40 Fun Facts About The Goodies

A King's Lynn bricklayer died from doing what while watching The Goodies episode 'Kung Fu Kapers'?

Laughing for 25 minutes straight brought on fatal heart failure for 50-year-old Alex Mitchell. His widow later wrote to thank the Goodies for making his final moments so pleasant.

In The Goodies, masters of the Lancastrian martial art Ecky-Thump hit opponents with which food?

Black puddings, swung while wearing flat caps and braces, are the art's only weapon. Bill Oddie reveals himself as a secret master and opens a profitable school.

Which American band named an album after the exclamation behind The Goodies' Ecky-Thump sketch?

The White Stripes called their sixth album Icky Thump, respelling a Lancashire cry of surprise. Jack White picked it up from his then wife, Oldham-born Karen Elson.

Which London landmark does a giant kitten climb in the signature image of The Goodies?

Post Office Tower, then London's tallest structure, is scaled and toppled by a kitten fed a growth mixture in the episode 'Kitten Kong'. The shot opened every later BBC series.

Which novelty song gave The Goodies their biggest chart hit, peaking at number four in the UK?

The Funky Gibbon spent ten weeks in the UK chart in 1975 and earned the trio a spot on Top of the Pops. A 2010 re-release raised money for a campaign to save gibbons.

In The Goodies, the trio travel on, and frequently fall off, which shared vehicle?

A three-seater bicycle carries all of them at once; they call it the trandem. Bill Oddie names it Buttercup in the special 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk'.

Bill Oddie of The Goodies later became a familiar British television presenter on which subject?

Wildlife was his passion from boyhood birdwatching in Birmingham. He went on to front Springwatch and Autumnwatch for the BBC.

Which surreal comedy began when Julian Barratt asked Noel Fielding to make a modern-day Goodies?

The Mighty Boosh grew from three stage shows and a radio series into twenty television episodes for BBC Three. Its first television series is set in a zoo.

Which Monty Python star plays a genie at the end of the special 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk'?

John Cleese pops up in Python guise and sneers that the show is for children before vanishing. Critics had aimed the same jibe at The Goodies, to the trio's irritation.

Tim Brooke-Taylor's signature waistcoat in The Goodies is patterned on which flag?

Union Jack colours first appeared on his chest in the episode 'The Movies' and stayed for the rest of the run. They suited the vain, royalist coward he played.

The Goodies trio met as undergraduates at which university, where all joined the Footlights club?

Cambridge gave them the Footlights, where Tim Brooke-Taylor was president in 1963 and Graeme Garden the year after. Future Pythons Graham Chapman and Eric Idle were contemporaries.

Graeme Garden of The Goodies qualified in which profession at university but never practised it?

Medicine ran in the family: his father was an eminent orthopaedic surgeon who devised a classification of hip fractures. Garden said he would not have been as happy as a doctor.

In which country, where repeats kept The Goodies popular, did the trio reunite for a 2005 tour?

Australia saw the series repeated through the 1970s and 1980s in a children's teatime slot. The 2005 reunion visited Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra and sold out most of its 13 shows.

All three Goodies eventually received which honour, one that Tim's character desperately craves?

OBEs went to Bill Oddie in 2003 for conservation work and to the other two in 2011 for services to light entertainment. The show had mocked the award for years.

In The Goodies, Graeme Garden's character plays up to which stock comedy stereotype?

Mad scientist Graeme builds the computers, robots and potions that drive many plots. Tim plays a vain royalist coward and Bill a scruffy rebel from Lancashire.

In 'The Goodies Rule – O.K.?', a 20-foot Dougal from which children's programme charges at the trio?

The Magic Roundabout supplies both the giant dog and an enormous Zebedee, who between them flatten a puppet government's country house. The scene was filmed at Parnham House in Dorset.

In The Goodies episode 'The End', the trio's office is accidentally encased in a huge block of what?

Concrete entombs them thanks to a building design by Graeme, and the rescue is put off for years. It is a bottle episode, shot on one set because the location budget had run out.

In The Goodies episode 'Earthanasia', the world is due to end at midnight on which day of the year?

Christmas Eve is the deadline set by the United Nations, which decides that ending everything is the best way forward. The trio spend the last half hour confessing sins and shedding inhibitions.

In The Goodies, a misread job advert lands the trio a five-year posting at which remote workplace?

A lighthouse was the job all along: Graeme had read the advert as an offer of light housekeeping. At Jollyrock, where keepers keep vanishing, everything is round, even the playing cards.

In The Goodies' 'Saturday Night Grease', whose portrait replaces the Queen's on Tim's wall?

Olivia Newton-John inspires a crush that sends Tim to the disco dressed like John Travolta, where he is arrested for touching a girl. Bill then opens his own exclusive club, Disco Billius.

