The birthday of the late, very public and credible Christian believer Sir Harry Secombe has just passed. And we are fast approaching the 25th anniversary of his death.
He of “The Goons” fame is also the splendiferous quintessence of Mr Bumble the Beadle in the cinematic version of Lionel Bart’s musical “Oliver”.
In a sign of things to come, year 6 saw me reprise Harry’s role as Bumble- the cruel and lusty but bumptious head of the workhouse in which the eponymous character existed (not lived)…
With marvellous gusto, he sang the words below (as did I, but in my case woefully- my pipsqueak prepubescent voice didn’t lend itself at all well to Sir Harry’s gorgeous Tenor depth-charge-like tones):
“One boy, boy for sale,
he’s going cheap, only 7 Guineas. ($1,900 AUD)
One boy, rather pale,
from lack of sleep.
Feed him gru-el dinners,
Stop him getting fat…”
Later, in one of the most famous lines in show business, Oliver, at the end of a putrescent and minuscule “meal”, holds aloft his tiny bowl, and begs, terrified,
“Please, Sir, I want some more.”
Bumble/Seccombe:
“MORE???!!!l
The Beadle then sings, aghast and mortified:
“Oliver, Oliver, never before has a boy wanted more!
Oliver, Oliver, won’t ask for more when he knows what’s in store!
There’s a dark, thin, wind-ing, staircase-without-any-bannister;
which we’ll throw, him, down, and,
feed-him-on-cockroaches-served-in-a-canister…”
In our production, I had a yearningly tragic crush on my fellow thespian, the lovely Jennifer. (It wasn’t reciprocated- a textbook case of Limerence.) Jennifer played my love interest in the show, the Widow Courtney.
In one scene she had to sit on my lap as I stole a sneaky little (but respectably long) kiss. It was the first time I’d ever kissed a girl. I “died and went to heaven”. For months afterwards little kids at school came up to me and said with quivering excitement, “Did you REALLY kiss her??!!”
* * * *
And so an Ode to Harry:
“For the one who laughed the Gospel into song – for Sir Harry Secombe, who made doctrine hum in a major key, who taught a weary world that joy can be reverent, and reverence joyful…
… For the Welsh boy (they can ALL sing beautifully) from Swansea, who grew into a man of mirth and mercy; for the tenor who turned blowing raspberries into psalms; for the saint who proved that the “fruit of the Spirit” includes chuckling…
May every note he sang still rise like stinky incense, and every laugh he gave echo still in heaven’s choirs – where the Goons rehearse eternity, and grace never misses its cue.
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” – Nehemiah 8:10
Harry Secombe Overture: “The Boy Who Laughed in Tune, and the Laugh that Prayed in Tune”.
“Needle-nardle-noo! ”– the phrase that would later echo through British wirelesses in the 1950s, was, in spirit, born decades earlier in the warm chapel air of Swansea.
Harry Donald Secombe entered God’s hilarious world on the 8th of September 1921, (a post-WWI celebratory baby). He was born into a city whose air was thick with both coal dust and hymn tunes. Dad Fred was a grocer with the voice of a deacon.
Mum Florence, a gentle soul of sturdy reliance on God, kept their home alive with laughter, psalmody, and the unspoken assumption that joy was a theological virtue. Harry embodies the indescribable blessing of being born into a Christian family.
At Dynevor Grammar School, Harry was a walking oxymoron (an idiot with a blowtorch😉).
Pious and mischievous, and impious. Reverent and ridiculous, he learned to project his voice across the playground long before he could do it across the Albert Hall. Chapel culture taught him his earliest doctrine— that God was as present in an outrageous guffaw as He was in a solemn, magnificent hymn.
Desert Song: Faith Under Fire.
The Second War gave Sir Harry both his greatest friendships and his deepest perspective. Serving with the Royal Artillery in North Africa and Italy, he first bumped into a “fellow lunatic” as Harry put it. It was none other than Aussie Spike Milligan – the boy from Woy Woy. (My immigrant wife thinks it is a hilarious name; Woy Woy has even named a bridge after Spike.)
