the surreality of the imagery and the speed of the comedy that I loved - the way they broke up the conventions of radio and played with the very nature of the medium." This is reiterated by Michael Palin and John Cleese. Cleese recalls listening to The Goon Show as a teenager in the mid-1950s "and being absolutely amazed by its surreal humour. It came at a key stage in my own development and I never missed a show". Music and sound effects Orchestral introductions, links and accompaniment were provided by a hand-picked big band made up of London-based session musicians. The arrangements and musical direction were done by Wally Stott from the third to the 10th series. Stott produced many arrangements and link passages, further improved by the first-class sound quality the BBC engineers managed to achieve. Members of the band featured prominently in the comedy proceedings, particularly jazz trombonist George Chisholm who frequently played Scots characters. The show's concluding music was usually either "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" or a truncated and ironic rendition of the Alte Kameraden (Old Comrades') march, followed by Max Geldray and the Ray Ellington Quartet playing "Crazy Rhythm" as play-out music. Other theme tunes used included "Goons' Gallop", a play on Devil's Galop, "I Want to Be Happy" and "Lucky Strike", which the cast sang over at the conclusion of the episode called "The Great Bank Robbery". In keeping with the variety requirements of the BBC's "light entertainment" format, The Goon Show scripts were structured in three acts, separated by two musical interludes. These were provided by the Ray Ellington Quartet – who performed a mixture of jazz, rhythm & blues and calypso songs – and by harmonica virtuoso Max Geldray who performed mostly middle of the road numbers and jazz standards of the 1930s and 1940s accompanied by the big band. Both Ellington and Geldray also made occasional cameo appearances; Ellington was often drafted in to play stereotypical "black" roles such as a tribal chieftain, native bearer or Major Bloodnok's nemesis (and counterpoint to Bloodnok's affliction) "The Red Bladder". It was in its use of pre-recorded and live sound effects that The Goon Show broke the most new ground. Part of the problem was that "not even Milligan knew how to capture electronically the peculiar sounds that came alive in his head – he just knew when it had not yet happened".:205