The story of The Goons, part three: Gone, but their comic genius will never be forgotten…

Collectively, The Goons were the most successful comedy team of their time.

And individually, the four members would go on to forge creditable careers after they split in 1960, though Michael Bentine had a head start, having left seven years previously.

In international terms, Peter Sellers was the one to make the biggest name for himself, becoming an Oscar-nominated actor and a Hollywood star.

He was known as “one of the most accomplished comic actors of the late 20th century” and the vast majority of his films were indeed comedies, including the smash-hit Pink Panther series, which ran from 1963-78.

Indeed, anyone born after 1960 is more likely to think “Inspector Clouseau” than “Goons” when Sellers’ name is mentioned.

The thing is, 1963’s The Pink Panther wasn’t meant to be a Clouseau movie, it was intended to be a vehicle for David Niven, given top billing as the charming jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton.

And Sellers wasn’t originally meant to be in the picture, either. Peter Ustinov was signed to play the bumbling French detective but he backed out after Ava Gardner left the project.

Director Blake Edwards turned to Sellers as a replacement and it soon became obvious to the cast and crew that the supporting actor was stealing every scene.

Niven had hoped to create a new film franchise but it was Sellers’ performance – for which he won a Golden Globe – that caught everyone’s imagination, and the subsequent films focused on Clouseau.

Indeed, such was his impact, when Edwards was brought in to replace the director of Sellers’ next film, he rewrote it as a Clouseau movie which is the reason why the utterly wonderful A Shot In The Dark doesn’t have “Pink Panther” in the title, and why it followed the first film into cinemas by mere months.

Sellers had already made more than 30 films before The Pink Panther, including the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, in which he played a Cockney spiv in the gang who use old Mrs Wilberforce’s house as a base in which to plan their security van heist.

And his versatility, especially with voices and accents, often saw him play multiple parts like he did with the Goons, such as in the 1959 comedy The Mouse That Roared, in which he played Grand Duchess, Gloriana, her Prime Minister and a game warden she appoints to lead her army.

Like Spike Milligan, Sellers – who was married four times, once to Britt Ekland – struggled with depression and also insecurity, often claiming to have no identity outside the roles he played.

His behaviour could be erratic and compulsive and he often clashed with co-stars and directors, especially in the mid-70s when his physical and mental health were at their worst, largely due to alcohol and drug problems.

Filmmakers the Boulting brothers described Sellers as “the greatest comic genius this country has produced since Charles Chaplin” but I think Spike Milligan fans – of which I am one – would disagree.

Milligan was the creator and main writer of the Goons, and he maintained his prolific output with novels such as Puckoon and his seven volumes of autobiography starting with Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall.

He was also very talented when it came to comic verse – Milligan’s Silly Verse For Kids should be given to every baby born in Britain – and his poem On The Ning Nang Nong was named the nation’s favourite comic poem in 1998.

Spike was also a TV regular, his comedy sketch show Q5 hugely influenced Monty Python, but he said he would have made more programmes, had he been given the opportunity.

He also cropped up as a jobbing actor from time to time, and Bernard Miles, who gave him his first straight role as Ben Gunn in Treasure Island in the early 60s, said he was “a man of quite extraordinary talents, a visionary who is out there alone, denied the usual contacts simply because he is so different, he can’t always communicate with his own species”.

Milligan always stole the show as Gunn and he must have been his fellow cast members’ worst nightmare as, always keen on ad-libbing, he soon left the text behind as he launched on a stream of absurdity.

He suffered from extreme bipolar disorder and had at least 10 nervous breakdowns, some lasting more than a year.

Eddie Izzard described him as “the godfather of alternative comedy”, explaining: “From his unchained mind came forth ideas that just had no boundaries.”

Harry Secombe’s prowess as a tenor allowed him to follow a career as both a comic actor and a singer.

He was a bel canto tenor, though characteristically the diminutive Welshman insisted that in his case this meant “can belto”.

He had a long list of bestselling albums to his name and was particularly noted for musicals including 1963’s Pickwick, which gave him a No 18 hit single – and his signature tune – with If I Ruled The World.

The show went to Broadway, earning Secombe a Tony nomination, and everyone remembers his portrayal of Mr Bumble in the film Oliver!.

The Harry Secombe Show debuted on Christmas Day in 1968 and ran until 1973, with Milligan, Ronnie Barker and Arthur Lowe regular contributors to its comic sketches.

But it was Sing A Song Of Secombe and Secombe With Music that pointed the way to his later career.

Secombe, whose brother Fred was a priest in the Church of Wales, became famous for presenting religious programmes such as Songs Of Praise, Stars On Sunday and Highway.

He was knighted in 1981 and referred to himself as “Sir Cumference” in recognition of his rotund figure, and the motto he chose for his coat of arms was “GO ON” – geddit?

In 1972, Secombe and Sellers told Michael Parkinson that Michael Bentine was “always calling everyone a genius” and, since he was the only one of the four with “a proper education”, they always believed him.

The Eton-educated Bentine parted company with the gang in 1953 on good terms but ever after felt that people resented his departure.

But that didn’t stop him carving out a good career on children’s TV.

His first show featured remote-controlled puppets, The Bumblies, which he also devised, designed and wrote.

These were three small creatures from outer space who slept on “Professor Bentine’s” ceiling and had come to learn the ways of Earthling children.

However, Bentine ended up selling the show to the BBC for less than the puppets had cost to create.

But The Bumblies set the template for Bentine.

His It’s A Square World (1960-64) featured a flea circus using special effects to show the movements of things too small to see.

Later, from 1974-80, he wrote, designed, narrated and presented Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, which starred bearded puppets – the Potties – comically re-enacting famous historical situations.

It sounds like the plot of a Goon show but, in 1968, Bentine took part in the first hovercraft expedition up the Amazon, while he was also a crack pistol shot and helped foster the idea of forming a counter-terrorist unit within 22 SAS Regiment.

He was also interested in parapsychology, carrying out research into the paranormal.

Alas, all of the Goons are gone now. Sellers was first, and youngest, to die, aged just 54 in 1980.

He was meant to meet his former partners Milligan and Secombe for dinner but died in his hotel room of a heart attack, with Secombe later quipping: “Anything to avoid paying for dinner.”

His funeral set the tone for future Goon burials as Glenn Miller’s In The Mood, a tune he hated, was played.

He’d told his fellow Goons of his plans but they didn’t believe him, only to dissolve in fits of the giggles when the vicar announced: “A piece of music that meant a lot to Peter” and the distinctive opening bars rang out.

Secombe sang Bread Of Heaven and when he himself died of cancer aged 79 in 2000, Milligan joked: “I’m glad he died before me as I didn’t want him to sing at my funeral.”

In fact, Secombe had the last laugh as a recording of him singing was played at Spike’s memorial service.

Milligan died of kidney failure in 2002, becoming the earliest-born, longest-lived and last Goon to go. He wrote his own obituary, stating: “He wrote The Goon Show and died.”

He’d once quipped he wanted his headstone to bear the words “I told you I was ill” but the diocese refused, until a compromise was reached in which it was inscribed in Irish Gaelic.

Bentine had already died from cancer in 1996, aged 74, and one of his hospital visitors was Prince Charles, a close friend of him and Milligan and a huge Goons fan, too.

The recordings that exist of that legendary comedy gang, and the books, records, TV shows and films the various members made after it split, mean there’ll be plenty more of those in the years to come.