Sellers & Milligan

I spotted this the other day in a charity shop and couldn't resist for a pound . It was released in1974 at the time of the Watergate investigations and although not as funny now as it might have been then it still has some period charm and daft "goonery" especially in the first track. Written by Spike Milligan, Alen Coren, N.F.Simpson, John Bird, Barry Took, Richard Ingrams and Barry Fantoni it encapsulates the Private Eye view of the world quite well and one wonders what it would have sounded like if all these "cooks" had not been stirring the comedy pot in the kitchen and it had been left to just a couple of writers.

Here's a bit about Private Eye from Wikipedia-

"The forerunner of Private Eye was a school magazine edited by Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, Christopher Booker and Paul Foot in the mid-1950s. They met at Shrewsbury School and after National Service Ingrams and Foot went to the University of Oxford, where they met their future collaborators Peter Usborne, Andrew Osmond, John Wells and Danae Brook, among others.
The magazine proper began when Peter Usborne learned of a new printing process, offset lithography, which meant that anybody with a typewriter and Letraset could design a magazine. Although Private Eye was founded amid the British satire boom and the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, at first it was merely a vehicle for silly jokes – an extension of the school magazine and an alternative to other humorous magazines like Punch. However, according to Christopher Booker, its original editor, it simply got "caught up in the rage for satire".
The magazine was initially funded by Usborne and was launched in 1961. It was named when Andrew Osmond looked for ideas in the famous recruiting poster of Lord Kitchener (an image of Kitchener pointing with the caption "Wants You") and, in particular, the pointing finger. After the name "Finger" was rejected, Osmond suggested "Private Eye", in the sense of someone who "fingers" a suspect."

Discover more about Private Eye magazine HERE.


Sellers & Milligan - Tape One

Sellers & Milligan - Tape Two

Sellers & Milligan - He's Innocent Of Watergate


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