Goodness Gracious Me

With 2 long discs here, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME has a lot of good to great material on it. What stands out to me the most here is Sellers' amazing ability to do a great variety of voices, including his British upper-class snob, his British commoner, and his man from India. Sixteen tracks are songs or include songs. However, some of the material here is NOT among his best work. Disc 1 is almost all good to great stuff, but on disc 2 the quality drops badly.I take issue with a couple of things. For one, the comments on the front cover suggest that this is ALL comedy material, such as saying this set is "His Best Comedy Moments." OK, about 93% of this is comedy, but some is not meant to be funny at all. For instance, "Jakka and the Flying Saucers" is a very well done children's fantasy story, but is not meant to be funny. Likewise, several songs, such as "I Haven't Told Her, She Hasn't Told Me," are nicely sung by Sellers, but aren't meant to be funny. Also, I would have left off the few tracks that are mean-spirited, namely "Setting Fire to the Policeman" and "Auntie Rotter."Technically these CDs are very good. The sound quality is great, with very low distortion. There is the glitch that "The Contemporary Scene, part 2" on disc 2 is actually a repeat of "Face to Face" on disc 1. And the CD case is very attractively done, with good photos of Peter Sellers and 2 including Sophia Loren, a good little essay on Sellers and comedy, and recording data including dates. The best feature of this set is how generous it is, since disc 1 runs 75:13, while disc 2 runs 75:10.Overall, I think GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME is fairly good, but the EMI Comedy disc of Peter Sellers entitled  Classic Songs and Sketches " is a more consistently high-quality disc.

I first bought most of these in the 1960s in their old Angel LP format. It's great to have them back. The Vaudevillean musical numbers now date a bit, but the comic vignettes not at all.

I have several Peter Sellers comedy sketches on vinyl, all now sadly worn out, so I was verypleased to find this compilation of 18 of his funniest on a 2 CD compilation.Here are the voices of Henry Crun, heard here in Any Old Iron, My Old Dutch, and Grandpa'sGrave, juxtaposed with Bluebottle's voice from the Goons in Putting on the Smile and I'm soAshamed.Sellers was for a time produced by the late George Martin who went on to become The Beatlesproducer, but some of Sellers earliest sketches dating back to the 1950's are to be heard here.Perhaps the most well known songs came from his alliance with Sophia Loren. GoodnessGracious Me and Bangers and Mash being particular favourites.This is a fun album, perhaps a little dated by modern standards, but a worthy addition to anycomedy collection.

I bought this for 'Goodness Gracious Me', but the whole CD set is an absolute delight!

Brilliant collection of Peter Sellers tracks and sketches with plenty of laughs. The man was a comic genius.

Never tire of this humour. Wish there was more of it in today's entertainment world.

Everything good