]
Moriarty: See that plate on the steam roller? See the letters on it? C.D.
Constable: Cor, blimey!
Moriarty: No, Corp Diplomatique! I have diplomatic immunity!
Constable: Get me out of here, call a doctor!
Moriarty: Sapristy [inaudible] Diplomatic immunity means I cannot be arrested, sued,
disfranchized, blackballed, guillotined, run out, [lifted?], [inaudible], charged, hung, drawn or
quartered, or needle-noddle-newed! You see, I happen to be the deputy vice [inaudible] of the
Titicacan delegation.
Seagoon: Then why are you driving a steamroller?
Moriarty: My feet hurt me.
FX: music
Seagoon: And so, here I was, freshly run over with my bagpipes irreparably flattened and
without a remedy. The weight of the steamroller has made a lasting impression on me. I was now
2 inches thick and 24 feet wide. This, this was very awkward. People kept opening and shutting
me. But what I needed most... was a kind word.
Eccles: Hallo?
Seagoon: And that wasn't it! As I lay on the road, I looked down to a [littlest?] top hat and
an up-turned face.
Eccles: Here, sit down on the pavement and rest a while. Hey! What's that sailing out of a sixth-
floor window up there? It's a piano.
Seagoon: A piano? [chuckles] Bird-brained idiot! What would a piano be doing falling from
FX: piano lands
Seagoon: Help! I'm under the piano!
Eccles: Give us a tune?
Seagoon: [under it] I can't find my music.
Eccles: Okay, then, it's time for Max Geldray
Geldray plays "That's why the lady is a tramp"
Greenslade: That was Mr. Max Geldray playing a harmonica. We thought you ought to know
what it was, anyhow. And now, a word from Neddy Seagoon.
Seagoon: Help! Get this piano off me! Send for the fire brigade!
Eccles: Why, are you on fire?
Seagoon: No!
Eccles: Okay, we've gotta have a reason for sending for 'em. I'll start one.
Greenslade: And so, while Eccles set fire to nearby Craven Hotel, the East Action Volunteer
Auxiliary Civilian Fire Force came dashing up
FX: sounds like horse drawn wagon at various speeds.
Henry: Come on, Min. Load the water pistols and fill that wicker basket at the fountain.
FX: wagon speeds up suddenly
Minnie: Ohhh!
Henry: Steady, Lightning!
FX: Ohhh? Oh, dear, dear, oh. There's a naughty, naughty man naked in that fountain!
Henry: Madam, put away that spy glass and stop using my bath water!
Seagoon: Help!
Henry: Don't you worry, young man, we shall have that heavy piano off you before you can say
Jack Robinson. But don't say it for the next seven hours.
Eccles: Here! That big hotel over there is on fire!
Henry: Where? Oh, yes, yes, Minnie, make a note that that hotel over there is on fire.
Minnie: Okay Firechief Crun, buddy.
Seagoon: Help!
Eccles: Hey! Where are all the other firemen?
Henry: They're all at the Fire Safety Week Dinner.
Eccles: Where is that?
Henry: In that hotel over there. Now, then, Min, get that leather crane into position over the
piano.
Minnie: Okay, buddy, okay [mumbles away]
FX: crane moves
Henry: Did you sign for the crane before we left, Min? Did you sign for it?
Minnie: Yes, yes...
Seagoon: Help!
Henry: Good, good, well, I'm glad you signed because we've got to have the documents to prove
it, you know? You must have a document.
Minnie: What? What documents, Henry?
Henry: For the crane, Min, the documents for the crane, you must have them, you know, you...
Seagoon: [screaming] Never mind about the blasted documents!
Henry: Ah, no, I'm sorry, you must have the documents, you must have them, you... Where are
they, Min?
Minnie: Where are what?
Seagoon: [screams] Help!
Henry: You must have the documents, can't get the wood, you know.
Greenslade: Meanwhile, in a seahouse in Saigon:
FX: Pointless Milliginish music with slight oriental tones
Greenslade: We just thought you'd be interested... We return you now to our story
Minnie: Oh.
Henry: All right, Minnie.
Seagoon: Help!
Henry: He's returned us to the story. Lower the crane.
FX: crane lowering sounds
Henry: All right, hook it on... Take the left tension...
Minnie: Left tension, buddy.
Henry: Now the right tension, right...
Minnie: Right tension, Henry.
Henry: Attach the grappling claws...
Seagoon: Help!
Henry: Take up the slack... Are you ready?
Minnie: Yes!
FX: factory whistle
Henry: Lunch!
Seagoon: I never saw them again. I finally extricated myself from under the piano [filled?]
with rage at the perpetrators of this outrage. I knocked at the door of the window from which the
piano had been thrown..
