The Goodies

The Goodies were a trio of British comedians: Tim Brooke-Taylor (17 July 1940 – 12 April 2020), Graeme Garden (b. 18 February 1943) and Bill Oddie (b. 7 July 1941). The trio created, wrote for and performed in their eponymous television comedy show from 1970 until 1982, combining sketches and situation comedy. The three actors met each other while undergraduates at the University of Cambridge, where Brooke-Taylor (Pembroke) was a law student, Garden (Emmanuel) was studying medicine and Oddie (Pembroke) was reading English. Their contemporaries included Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle, who later became members of Monty Python, and with whom they became close friends. Brooke-Taylor and Cleese studied together and swapped lecture notes, for they were both law students, but at different colleges within the university. All three Goodies became members of the Cambridge University Footlights Club, with Brooke-Taylor becoming president in 1963, and Garden succeeding him as president in 1964. In 1965, Eric Idle succeeded Garden as Footlights Club president. Idle had initially become aware of the Footlights when he auditioned for a "Smoking Concert" at Pembroke College in front of Brooke-Taylor and Oddie. Brooke-Taylor, Garden and Oddie were cast members of the 1960s BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which also featured John Cleese, David Hatch and Jo Kendall, and lasted until 1973. I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again resulted from the 1963 Cambridge University Footlights Club revue A Clump of Plinths. After having its title changed to Cambridge Circus, the revue went on to play in the West End in London, England, followed by a tour of New Zealand, then on Broadway in New York City (including an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show). They also took part in various TV shows with other people, including Brooke-Taylor in At Last the 1948 Show (with Cleese, Chapman and Marty Feldman). Brooke-Taylor also took part in Marty (with Marty Feldman, John Junkin and Roland MacLeod). In 1968 Brooke-Taylor appeared with Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman in How to Irritate People. Garden and Oddie took part in Twice a Fortnight (with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Jonathan Lynn), before Brooke-Taylor, Garden, and Oddie worked on the late-1960s TV show Broaden Your Mind (of which only about ten minutes survives). The original BBC television series ran from November 1970 to February 1980 on BBC 2, with 67 half-hour episodes and two forty-five-minute Christmas specials. The series was created by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, and originally co-written by all three, with Oddie providing the music for the show. Later episodes were co-written by Garden and Oddie. It was one of the first shows in the UK to use chroma key and one of the first to use stop-motion techniques in a live action format. Other effects include hand editing for repeated movement, mainly used to make animals "talk" or "sing", and play speed effects as used in the episode "Kitten Kong". In the series, the threesome travelled on, and frequently fell off, a three-seater bicycle known to them as a 'trandem'. In September 1978, the trio appeared in character in an episode of the BBC1 television game show Star Turn Challenge, presented by Bernard Cribbins, in which teams of celebrities competed in acting games. Their opponents were three members of the cast of The Liver Birds, Nerys Hughes, Elizabeth Estensen and Michael Angelis. They also presented the Christmas 1976 edition of Disney Time from the toy department of Selfridges store in London, broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day at 5.50 pm. The Goodies never had a formal contract with the BBC, and when the BBC Light Entertainment budget for 1980 was exhausted by the production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series, the Goodies signed a contract with London Weekend Television (LWT) for ITV. However, after one half-hour Christmas special ("Snow White 2") in 1981, and a six-part series in early 1982, the series was cancelled. In later interviews the cast suggest the reasons were mainly economic, and that a typical Goodies sketch was more expensive than it appeared. "The Goodies" won the Silver Rose at the Festival Rose d'Or, held in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1972 for a special episode, based on the original 1971 Goodies' "Kitten Kong" episode, titled "Kitten Kong: Montreux '72 Edition". In the first episode of the next series, "The New Office", Tim Brooke-Taylor can be seen painting the trophy gold. "The Goodies" was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme in 1972, losing to The Benny Hill Show. "The Goodies" won the Silver Rose in 1975 at the Festival Rose d'Or for their episode "The Movies". "The Goodies" was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme in 1976, losing to The Two Ronnies. Unlike many long-running BBC comedy series, The Goodies has not enjoyed extensive repeats on terrestrial television in the UK. In 1986, BBC2 broadcast the episode "Kitten Kong" during a week of programmes screened under the banner "TV-50", when the BBC celebrated 50 years of broadcasting. In the late 1980s the pan-European satellite-channel Super Channel broadcast a couple of episodes, and the short-lived Comedy Channel broadcast some of the later Goodies episodes in the early 1990s. Later UK Gold screened many of the earlier episodes, often with commercial timing cuts. The same episodes subsequently aired on UK Arena, also cut. When UK Arena became UK Drama, later UKTV Drama, The Goodies was dropped along with its other comedy and documentary shows. The cast finally took matters into their own hands and arranged with Network Video for the release of a digitally remastered 'best of' selection entitled The Goodies ... At Last on VHS and Region 0 DVD in April 2003. A second volume, The Goodies ... At Last a Second Helping was released on Region 2 in February 2005. Series 9 (including the Xmas special) was released on Region 2 as The Goodies – The Complete LWT Series on 26 March 2007 and a fourth volume The Goodies ... At Last Back for More, Again was released on region 2 in 2010 as well as a DVD box set containing all four volumes to celebrate 40 years of The Goodies. In 2004, an episode of the BBC documentary series Comedy Connections was devoted to the Goodies. During Christmas that year, Channel 5 repeated the classic 1973 episode "The Goodies and the Beanstalk". Christmas 2005 saw a 90-minute Goodies special, a documentary about the series, Return of the Goodies, broadcast on BBC Two. Early in 2006, a single episode ("Winter Olympics") was broadcast on BBC Two. In February 2007, the 1982 LWT series was repeated on pay-TV channel Paramount 2. In December 2010, BBC Two showed selected late-night repeats of the BBC series, which ran nightly from 23 to 30 December. This apparent gesture followed years of campaigning by The Goodies that the shows had not been repeated like other BBC shows such as Dad's Army, Only Fools and Horses and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. The episodes shown were: "Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms" / "Earthanasia" / "The Goodies and the Beanstalk" / "Kitten Kong" / "Lighthouse Keeping Loonies" / "Saturday Night Grease" / "The Baddies" (a.k.a. "Double Trouble") and "The Stone Age", although "Scoutrageous", "Kung Fu Kapers" and "Scotland" (a.k.a. "Loch Ness Monster") were originally billed as episodes 1, 2 and 7 of the repeat run. The episodes garnered good ratings given their time slot, and the first six episodes were taken from the BBC's own master tapes, rather than the digital remasters, the rights to which are currently owned by Network Video. "The Baddies" and "The Stone Age" have never been digitally remastered. On Sunday 8 June 2014, during a 1970s weekend, BBC Two repeated the Montreux '72 Edition of "Kitten Kong" once again; however, this has been the only episode to be repeated twice, and no full series have been repeated since. In September 2018, Network