Graeme Garden and The Goodies have long been celebrated at Bristol’s Slapstick Festival. The slapstick visual sequences were absolutely central to the joy of their longrunning and much loved comedy series. As Graeme said on the night, the idea behind the original series lay in making a kind of real life Roadrunner cartoon. But this year Graeme and the Festival team came up with a new angle. Given I’d spoken publicly about how a particular episode of the show had offered me inspiration during my sex discrimination equal pay tribunal against the BBC in 2019, how about doing an entire evening focussed on the political and social satire in many of the episodes?
Looking back to 2018 when I’d interviewed Graeme, Tim and Bill together to mark the DVD release of the complete BBC episodes, I’d been struck by how reactive the series seemed to news events and social change of its day, often filtering in the sense of tabloid generated or amplified outrage: There were episodes on the obsession with suburban satanists, punk, the National Gallery’s budget and fears of having to sell off art.
And equally how the tone of the show had changed, from quite an adult sensibility (Bill going off on psychedelic sherbert trips, topless pinups on the office walls, and, scantily clad and mostly dialogue-free women as set dressing ) to something more inclusively comic.
Graeme quickly came up with a shortlist of episodes and we compiled a rich selection of clips to illustrate the theme. At the Bristol Beacon event for the Slapstick Festival in front of a warm and enthusiastic audience, we launched our Thinking Woman’s Guide To The Goodies; inspired by female broadcasting pioneer Joan Bakewell’s highbrow cultural interviews in the 1960s. The whole event was filmed, and featured audience questions too. You’ll hopefully you’ll be able to catch it posted on Youtube soon.
My gratitude to Tim, Bill and Graeme is deep, and I want to express my huge personal thanks to Graeme Garden and the whole Slapstick Festival team.
Give Police A Chance S1 Ep 3 ( 22nd Nov 1970) had its origins in Bill Oddie being stopped by police while driving his car and then assaulted. He was charged and convicted of assault after a police officer testified in court that Oddie, despite being much shorter, had kicked him in the chest. The episode captured the sense of how violent their reputation was at the time, and played with the idea of the Police seeking The Goodies’ help to clean up their image. Tim Brooke Taylor’s onscreen persona (unlike his real views) as a patriotic, trusting conservative, added real power to story lines like this, as the veil fell from his eyes.
Pollution S2 Ep 3 (15th Oct 1972) – We chose a slapstick sequence from this episode, after the Goodies went on the trail of pollution being created and dumped by the ministry of pollution. It featured sewage filled lakes (how 2024!) and acid rain – courtesy of acetone poured on Tim’s umbrella. The health and safety assessments for the show would make entertaining reading. This episode also offered a moment to reflect on the musical genius of Bill Oddie. His song-writing pioneered a new kind of multi-genre music for comedy.
Gender Education S2 Ep 11 (31st Dec 1972) – Beryl Reid starred as the Mary Whitehouse figure Mrs Desiree Carthorse, one of many veteran comedy actresses to play key roles in The Goodies. I’d first interviewed Graeme about Whitehouse back in 2020, when I was researching her campaign diaries. The storyline reflected the very current moral panic about sex and violence on TV and her concerns about a controversial new sex education film for schools, which would show a couple having intercourse. Graeme revealed they found out Whitehouse had been a fan of the show in real life and had written to the producer to say as much. I also enjoyed reading Graeme an extract from her 1977 diaries, when it was clear she’d confused them with the Pythons and their planned film The Life of Brian. How appropriate that the last time the Guardian wrote a piece about me claiming something from the 70s needed a fresh critical appraisal, it was Mary Whitehouse.
