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Eccles (character)


"Mad" Dan Eccles (/ˈɛkəlz/) is the name of a comedy character, created and performed by Spike Milligan, from the 1950s United Kingdom radio comedy series The Goon Show. In the episode "The Macreekie Rising of '74", Peter Sellers had to fill in for the role in Milligan's absence. Very occasionally, he was referred to as 'Mad Dan' Eccles.

Eccles was one of the show's secondary characters, but like his counterpart Bluebottle (portrayed by Sellers), Eccles became extremely popular and he is regarded as epitomising the show's humour.

Milligan visualised Eccles as a tall, lanky, amiable, well-meaning, but incredibly stupid teenager who often found himself involved—usually alongside Bluebottle—in one of the nefarious schemes created by arch-villain Hercules Grytpype-Thynne.

Eccles was often referred to as being something other than an ordinary human. Seagoon says of him "He was the nearest thing I had seen to a human being without actually being one" ("The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-On-Sea"). In "Lurgi Strikes Britain", in a conversation about how Lurgi could easily kill every human in England, Eccles quips, "Then I'm okay, fellers!" In "The Greenslade Story", Grytpype-Thynne mentions that Eccles is colour-blind, and in "The Missing Scroll", Seagoon says of Eccles: "He was living proof that the Piltdown Skull was not a hoax."

The Eccles character and his distinctive voicing were strongly influenced by Milligan's childhood love for the classic Walt Disney cartoons and specifically Disney's anthropomorphic buffoon dog character Goofy. However Eccles transcended the denseness of Goofy, being instead more like a young adult with childlike impulses, which may explain his friendship with Bluebottle. His special talent is for taking things he hears literally, with humorous and occasionally insightful results.


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