AGNES TETLEY, who had not seen her half-brother since he was 12, was waiting for him on the quayside when his ship docked at Liverpool in September 1925. He was lean and wiry in appearance, and, though timid in manner, full of enthusiasm. Agnes took him to London by train and found digs for him in Rowland Gardens, South Kensington, near to the Royal College of Music, where Sir Hugh Allen, as good as his word, enrolled him for the winter term. The college register shows that Goodall gave his year of birth as 1903, instead of 1901. He may have believed that at 24 he was rather old to be a student. He need not have worried. He looked so boyish that most of his fellow students thought he was much younger anyway.

Goodall's principal study was piano, his second one organ. To meet his rent and living expenses, as well as the college fees of 12 guineas a term, he took a job as a pianist at the King's Picture Playhouse (now the Cineworld), on the corner of King's Road and Old Church Street in Chelsea. For several nights a week he accompanied the silent films, playing jazz, popular music, excerpts from the classics, anything that fitted the pictures on the screen. Later he played the cinema organ.

Goodall also answered an advertisement for an assistant organist at the church of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn, an Anglo-Catholic stronghold that enjoyed a high reputation for the quality of its music. The resident organist, Owen Franklin, wanted one of his own pupils as assistant, but the vicar, Father Henry Ross, insisted on auditions being held. There were eight candidates in all. Goodall, who came towards the end in the playing order, noted that his predecessors were all cautious in their choice of test-pieces. Instinct told him that this was the wrong approach, and in contrast he gave a bravura performance of Marcel Dupré's F-minor prelude and fugue. “I rattled the windows,” he said later. Ross was bowled over and gave him the job on the spot.