Superstar S3 Ep 7 (12th July 1973) – Perhaps the most prescient and revelatory evidence of my thesis, about The Goodies reflecting the social issues of its day, was this elaborate parody of pop fame in the gender-bending glam rock era. In a particularly sharply written episode, Oddie finds fame as Randy Pandy, managed by the cynical Barbara Mitchell, and packaged with maximum shock value for girls, boys and “the twilight zone”. There’s even a Jesus Christ Superstar-style show for him to star in, based on the life of St Augustine. The portrayal of TOTP, which saw teenage girls brought in on a livestock lorry to be the studio audience, was striking for capturing what was only revealed in hindsight, after the Jimmy Savile scandal in the 2010s.
Hospital For Hire S4 Ep 3 (15th Dec 1973) – Another episode that looks remarkable in 2024, with issues around crumbling, filthy buildings, low morale, waiting lists and government policy on the NHS. Harry H Corbett played the Minister. The clip we showed saw inviting The Goodies visiting Crippen ward to see how a modern NHS hospital works.
Cunning Stunts S5 Ep 10 (14th April 1975) – My favourite episode, and the ultimate inspiration for the Slapstick Festival event, this captured the essence of The Goodies’ satirical possibilities. The title is knowing risque wordplay, it came out a few months before the implementation of the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and the 1970 Equal Pay Act aimed to transform the workplace for women. The episode was, said Graeme, conceived as a love story, with Bill falling for an heiress, played by Tessa Wyatt (then married to regular Goodies target Tony Blackburn). When she takes a job as a reporter in The Goodies newsroom, she soon upturns the sexual politics of the office and starts sexually harrassing the boys, much to their horror. It’s a magnificent moment and meant a lot to me and my sister growing up in that strange decade. We memorised the scene thanks to taping it off TV on an early VCR, and used to quote it at eachother for years after.
South Africa S5 Ep 11 (21st Apr 1975) – This satire on apartheid was clearly mocking the racist attitudes of the South African regime, and the violence of their security forces, but even with a star turn by Philip Madoc as the violent head of the South African tourist board, it remains a very difficult watch. Graeme was revealing about the push back from the BBC who claimed it wasn’t funny enough. They added more jokes, the episode got made, but it was really good that we got to discuss honestly the problem with blackface, and how the use of racist language even for satirical ends – the kind I regularly heard at school or on sitcoms like Love Thy Neighbour – was uncomfortable.
Politics S8 Ep 1 (14th Jan 1980) – A new decade and this episode captures how much had changed in politics since The Goodies began in 1980. Graeme played a Tim Bell-like media guru, making over political leaders. We had parodies of Mrs Thatcher (Tim Brooke-Taylor at his finest), plays on Evita, and spoof political ad campaigns about class and free enterprise that connect directly to the world of today.
The Playgirl Club Sq Ep 4 (Nov 1970) – Out of chronological sequence, but a clip I wanted to include, was this spoof of the Playboy Club and the strange mainstreaming of American porn culture that took Britain by storm in the early 1970s. It’s another tricky watch, not least for Graeme, who was gracious in agreeing to show it. Starring Liz Frazer and featuring comedienne Queenie Watts, this episode features the Goodies going undercover (like Gloria Steinem) as Playgirl Wolves (complete with ears and scanty outfits) in Liz Fraser’s den, where women subjected men to their female gaze. There are a couple of real male go-go dancers gyrating in the club. When Hugh Hefner died I interviewed my mother for The Guardian about being taken to the Playboy Club for my father’s business dinners with clients and their spouses. Watching this reminded me of that strange era.
As I said in 2018, my biggest finding was that as a profundly revealing social document of the decade – what was going on in social attitudes, politics, culture, humour – The Goodies – with its mass multi-generational audience – is the series that future historians will be studying. Not Monty Python.
Graeme and I are already planning the next installment of The Thinking Woman’s Guide…
Further listening/reading
Reappraise the Goodies as a catalyst for social change (Feb 18th 2022 Guardian)
Ahead of her time? Programme reevaulates Mary Whitehouse’s legacy (March 1st 2022 Guardian)
Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse (Archive on 4, May 5th 2022)