Legendary British comedians Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe have all gone up to the big radio studio in the sky, but their inspired nitwittery keeps old fans enthralled and continues to win over new ones.

Ying Tong: A Walk with The Goons has played to rapt audiences in the eastern states and now it’s Adelaide’s turn to look into Milligan’s brilliant but troubled mind.

Aussie actor, writer and comic Geoff Kelso plays Milligan, a role he is now comfortable in but that was daunting to begin with.

“There is that pressure in recreating someone who is to Goons fans a sort of god,” Kelso said. “All of us suffered from that: Johnny Biggins, who’s playing Peter Sellers, had the same reservations. But the success of the show and the very positive responses that we’ve had have assured us that we’ve nailed them pretty well.

“I think they [The Goons] would approve.”

Written by Roy Smiles, the show also features David James as Harry Secombe and John Hannan as voiceover man Wallace Greenslade and follows Milligan through a period of hospitalisation after a nervous breakdown.

“It’s a journey through Milligan’s mind,” Kelso said. “You watch him battle his demons and those demons actually include The Goon characters. He did say obviously he loved writing all that crazy stuff, but it became an obsession. He said he lost his marbles writing it and it certainly destroyed at least one marriage and helped drive him nuts.”

Kelso attributes The Goons’ lasting popularity to their “extraordinary combination of different sorts of humour”, mashing up everything from Marx Brothers fly-in-your-soup jokes and cartoonish slapstick violence to puns and music-hall cracks complete with the requisite wah-wah-wah-wah accompanying the punch-line.

“There were all those elements, but mixed in with them was a kind of surreal absurdist humour that seemed to come like from Lewis Carroll,” Kelso said said. “Milligan described their style of comedy as taking any situation to its illogical conclusion.

“That mixture was like a box of fireworks: skyrockets and Catherine wheels and penny bungers,” Kelso said. “It wasn’t just one style of humour. It was the whole lot mixed together. Sometimes it was the speed at which it went and the silly voices that made you laugh.

“It’s just the sense of the absurd that clicks for some people.”

Ying Tong: A Walk with The Goons plays at Her Majesty’s Theatre from November 5-22.