Eccles (), also referred to as 'The Famous Eccles' or 'Mad Dan Eccles', is the name of a comedy character, created and performed by
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish actor, comedian, writer, musician, poet, and playwright. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Colonial India, where he spent his ...
, from the 1950s
BBC radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term ori ...
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 'Field Marshal' Eccles.
Eccles was one of the show's secondary characters, but like his counterpart
Bluebottle (portrayed by Sellers), became extremely popular and he is regarded as epitomising the show's humour. The Eccles character and his distinctive voicing were strongly influenced by Milligan's childhood love for the classic
Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
cartoons and specifically Disney's
anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
buffoon dog character
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. He is a tall, anthropomorphic dog who typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a ...
. . When Milligan wrote ''
The Idiot Weekly'', an
Australian version of ''
The Goon Show'', Eccles often made appearances in the script.
Milligan visualised Eccles as a tall, lanky, amiable, well-meaning, but incredibly
stupid teenager who often found himself involved—usually alongside Bluebottle and
Neddie Seagoon—in one of the nefarious schemes created by arch-
villain
A villain (also known as a "black hat" or "bad guy"; the feminine form is villainess) is a stock character, whether based on a historical narrative or one of literary fiction. ''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'' defines such a character a ...
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne. As well as being frequently referred to as being something other than an ordinary human, Eccles also possesses remarkable stupidity when dealing with physical objects; in "The Greatest Mountain in the World" he describes two sticks of dynamite as "What luck! Two big cigars and they're both lit!"
{{Goons
The Goon Show characters
Male characters in radio
Radio characters introduced in 1951