Milligan would become his lifelong comedic friend and co-conspirator. In the desert, humour was oxygen. Men clung to it as to Scripture. Harry led improvised concerts, wrote sketches, and cheered troops under mortar fire: “If we stopped laughing we’d have to think.”
His reliance on Jesus in those years was unpretentious. He would recall whispering the 23rd Psalm under his breath as murderous shells rained down: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” He discovered that fear and dependence on God often occupy the same slit trench.
The laughter was defiance, but it was also prayer.
Goons and Glory: Acting Out for the Kingdom.
Post-war Britain craved laughter like it craved bread. In 1951, The Goon Show exploded onto the BBC with a sound that seemed to come from another dimension – part radio, part anarchy, part theology of the absurd.
With Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Michael Bentine, Seccombe became the genial nucleus of controlled chaos. His booming, irrepressible voice – “Neddie Seagoon at your service!” – grounded the madness. Amid surreal scripts (“You can’t get the wood, you know!”) and collapsing fourth walls, Harry was the moral centre and good-natured fool who believed, against all evidence, that life made sense.
Off-air, he was ballast to his more tormented companions. Sellers could be mercurial, and Milligan depressive. Harry remained imperturbably kind. When Spike unravelled under mental illness, Harry prayed for him, visited him, defended him, and forgave him— again and again. Seventy times seven – Matthew 18:21–22. Spike admitted: “He’s the only Christian I ever met who behaved like one.”
“How Does Moses Make Tea? He-brews it.”
(Tea, Myra, and Miracles)
In 1948, Harry married Myra Atherton, his steadfast soprano in a duet of half a century. Their marriage was ordinary in the holiest sense: they prayed, sang, raised four kiddies, and brewed enough tea to sanctify a small county.
Their home pulsed with affection – an anchor against celebrity’s drift.
Harry would arrive home from a gig or shoot, hundreds of fans’ adulation ringing in his ears. His head would be so big with unrealistic pride that it wouldn’t fit through the door. Myra would immediately say: “You promised you’d do the washing, Harry. Off you go and do it, darling!”
She grounded him. He needed her. She knew that even though he might have an extraordinary job, he was a completely ordinary person. Myra often read aloud from the Psalms; Harry from the Gospel of John. He joked that she was “management’s representative on earth.” Together, they embodied domestic trust in God: steadfast, laughing, rooted.
The Secombes were low-church Anglican, close to evangelical in spirit— Scripture and song, not smoke and bells. Harry once quipped: “If incense worked, we’d have used it in the Goons.”
The Near-Death Aria: “At Last, God Caught My Eye”
In 1980, after a burst appendix and severe peritonitis, the comic almost died. The experience transfigured him. He later expressed it, “At last God caught my eye.”
From then on, Harry prayed daily, read his Bible with curiosity and delight, and found Jesus not as abstraction, but as Friend. Gratitude replaced striving: “I still make a noise, but now I know Who I’m making it for.” Seccombe began to see laughter not merely as medicine but as revelation – the sign that grace was still winning.
Arias and Raspberries: From Goons to Gospel.
The comic turned tenor. His albums – Sacred Songs, Songs of Faith and Inspiration, and Favourite Hymns— were runaway bestsellers. His rendition of “The Holy City” became iconic, sung not with operatic vanity but devotional abandon.
From “Consider Yourself” in Oliver! to “Bless This House” on TV, Harry’s voice always seemed to carry something more than melody – it was a kind of audible benevolence: “When I sing I’m saying thank You.” (to God). He was never embarrassed by relying on Jesus, but wore it like a snicker – effortlessly, unintentionally, involuntary.
Highway to Heaven: The Sunday Night Pilgrimage.
In the 80s, Harry became the gentle face of Highway, a BBC series that wove hymns, travel, and reflection into a weekly benediction. Viewers described it as “televised grace.”
No pulpit, no polemic— just the knight wandering through cathedrals, coastlines, and chapels, chatting with ordinary believers. He ended each episode with his soft Welsh farewell:
“Whatever the week holds, may you find a smile and a blessing in it.” It was evangelism without argument– joy incarnate. He would later say, “I just sing for my Boss.”
The Harry According to the Gospel.
If Secombe had written a creed, it might have sounded like this:
• God is good, and has a genius and a mighty silly sense of humour.
