Back! Back! Back! Our occasional series of Lovely-pictures-without-a-remit. And here’s a TV tie-in! We present a lovely behind-the-scenes still from the 1975 THE GOODIES episode ‘Bun Fight at the OK Tea Rooms’, as shown on BBC on Wednesday.
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WITH Alternative Comedy looming on the horizon like a manic snorting lisping bloke saying “Barstard!”, a meeting of minds took place between the primary practitioners of pre-Python, post-Python and, erm Python-Python Oxbridge fringe-fripperies in the form of this decidedly off-kilter panto. Douglas Adams and John Lloyd produced, Clive Anderson and Rory McGrath scripted, and Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden, Peter Cook, John Cleese, David Hatch, Maggie Henderson and Jo Kendall mugged to the audience (well, apart from the home-tape-recorded Cleese) as if in a freewheeling edition of ISIRTA on the run from the ‘structure’ police, while occasionally referring to pseudo-satirical pisstaking of Aladdin-skewed cliches. Utter genius madness from start to finish, and basically an entire Christmas Day of BBC7 in one handy hour-long package.
Altogether now: “Kids’ book!” Well, in many cases yes, but what a kids’ book! The first comedy TV tie-in to fully capitalise on the ‘warped Eagle annual’ format that Monty Python’s Big Red Book inaugurated, The Goodies File settled into its new habitat with alarming gusto. Compiled by all three Goodies (unlike the series, which was mainly a Bill and Graeme production), the brown-covered File followed the ‘random scrapbook’ format of the Python templates (with invaluable visual input from designer Anthony Cohen) and gave it an admittedly slight sitcom-like overall ‘plot’ – in this case the determination of Edna Tole (Mrs), the lady who ‘does’ for our intrepid trio, to fit them up for the tabloids as a bunch of ne’er-do-well ‘coots’, and cop a fat cheque from publishers Weiden, Feld and Nicolson (‘a song, a smile, and amazing stunts with a grapefruit!’) in the process.
The stage is set for an assortment of as-it-occurs-to-them daftness: a lurid home-printed promotional booklet for the ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ outfit; a ‘dress your own Goodies’ cut-out doll tableau (complete with ‘Tim’s sensible shoes’, ‘Bill’s tasteful trousers’ and ‘Graeme’s impressive shirt’); the story of the smash-hit musical Super-Pope; a good hundredweight of OBE references, and Bill’s bird-watcher’s guide with over-defensive foreword (”There’s nothing weird about me, you know [...] STOP GETTING AT ME. OR I shall CRY.’)
It’s the early years of the Superchaps’ telly incarnation clapped effortlessly between hardcovers, and with its copious photostatted royal invitations ans secret plans (some scrawled on the backs of actual fag packets – ’20 Gut-rotters coke-tipped’), criminal records and notes from one Izzy Bent, it set the template for even greater, more intricate literary excursions that were to follow. At the time, it was the most Goodies-related fun you could have at the time without access to a VCR, a trandem, and the lease on a 6-legged pantomime dromedary costume. Will you please get off my desk?
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STARTED off as an excuse for the old I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again team to keep on getting their I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again money while tied up with TV projects, courtesy of an improvised panel game made up of smut, innuendo and silliness. Original rotating line-up was therefore Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Jo Kendall and John Cleese (with fellow ex-ISIRTA-er David Hatch as producer) being given silly things to do by former Joe Meek-produced Trad Jazz Boom hitmaker and irreverent host of BBC jazz shows Humphrey Lyttleton. Oddie, Kendall and Cleese dropped out after a series or two, making way for external witmongers Barry Cryer and Willie Rushton to make up the long-running classic four-man line-up. Key running themes developed during these early days, most of them still in use to today, include ritual humilation of town and townspeople playing host to that evening’s recording, baiting of resident pianist Colin Sell, ridiculing of comedy panel game contemporaries (“I heard a joke the other day, apparently Quote… Unquote has a Listen Again feature… good one, Nigel!”), ever more ambitious double entendres about scorekeeper The Lovely Samantha, and of course the games – some self-explanatory, others not explanatory in any way at all: Late Arrivals, The Uxbridge English Dictionary, Just A Minim, The Bad Tempered Clavier, Pick Up Song, Cow Lake Bomb, Swanee Kazoo, Letter Writing, Name That Barcode, Quote… Misquote, One Song To The Tune Of Another, Sound Charades (invariably introduced with an anecdote about ‘The Undisputed Grand Master Of The Game’ Lionel Blair), Film Club, Book Club, and of course Mornington Crescent, famed for its innumerable, impenetrable and fiercely guarded rules. Survived Rushton’s death in 1997 by bringing in clued-up guest contestants like Jack Dee, Linda Smith, Rob Brydon, Stephen Fry, Andy Hamilton, Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Tony Hawks, Harry Hill, Phill Jupitus and Ross Noble, bringing their own running jokes with them, and similarly countered Lyttleton’s recent passing with installation of HIGNFY-esque ‘guest hosts’, and long may it continue.
