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Comment by milliams | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, as a Brit I've never in my life heard of "Brown Windsor soup". Admittedly I've never watched the Goon Show but it's hardly "deep...into the British psyche". Perhaps it's a generational thing (I'm in my 30s)?

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I'd never heard of it (42) but I asked my wife and she figured it must exist because the Major orders it in Fawlty Towers.

I've done a small straw poll from a range of ages (20's to 70's). Only the older people (60's+) seem to have vaguely heard of it but none knew what it is or had any particular reaction to me mentioning it.

Note though that my sample size for older people is very small due to the lack of 50's+ in my immediate vicinity (one person in their 60's and one person in their 70's).

As an American, I'm pretty much on my own for even knowing what the Goon Show is, let alone Brown Windsor Soup. I even met Harry Secombe once in the late 90's at a hotel in Bournemouth, and nobody knows who the heck I'm talking about when I mention it.

> Admittedly I've never watched the Goon Show

Being a radio show, you could watch it with your eyes closed.

As radio shows go, it was actually very visual.

I've never watched the Goon Show either, but I've listened to most extant episodes. Perhaps that's why the name seemed so familiar.

Weirdly, I have watched the Goon Show. But only one episode - the last episode of the radio show was on tv too. (I grew up listening to my dad's tapes of the others)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Goon_Show_of_All

It is, of course, on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF745ywyvVY

FWIW, I hadn't heard of Brown Windsor Soup till I watched the recent adaptation of Around The World in 80 Days.

I guess that shows what I know about my country's cultural history :)

1. create a myth

2. debunk it

3. everybody click and complain

4. profit?

Yup, same, I'm 45 and I never heard of the stuff.

At a guess, you had to be in the generation that actually watched the Goon Show.

50, UK born and bred (southern). I think I have heard the name, but no idea what it's like or ever eaten anything that claimed to be it.

UPDATE: I just asked a guy who works with me who's 61 and he said straightaway "it was a comedy invention created as a satire on British cuisine."

It’s fascinating that wikipedia can’t be corrected.

Same, I've never head of it either.

I'm in my early 40s and have never heard of it either. Maybe it's a Southern thing.

I'm from the South, it isn't. Ironically, the notion that Brown Windsor Soup is famous itself appears to be a hilarious lie

It's more of a Utica expression

Reference:

https://youtu.be/4jXEuIHY9ic

I’m Scottish but moved down to Sussex as a kid and have been here for almost 3 decades. I’ve never heard of it either. Seems a generational thing as both my parents were familiar with it as an old dish.

47, lived in Surrey my whole life, never heard of it.

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