It’s forty years since the first episode of „The Goodies“ was broadcast on the BBC, but you wouldn’t know it. For some (t)reason, the BBC rarely acknowledges the existence of one of it’s most popular comedy programmes. Originally entitled „Super Chaps 3“, „The Goodies“ were concieved, written and performed by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie. All three were Cambridge graduates, and had come to comedy through the „Cambridge Footlights“ comedy revue society, where they had met and worked with John Cleese, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman, later of Monty Python fame. Their first success came with the radio show „I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again“.

Walking the Cat

The idea that the Goodies would do „anything, anywhere, anytime“ was concieved so that the theme of the programme was as loosely pinned-down as possible, with the three living in their shared home in the London suburb of „Cricklewood“, and travelling on their supremely unwieldy „Trandem“ – a three-seater bicycle that they apparently never managed to ride for more than 100 metres, according to Bill Oddie. Brooke-Taylor played a pro-royal upper-class Union-Jack waistcoat-wearing conservative, Garden (who studied medicine) a slightly-mad scientist type, and Bill Oddie portrayed a left-leaning 70′s hippie character. The series lasted from 1970 until the early 1980s, racking up no less than 70 episodes including two christmas specials,although it suffered unfairly from comparisons with Monty Python, and the general attitude that it was a „Kid’s programme“ aimed at children, despite being shown after 9pm at night. The humour was highly visual, meaning that it translated easily – episodes made their way to Germany as part of „Englebert and the Young Generation“.
Memorable episodes include „Kitten Kong“, where a kitten is injected with growth serum by Graeme, and demolishes the Post Office Tower in a satire of „King Kong“, „Kung-Fu Capers“, where Oddie, complete with oversized flat cap, demonstrates the Lancastrian art of self-defence – „Ecky Thump“ – by beating people senseless with a black pudding, and „U-Friend or Foe“, which pretty much satirized then-current SF Blockbusters „Star Wars“ and „Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind“. The „Kid’s Show“ criticism was well and truly addressed with a pointed satire of Apartheidt („South Africa“) where South African police paint anything dark brown white, including Tim Brooke-Taylor’s tie.

Anything You Can Do

Unfortunately, due to some strange machinations at the BBC, the Goodies were rarely – if ever – repeated or even issued on DVD or video. The BBC claimed to have stopped making the show as the costs were high due to the special effects frequently demanded by the script, but, if that’s the case, why not repeat them to defray the costs?

Teaching the Dodo To Fly

The show is regularly repeated in Australia, where it has an enormous fan-base.

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Update: BBC finally repeat the Goodies after 25 years > read more

Two memories :

Number One : October 1979 : walking into Martin’s the newsagents after school, and discovering that all six shelves of the paperback section were filled with a book with a strange cover, and an even stranger name : “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. The world turns upside down. (Mind you, at that age, your world tends to turn upside-down with considerable regularity, due to girls, music and frantic wanking schedules)

Number Two : Sitting at work in Deutz over the road from the Köln Arena, 12th May 2001, I recieve an email from an old college friend “Douglas Adams is dead!”. The world turns upside-down, but not in a nice way.

Douglas Adams is well-known throughout the world for the “Hitch Hikers” and “Dirk Gently” books, but very few people outside the UK realise that he was an excellent comedian and comedy writer long before the “Hitch Hiker” phenomenon, and contributed scripts and performances to many British radio and TV shows. Amongst his most-celebrated early work is the infamous “Kamikaze” sketch, about a Kamikaze pilot being briefed for his 20th mission – having failed to find a target on the previous nineteen.

Adams also collaborated with Monty Python star Graham Chapman, who, by all accounts, was famously difficult to work with. Nevertheless Adams managed it, and made two brief appearances in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (as a surgeon in the 42nd episode, and as a “pepperpot” holding an atomic bomb in the 44th) as well as contributing a sketch about a doctor forcing a patient, who has been stabbed and is bleeding to death, to sign lots of unnecessary forms and paperwork before being treated – something he later recycled in the computer adventure game he co-wrote with Infocom Games, entitled “Bureaucracy”. He collaborated on several other projects with Chapman, including the TV Pilot “Out Of The Trees”, which featured the original version of “The Private Life Of Genghis Khan” (later rewritten and expanded, and available in the Adams collection “The Salmon of Doubt”), as well as a sketch where a young man (played by Simon Jones, later to play Arthur Dent in the Radio and TV versions of HHGTTG) picks a flower, leading to a chain of events that cause the collapse of civilisation and the planet to explode. the Chapman-Adams team also wrote an episode of the 1970′s comedy show “Doctor on the Go” (based on the popular “Doctor” books by Richard Gordon). Adams also contributed a number of sketches to “Not The Nine O’Clock News”, including one where an interviewee, named Douglas Adams, trys to plug his book “How to get your book plugged on TV”.