FX: knocking, door opens
Thynne: Oh, yes, we've been expecting you... Give me your hat and coat... Thank you.
Now, get out.
FX: door slams; furious knocking; door opens
Thynne: Oh, yes, we've been expecting you. You left your hat and coat. Here. Now, get
out!
FX: door slams; furious knocking; door opens
Thynne: I'm sorry, everyone's out.
Seagoon: Wait! I have a question. Are you a piano short?
Thynne: Only one.
Seagoon: And... where is that?
Thynne: I really couldn't say. I threw it out of the window one night and the next morning it
was gone!
Seagoon: You careless, lackadaisical piano waster!
Thynne: Needle-noddle-new!
Seagoon: To name but a few!
Thynne: Of course.
Seagoon: Do you realize that it struck me in the bagpipes?
Thynne: What?
Seagoon: I'm going to sue you for wanton piano hurling and ú50,000.
Thynne: You can't have both.
Seagoon: Very well, I shall take the money.
Moriarty: You will have neither!
Seagoon: Great heavens, it's Count Foreign Fred Moriarty!
Moriarty: Ah-ho!
Seagoon: The fiendish steamroller driver of Regent Street.
Moriarty: Yes, likewise we claim diplomatic immunity from charges that you have been
struck by a piano.
Seagoon: Why?
Thynne: This is a Titicacan legation and that piano carries a Corp Diplomatic plate.
Seagoon: It does not! And, what is more, I have the piano stored in a secret bonded
warehouse in Bond Street until I produce it as evidence in the forthcoming legal proceedings!
Moriarty: [whispers] Pristy piano! Unless we can get that Corp Diplomatique plate secretly
screwed on that piano, we are speet, spet, phew!
Thynne: Unless we can get that Corp Diplomatic plate securely screwed to that piano we
are [further descriptive noises of their fate]!
Seagoon: Sapristi piano! Unless they can get that Corp Diplomatic plate securely screwed
to that piano, they are [further descriptive noises of their fate]!
Greenslade: Meanwhile,in a stench-packing factory in Saigon...
FX: Pointless Milliginish music with slight oriental tones, ending in tick, fic-poong
Greenslade: We return you now to where we left on.
Sellers: Bic, tic, zong!
Eccles: Fine, fine, fine...
[they have trouble continuing because they are laughing so much]
Seagoon: Dear listener, I realized I had them! Without that CD plate on the the piano their
cook was goosed! So I went to see the most astute legal mind in Trafalgar square.
FX: water rushing.
Major: [singing]... the man from yittl-ong-pong....
Seagoon: Bloodnok! Bloodnok! Bloodnok! I need your help!
Major: I'm sorry, it's her day off.
Seagoon: I want you to sue the Titicacan legation for striking me with a piano.
Major: How much for?
Seagoon: They did it for nothing.
Major: No wonder we get so many overseas visitors.
Seagoon: I want you to sue them for ú50,000.
Major: I accept the case, but first the man from Illiing-tong! Demonstrate with that mad banjo
and split mackerel head!
[song by Ray Ellington]
Greenslade: Case of the Missing CD Plates, Part the Two.
Seagoon: Dear Listener, my legal advisor, Major Bloodnok, demands a salary of ú40,000
before he will proceed with my case against the Titicacan legation and thus see justice done.
Thynne: Ah, Neddy?
Seagoon: You!
Thynne: Neddy, how would you like ú40,000?
Seagoon: In money.
Thynne: Gad, you drive a hard bargain.
Seagoon: Name the task.
Thynne: Very simple, dear boy, very simple. All you have to do is to go to a certain
bonded warehouse in Bond Street, effect an entry, and, blindfolded, screw a small, white, metal
plate to a certain object in the dark, which, for the time being will remain incognito.
Seagoon: Wait. What's on this small plate?
Thynne: Well, if I promise to tell you, will you promise not to tell anybody?
Seagoon: Yes.
Thynne: Good. Then it will be a secret between us.
Seagoon: Right.
Thynne: You'll do it?
Seagoon: Yes--Stop! What is this object I am to screw this plate to?
Thynne: I can't tell unless I keep completely silent about it.
Seagoon: Right. Tell me in silence then.
Thynne: Very well
[lenghty silence follows]
Seagoon: I can't believe my ears!
Thynne: Good. And here's the screwdriver, a blindfold, and a cucumber.
Seagoon: Cucumber?
Thynne: You've got to eat, haven't you? Now then, off you go. [Whispers] Little does this
poor idiot know but inside the cucumber is a powerful infernal machine timed to explode the
moment it detonates and to blow him to perdition when he has completed his task. Exits,
humming.
Greenslade: By the magic of wireless we now take you to a tar barrel in Yokohama...
