12 Facts About Larry Stephens

Lawrence Geoffrey Stephens was a BBC radio scriptwriter, best remembered for co-writing The Goon Show with Spike Milligan.

Larry Stephens was a regular writer of the show for the first two years, and then returned to The Goon Show to assist Milligan.

Larry Stephens was born in West Bromwich and moved to Quinton, Birmingham, when he was four.

Larry Stephens wrote for Hancock again on The Tony Hancock Show, which was screened on ITV by Associated-Rediffusion.

Larry Stephens wrote for other popular television series too, such as The Army Game with Maurice Wiltshire, with whom he co-wrote three Goon Show episodes.

In February 1954, the BBC asserted that Larry Stephens had violated the terms of his contract by failing to deliver scripts for The Goon Show on time, and that, thereafter, his work would only be considered on spec.

Insulted, Larry Stephens refused to have anything further to do with The Goon Show.

Milligan would throw out all kinds of hit-or-miss suggestions; Larry Stephens would retrieve the ones most likely to work.

Larry Stephens was probably at his busiest during 1955 and 1956, during which time, apart from co-writing The Goon Show, he supplied the story and helped shape the screenplay for The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn, and made countless last-minute re-writes of various comedians' scripts, innumerable gags for a wide range of variety shows and quite a few unofficial edits of troublesome television scripts.

Larry Stephens' heavy drinking had aggravated his high blood pressure, and he died on 26 January 1959; the official cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage brought about by chronic hypertension.

Larry Stephens' death has been a subject of surmise and conjecture.

Many Goon Show fans believe that Larry Stephens died while having dinner with Milligan.