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Ein Text von Steve Dix

Und hier noch der Video-Tipp mit dem Hund:

Und hier die 5 Fragen an John Doyle:

1. Welches ist die größte Herausforderung für Stand-Upper zur Zeit?

2. Welches Thema kannst du nicht mehr auf der Bühne hören? [1:25]

3. Was ist der neue Trend? In welche Richtung bewegt sich das Stand-Up-Business deiner Meinung nach? [2:26]

4. Welcher Videoclip hat dich in letzter Zeit vom Sessel gehauen? [3:07]

5. Was sind deine aktuellen Projekte? [3:42]

Hier Johns Video-Tipp:

Mehr zu John Doyle, seinem Buch und seinem aktuellen Programm erfahrt ihr auf johndoyle.de

Über das Format:
“5 Fragen an…” heißt die neue Interview-Serie die heute auf Deuser or Die startet. In regelmäßigen Interviews mit Künstlern und Machern in der Comedy-Szene wollen wir den Status Quo abbilden. Wir freuen uns auf spannende Diskussionen.

Big in Albania

British comedian Sir Norman Wisdom O.B.E. died at 95, on 4th October 2010. He is perhaps best-known for his slapstick comedy films of the 1950′s and 60′s. Norman carefully constructed a comedy character – a childlike bumbling idiot in a suit two sizes two small – that he named „the Gump“. The Gump was usually paired with a father-figure character named „Mr. Grimsdale“, and this gave Wisdom his catchphrase – an anguished cry of „Mr. GRIMs-daaalee!!“ as the situation around him deteriorated to chaos. Most of the films usually pitted Norman as a little everyman against uncaring figures of authority. It was a formula that worked so well, that his films were the only Western films allowed to be shown under the Communist regime in Albania. Comedian Lee Evans has often been compared to Wisdom, and Charlie Chaplain stated that Norman Wisdom was his favorite clown. The character was almost universally liked by children, and lead, in the 1970′s, to his films being frequently repeated on TV as children’s entertainment.

Wisdom had experienced a horrible childhood, and was thrown out by his father, aged 13. After periods of work in the Merchant Navy and as a coalminer, he ended up destitute and living on the street. In desperation, he attempted to join the Army as a bandsman. On having his bluff called due to his lack of musical knowledge, he responded to the recruiter „I can learn“. He did, and learnt both the clarinet and the trumpet. During the war, he worked in a command bunker in Britain, where he connected phone-calls between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other allied world leaders. He was once reprimanded for calling Churchill „Winnie“.

After the war, he decided on a career in entertainment. Starting as straight-man to a magician, he assembled the character of „The Gump“. Within two years, he was a star, rapidly going on to do television and commanding huge audiences. Film was inevitable.

Most of his films, even today, are met with sneers by film critics, mainly due to the slapstick style, which dated the films heavily. The films were, however, hugely popular with the public, making more money than the „James Bond“ films that were out at the same time. By the end of the 1960′s, their popularity wained, and so attempts were made to modernise them, ultimately removing the Gump character and casting in relatively more „straight“ characters. This made the resultant films even more unpopular, as the fans wanted to see the Gump screaming „Mr. Grimsdale!!“. The films ended, and Wisdom retreated to television, where, ironically, he took up the character of the Gump again. Subsequent examination, however, reveals that the films are a great deal better-written than you would think, and are a great deal more satirical than they’re given credit for. He recieved the Order of the British Empire and a knighthood for his services to entertainment.

Den Anfang macht Tobias Mann, begnadeter Comedian, Kabarettist, Moderator und Musiker erster Güte. Mit seinen Solo-Programm “Durch den Wind und wieder zurück” und seinen beiden TV-Shows “Mann an Bord” und “Fun(k)haus” spielt der Mainzer in der ersten Liga. Im Interview spricht er über die große Herausforderungen für Comedians, neue Themen zu finden, sieht aber gute Chancen so lange diese gut rübergebracht werden. Was der kommende Trend auf der Bühne ist und was genau ein Plansequenz so faszinierend macht, gerade wenn sie mit dressierten Hunden ausstaffiert ist erfahrt ihr im folgenden Interview. Mehr zu Tobias Mann gibt es auf tobiasmann.de.

Video: Interview mit Tobias Mann (4:18)

Video-Tipp: OK Go’s Video “White Knuckles”

Titelbild: Angelika Stehle

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