FX: Pointless Milliginish music with slight oriental tones, ending "fic, tock, tang"
Greenslade: Thank you. The Diplomatic Case of the Strange Immunity, Chapter Eight. A
Case of Strange Diplomatic Immunity, or, with Igloo, Jack Knife and Saxophone Along the Apian
Way. Chapter Ten. It is midnight in a certain bonded warehouse in Bond Street.
FX: mystery mood music
Bluebottle: Eccles?
Eccles: Eh?
Bluebottle: Eccles? It is nice sitting on this glowing brazier being a night watchman, isn't it,
Eccles?
Eccles: Yeah, fine, fine.
Bluebottle: Yes, it is fun being a night watchman!
Eccles: Yeah.
Bluebottle: Eccles? Do you like being a night watchman?
Eccles: Yeah, fine, fine.
Bluebottle: Yes, I like being a night watchman. It's like being a day watchman, only it's in
the dark. You are a brave night watchman, aren't you, Eccles?
Eccles: Yeah, sure, fine.
Bluebottle: And I am a brave nightwatchman.
Eccles: Yeah.
Bluebottle: I like being a brave nightwatchman. [screams]
Eccles: What?
Bluebottle: There's something crawling on my [trowsers?]!
Seagoon: Ah, never fear! It's only me, little wooden-sockped night watchman.
Bluebottle: Ah, my captain! Springs smartly to attention putting left toe into rat trap.
FX: Trap shuts
Bluebottle: [screams] Writhes in agony on floor. Thinks: What shall I think? Thinks: I can't
think of a think. Unthinks.
Seagoon: Listen, tiny Nerk!
Bluebottle: Eh?
Seagoon: I have a job for you. Now, take this plate and screwdriver and screw it into the
object which I am told is in the far left-hand corner of this warehouse.
Bluebottle: What is the reward, Captain?
Seagoon: This lovely, green, succulent, prize-winning cucumber!
Bluebottle: Oh, goody!
Seagoon: Now, off you go and do your task. Come, Eccles, we must watch without to see
that little Nerk shall not disturb-ed be! Exunt Tucket and Treeze, fighting [exunt].
Bluebottle: There. I have screwed the plate onto the piano. Now for a nice, succulent meal of
lustrious [sic] cucumber. Thinks: I wonder what it would be like to be a manmade salatite [sic],
120 miles above the earth?
FX: explosion, sound of strong wind
Bluebottle: Ahh! So this is what it's like! Ahhh!
FX: music, gavel rapping
?: [inaudible] Seagoon versus the Titicacan Embassy. We reward Count Moriarty, and
Hercules... And Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, Consule of no fixed [a place?] the sum of 50,000
nicker for wrongful accusations. Than-cue.
Seagoon: 50,000 nicker! How will I get it? Wait! I know! [laughs] I'll get even with them! I'll
go to Titicaca!
Greenslade: And so, Seagoon took a ship for Titicaca. Meanwhile, in a notorious fish shop in
Baryschool in Yoshiwara... [considerable silence] By Jove, I do believe they're closed!
Seagoon: And so I arrived in Titicaca with my bagpipes, bent on revenge... All I had to do
was to find a steamroller, throw myself under it and sue for damages. I hadn't long to wait.
FX: steamroller approaches.
Voice: Look out!
FX: Ned screaming, bagpipes dying
Greenslade: Dear Listener, the sound of the Goon and his bagpipe being run over is the
second sound in the series "These [or themes?] we have loved."
Milligan: Oh! All right, lift him out gently, lads, and now, unroll him.
Sellers: He keeps curling up like a blinder, matey.
Milligan: Are you all right, Tom?
Seagoon: Arrest that man!
Sellers: What man?
Seagoon: The driver of that steamroller! I demand ú50,000 compensation!
Sellers: Driver, did you hear that?
Major: Yes, and I won't pay it!
Seagoon: You can't get out of it!
Major: Yes, I can! See these CD plates on the steamroller? Diplomatic Immunity, you see!
Seagoon: You're not--
Major: Yes, I am! Major Bloodnok, British Ambassador to the Court of Titicaca!
Seagoon: You mean--
Major: Yes, I have diplomatic immunity! Keep away from me. And what is more, I can charge
you!
Seagoon: Indeed? And may I hear the charge?
Major: Certainly!
FX: trumpet charge
Seagoon: Oh, no! You can't do this to me...!

fades to theme music, credits

Greenslace: And that was the Goon Show, a BBC recorded program featuring Peter Sellers,
Harry Secombe, and Spike Milligan, with the Ray Ellington Quartet and Max Geldray. The
Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott, script by Spike Milligan, announcer Wallace
Greenslade, the program was produced by Peter Eton.