• The devil hates laughter because it reminds him of heaven.
• Hymns are just theology with better tunes.
• The Kingdom of God will be terribly noisy, cacophonous.
He once said, “When I meet St Peter, he’ll probably say, ‘You sang a bit sharp on the third verse, but you can come in anyway.’”
Anecdotes, Aprons and Acts of Grace.
At home, Harry painted landscapes, gardened badly, and cooked well. He collected model trains, quoted Shakespeare, and cheerfully misquoted Scripture and prayers:
“The meek shall inherit the mirth.”,
“For what we are about to receive, Mother Lord make us truly thankful.”,
“Our Father, Who art in heaven, Harold be Thy Name.”…
He supported Christian Aid, visited hospitals unannounced, prayed with strangers, and once turned up at a fan’s sickbed just to sing the Doxology: “He practised what we only joked about,” said Milligan. The other Goons were mystified by his highly believable obedience of, trust in, and love for God. Maybe even impressed? And envious?
* * * *
Why was he the only believing Goon we know of? Clearly, he was among God’s chosen. The Lamb had written his name in His Book of Life. (No doubt in Comic Sans or some equally silly font, like Leunig’s “curly” writing).
Encore: Songs for the King.
In his later years, Secombe’s voice grew frail, but his dependence on God deepened, enriched, and grew more unassailable. Every hymn was a rehearsal for heaven: “Abide with Me” for surrender, “How Great Thou Art” for awe, and “The Holy City” for hope.
Sir Harry often quoted Psalm 16:11 – “In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.”
And he sang as if he were already halfway there. Because he was. All believers are.
The Long (Three Fold”) Amen, for the Three Goons.
Harry died on 11 April 2001, surrounded by his family, a year shy of three score years and ten. Oh, the irony! God, the joker. His funeral was, fittingly, halfhymn and half hearty chuckle.
Archbishop Rowan Williams called him “a man whose faith shone through his laughter.”
One mourner recalled that as Harry’s coffin was carried out to the strains of “The Holy City”, it almost felt like the song was carrying him upward.
The Final Note: Harry’s Heavenly Encore.
The stage lights dim, the celestial curtain rises on God’s proscenium arch. There he stands— a plump Welsh tenor with a grin wide enough to shame the seraphim and cherubim. Milligan mutters, “We’ll never get any sleep up here.” Sellers, halo slightly crooked, applauds.
Harry looks around, eyes misty, lump in his throat: “At least the acoustics are good,” he winks.
God, smiling, simply says, “Welcome home, ya great Goon!” Harry nods, lifts his chin, and launches into: “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Lift up your gates and sing…”, his two chins quivering with joy. And somewhere in the upper harmonies, Myra’s voice joins his.
Afterword: Doctrinal Laughter.
C. S. Lewis (one of “The Inklings”) said, “Joy is the serious business of Heaven”.
Chesterton (another Inkling) said, “… angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
Tolkien (a third) said, “… the deepest laughter and gladness of the Christian life are not escapist, but eschatological— they are foretastes of the Great Joy to come.”
Harry embodied all three.
Because, in the power of his all-powerful King (of comedy), Harry proved that holiness need not scowl. His life was a theology of joy— laughter transfigured into praise. Each Goonish absurdity, each tender hymn, each self-deprecating quip, as part of the same doxology: a God big enough to be laughed with, not at.
Like Oliver, he might have said to the Almighty, “Please, Sir – I want some more.” And the Lord, smiling, would sure reply, “Help yourself lad – eternity’s the refectory.”
So let the final word be Harry’s own refrain:
“Keep laughing in the light, singing in the dark, and remember- even cracked notes please the Conductor.”
Amen—
and needle-nardle-noo.
Please give thanks to God with me for Harry.
For his fearless honesty with the other Goons about God,
And God’s great love for Harry, shown in Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.
In His everlasting, international, all-powerfull rule.
In His righteous, just, and wise Kingship.
And in His loving, compassionate, merciful judgement.
For the sake of the Name of the One who died in Harry’s and our place-
to bring us forgiveness, adoption as His beloved forgiven children,
and as Jesus’ precious, treasured siblings,
Amen.
Image Credit: Secombe family