Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Goodies

Classic cult TV comedy from the 1970s from three University of Cambridge students called "The Goodies". This surreal series was a must see TV event for the British and Australian audiences, as well as some other territories too.
The three guys who clowned around were Bill Oddie,Tim Brook-Taylor and Graeme Garden, who starred, wrote, sung and  did amazing stunts through out its BBC TV 70 plus episodes run  in the 70s, and a short stint later on LWT. All three homed their comedy skill by appearing in the Cambridge Footlights at the same time as some of the Python team, who nearly had Tim Brook-Taylor in their cast.

The Goodies travelled around on a three person bike (Tandem) trying to assist and help solve problems for other people, often bringing in high profile personalities of the time, along with amazing cutting edge camera tricks, long before computers did that.

Despite its HUGE success the show very rarely gets a repeated showing, (Australia shows it all the time), as BBC controllers just did not like it, so it was put on the shelf for nearly 40 years, but remains in all the baby boomers memories, thus its resurgence on satellite channels  over the last few years.

A 1971 special called "Kitten Kong" has a classic image of a pussy cat on the BT Tower and pulling it down, the show earned a  Montreaux award, ask many people of a certain age about that episode and "The Beanstalk" special they will smile at you.

And here is a clip from the Beanstalk.
The Goodies also had many fun singles during the 1970s.

The Main Cast


Tim Brooke-Taylor was born in 1940, and in the 1970s also appeared in "His and Hers" and "Shang a Lang".

Bill Oddie born in 1941, and also starred in "The Two Ronnies","Doctor In Charge" and also with Engelbert Humperdinck too in his TV shows.

Graeme Garden born in 1943, and also starred in "Doctor In Charge" and Engelbert too.

Here are The Goodies in a TV chat many years later.

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