In The Goodies' 'Goodies and Politics', Tim and Bill fight an election in a spoof of which musical?

Evita had been a West End hit since 1978. Tim stands as Timita against Bill's Che, and the election is tied at one vote each because nobody else bothers to vote.

The Goodies' first ITV programme was a 1981 festive special billed as a sequel to which fairy tale?

Snow White 2 sees the trio apply to replace missing dwarfs, only to be thrown out for being too tall. Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie wrote it for London Weekend Television.

Which sci-fi series exhausted a 1980 BBC budget, prompting The Goodies to sign with ITV?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ate the money, and the trio had never had a formal BBC contract. They joined London Weekend Television, which dropped them after one special and six episodes.

The Goodies twice won a Silver Rose at the Rose d'Or festival, held in which Swiss lakeside town?

Montreux honoured a remake of the giant-kitten episode in 1972 and 'The Movies' in 1975. Tim is later seen on screen painting the silver trophy gold.

In The Goodies, the trio run their do-anything agency from an office in which London district?

Cricklewood is the address the scripts keep returning to. Disguised as a dog for Crufts in 'Frankenfido', Bill Oddie competes as Cuddly Scamp Hairylegs of the same suburb.

Which 1980s cartoon superhero series reunited all three Goodies as its voice cast?

Bananaman had Graeme Garden as the title hero, Tim Brooke-Taylor as narrator and Bill Oddie as Crow and Doctor Gloom. It ran for 40 five-minute episodes.

Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden of The Goodies were panellists for decades on which radio show?

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, the self-styled antidote to panel games, began in 1972 and kept both men as regulars for more than 40 years. Bill Oddie was an early panellist until Willie Rushton replaced him in 1974.

Which props stood in for horses in The Goodies two years before Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Coconut shells clopped through the 1973 episode 'Hunting Pink'. The same gag in the Python film is often credited to Michael Palin.

In The Goodies' 'Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms', what do the trio strike in an old Cornish mine?

Cream is what they strike, a rival find of jam and scones follows, and the feud ends in a shoot-out with tomato sauce instead of guns. Graeme cheats at poker with a hidden toaster.

In 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk', what is all that Bill Oddie gets for selling the trio's trandem?

A tin of baked beans is the best offer after the crowd of bidders ridicule the machine. Tim tips the contents over Bill's head, but Graeme plants one bean just in case.

In The Goodies episode 'Kitten Kong', what is the fluffy white kitten that grows enormous called?

Twinkle is one of the patients at the trio's clinic for loony animals, alongside a vampire bat and two singing dogs. Graeme's growth mixture does the rest.

In The Goodies episode 'The Movies', what kind of film does Graeme Garden insist on making?

A Western, and a violent one, is Graeme's choice, while Tim shoots a Biblical epic and Bill a black-and-white silent comedy. The three productions keep crashing into each other's sets.

Tim Brooke-Taylor of The Goodies co-wrote which much-imitated sketch for At Last the 1948 Show?

Four Yorkshiremen, in which men compete over who had the poorest childhood, was written by the 1948 Show's own performers in 1967. Monty Python later adopted it for their live shows.

Students at which Scottish university elected Tim Brooke-Taylor of The Goodies as their Lord Rector?

St Andrews had him as Rector from 1979 to 1982; he arrived for his installation by helicopter and told a mother-in-law joke in Latin. He urged that a woman succeed him, and one did.

Which 1960s BBC sketch show with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden led directly to The Goodies?

Broaden Your Mind billed itself as an encyclopaedia of the air, and Bill Oddie joined for its second series. An early title considered for The Goodies was Narrow Your Mind.

Besides co-writing and starring in The Goodies, Bill Oddie also supplied which element of the show?

The music was his department: he wrote the show's songs and co-wrote its theme with Michael Gibbs. His songs later gave the trio five hit singles in twelve months.

What became of the BBC's original 1971 tape of The Goodies episode 'Kitten Kong'?

It was wiped so the videotape could be reused, leaving the original as the one episode officially missing from the archives. An expanded remake made for a festival the next year survives.

A Leicester fan of The Goodies refused to leave for hospital until an episode ended, despite what?

Going into labour mid-episode did not shift Seema Bakewell from 'Alternative Roots'. Thirty years on she took the grown-up baby, Ayesha, to a reunion show and told Graeme Garden the story.

The Goodies lost the 1976 BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme to which rival show?

The Two Ronnies took the award, four years after the trio's first nomination had lost out to The Benny Hill Show. Those were the series' only two nominations for the prize.

In The Goodies, a pantomime horse renamed Black and White Beauty must be trained to win which race?

Grand National glory slips away in a photo finish, when Beauty and a rival stop to pose for the camera and a third horse wins. Tim and Graeme are inside the costume the whole way.