Show Notes
"He's only got to lift his leg and he'll drown 50 kids!"
This week: Digby, The Biggest Dog in the World, a 1973 British family comedy in which an Old English Sheepdog accidentally drinks an experimental growth formula and raises the woof!
Leading the cast is Jim Dale as Jeff Eldon, an animal psychologist at a NATO research facility; when Spike Milligan (playing a shameless German stereotype) moves in next door he is all for having him impounded as he mistakenly believes Jeff thinks he is a dog.
It's part Disney family adventure, part monster movie parody and utterly British.
Did we forget to mention that other cast members include Angela Douglas, Norman Rossington, John Bluthal and Victor Spinetti? There’s also a cucumber the size of a bus, a mischievous chimp and a wonderful scene set in a roadside café.
Plus we ask: did Dulux pay for the outrageous product-placement? Do the special effects hold up? And why wasn’t Jim Dale a bigger star in Britain?
Joining Tyler is Graham Rinaldi, film writer and academic and huge Bowie fan, and please feel free to join in the Bowie drinking game as we discuss this fine film.
More from Goon Pod
The Queen in America, Eurovision, Elvis, knitting a Spon, a Russian Love Song, Harry Rocking the Town! - it's all here this week! Plus: how much do we love Moriarty, a glaring goof and Watch That Tiger!
Jet Storm, also known as Jet Stream or Killing Urge, is a British thriller directed and co-written by Cy Endfield and starring Richard Attenborough, Stanley Baker, Patrick Allen and Virginia Maskell. It is an early example of what would become the aviation disaster-film genre, preceding films such as Airport by more than a decade. Released in October 1959, it centres almost entirely on a transatlantic flight from London to New York and the psychological and moral crisis that develops among its passengers when one of them threatens to destroy the aircraft.
Broadcast on Channel 4 on 2nd December 1985, The Last Laugh Before TV-am was Spike Milligan’s attempt to bring his particular vein of humour to a new generation... although very little about it suggested that Milligan had changed his approach since the early Q series.