Perhaps Orson Welles isn’t a character who was ever firmly on the rails in the first place, but this peripatetic metropolitan sketch show is an oddball late-period project that stands apart even from all his other oddball late-period projects. Welles hooked up with the nascent Goodies to make a rag-bag of sketches called Orson’s Bag, which was then re-hashed a couple of years later as London – but was still never properly finished. The most famous section involves Tim Brooke-Taylor as a bowler-hatted reporter in perpetual search of Carnaby Street, bumping into assorted Welles characters – flower seller, Norman Evans-style old crone, Jimmy Edwards-esque bobby, slightly dodgy Chinese strip club proprietor, even a Morris dancer – in a fantastic Dick Emery-style tour de force. He even performs Bill Oddie’s One Man Band song. Other bits and pieces are more fragmentary – a beautifully shot scene in a cobwebbed gentleman’s club, with Welles as all four crusty members, has no soundtrack. Even in slivers, it knocks his Don Quixote project into a cocked hat.
Read MoreODDIE ALERT! The blathersome Bill, clearly with a few leftover FROM THE TOP scripts kicking about, cobbled together this “kids – they’re crazy!” effort starring himself as a, ahem, ‘Do-Gooder’, joining forces with four kids, one of whom was IAN “DA BUNGALOW” KIRKBY, to form the titular ensemble.
Read MoreTHE GOODIES decide to regroup after numerous solo efforts to “recreate the magic”. A suitable vehicle is searched for to best deploy their many talents. Instead, they end up doing silly voices for this plodding cartoon Batman pisstake of the long-extinct Nutty comic. Tim does Eric, resident of 29 Acacia Avenue and soft fruit fancier; Graeme does what happens when Eric eats a banana; Bill does wise-talking crow and Oirish police comissioner. Laughs fail to follow.
Read MoreWHAT can you do with an apostrophe?
Read More“WHERE DO BIRDS GO TO DIE?” “Was ration Britain a better Britain?” These and other profound – well, profoundly pointless – questions were ostensibly “received” by hosts BILL ODDIE, BILLY BUTLER and WENDY LIVESY/DEBBIE RIX from the public. Classic 80s set found them all perched on chrome stools in front of a tittering audience who were promptly terrorised into silence during a “serious bit”, i.e. JOHN NOAKES coming in to blub that Shep had died. “Gimme fax!” yelled the theme tune, dementedly. Give us Erinsborough, yelled the nation.
Read MoreWAS THERE NO WAY to keep the lesser talented Oddie off the screen in the mid-80s? No. Here he was again, writing, starring and musically-embellishing (of course) in kids sitcom depicting goings-on at Jolly Theatre Stage School. Which (of course) is far from jolly. Especially when Bill – William Worthington, 43-year-old bank manager – turns up to enrol. Much pratfalling and caterwauling ensues. And that’s just from Bill. Other characters included Polly Jolly and Wayne Layne. Couldn’t he be bothered to have thought up different sounding ones?
Read MoreBILL ODDIE again. This regional TISWAS replacement (see also OUR SHOW) didn’t exactly have legs. Oddie wore yellow waistcoat and boots. “Banana”, you see? They had an audience. They had guests. “It’s the Saturday Banana…” Notable (well, relatively) for containing the first TV appearances of METAL MICKEY in a pre-Dolenz series form. Presumably he just stood about saying “boogie boogie boogie” to Oddie. The shadow of Maidstone, ME15 6RS loomed. Set featured a 30ft tall fibreglass banana, sat phallus-like vertically in the air, almost level with the main road.
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Top of the PopsFor the first time in a while, two consecutive episodes, so it’s a completely different line-up to the last time and some belated debuts for Ian Dury and Sham 69 who we’d have otherwise seen two weeks ago, in a classic Pops juxtaposition with another Cilla flop and the first appearance of a record that, even skipping all the Savile and Travis episodes, you’re going to hear a hell of lot over the next few months.
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