Michael Bentine remembers his time in the RAF and MI9

I was given the heads up to this by a friend. I'm always a bit reluctant/bothered about listening to these sort of things but I'm glad I did.

Try to find 30 odd minutes to listen to this mainly very funny story.

BBC iPlayer - Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester: An Actor's Life for Me - But Not for Very Long

 

Seconded. It's a very funny programme and well worth a listen.

 

Shame there's not more - The gibbons, drill square and wooden bomb had me in stitches !

 

Shame there's not more - The gibbons, drill square and wooden bomb had me in stitches !

The wooden bomb was brilliant. There's been some good stuff on R4 recently like the Arnold Ridley programme I linked to last night.

All the wartime reminisces of the Goons are as funny. The obvious one being Spike's memoirs but if memory serves me correctly Secombe also served in Italy and Sellers was in the RAF.

Might be worth putting all the various tales together on a thread.

 

Well thats how he became a Intelligence Officer.On aircrew ITW,he was given the cultures as jabs and became seriously ill for 6 months and would have been discharged on ill health grounds but then his language skills were harnessed and he remustered to a Intelligence Officer.

He served at Hemswell as a intelligence officer on the PAF bomber squadrons based there and might have gone on to nearby Ingham when Hemswell was closed in 1943 for the laying down of runways and the Polish squadrons moved there.

Would be interesting to follow up the story of the magnetic and accoustic mines being dropped into a Lincolnshire farmer's pond.

Apparently while at Hemswell,he was involved in the game of applying a trail of shoe prints across the ceiling of the officers mess dining room or so the story goes.

 

Would be interesting to follow up the story of the magnetic and accoustic mines being dropped into a Lincolnshire farmer's pond.

Someone else mentioned that to me but no real clues other than the Polish Pilot. I also wondered who the poor chap was who died from the wrong jabs.

 

Although, at the moment, they only have the first 3 episodes available, the series is currently (13th Jan 2018) being repeated on the Iplayer / Radio4extra: Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester - Available now - BBC Radio 4 Extra

The remaining episodes are scheduled to be broadcast again over the next few weeks: BBC Radio 4 Extra - Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester - Next on

 

Thanks for that link.
You can sometimes hear the old Goon shows on Radio 4 Extra. (He was one of them.)