The Goodies
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40 free The Goodies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Goodies ran through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, mixing sitcom plots with cartoon-style slapstick, speeded-up film and visual effects that few British comedies had tried. Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie played exaggerated versions of themselves: a trio for hire who would take on any job, however ridiculous. This quiz covers the episodes fans still talk about, from a kitten that outgrows London to a secret northern martial art, along with the running jokes, the guest stars, the chart records and the awards. It also follows the trio before and after the show, on radio, in cartoons and beyond. It is written for anyone who grew up with the series or found it later through repeats, and for quiz setters who want a reliable British comedy round. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A King's Lynn bricklayer died from doing what while watching The Goodies episode 'Kung Fu Kapers'?
Laughing
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.
Q 02In The Goodies, masters of the Lancastrian martial art Ecky-Thump hit opponents with which food?
Black puddings
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.
Q 03Which American band named an album after the exclamation behind The Goodies' Ecky-Thump sketch?
The White Stripes
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.
Q 04Which London landmark does a giant kitten climb in the signature image of The Goodies?
Post Office Tower
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.
Q 05Which novelty song gave The Goodies their biggest chart hit, peaking at number four in the UK?
The Funky Gibbon
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.
Q 06In The Goodies, the trio travel on, and frequently fall off, which shared vehicle?
Three-seater bicycle
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'.
Q 07Bill Oddie of The Goodies later became a familiar British television presenter on which subject?
Wildlife
Wildlife was his passion from boyhood birdwatching in Birmingham. He went on to front Springwatch and Autumnwatch for the BBC.
Q 08Which surreal comedy began when Julian Barratt asked Noel Fielding to make a modern-day Goodies?
The Mighty Boosh
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.
Q 09Which Monty Python star plays a genie at the end of the special 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk'?
John Cleese
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.
Q 10Tim Brooke-Taylor's signature waistcoat in The Goodies is patterned on which flag?
Union Jack
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.
Q 11The Goodies trio met as undergraduates at which university, where all joined the Footlights club?
Cambridge
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.
Q 12Graeme Garden of The Goodies qualified in which profession at university but never practised it?
Medicine
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.
Q 13In which country, where repeats kept The Goodies popular, did the trio reunite for a 2005 tour?
Australia
Q 21In The Goodies' 'Goodies and Politics', Tim and Bill fight an election in a spoof of which musical?
Evita
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.
Q 22The Goodies' first ITV programme was a 1981 festive special billed as a sequel to which fairy tale?
Snow White
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.
Q 23Which sci-fi series exhausted a 1980 BBC budget, prompting The Goodies to sign with ITV?
The Hitchhiker's Guide
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.
Q 14All three Goodies eventually received which honour, one that Tim's character desperately craves?
OBE
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.
Q 15In The Goodies, Graeme Garden's character plays up to which stock comedy stereotype?
Mad scientist
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.
Q 16In 'The Goodies Rule – O.K.?', a 20-foot Dougal from which children's programme charges at the trio?
The Magic Roundabout
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.
Q 17In The Goodies episode 'The End', the trio's office is accidentally encased in a huge block of what?
Concrete
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.
Q 18In The Goodies episode 'Earthanasia', the world is due to end at midnight on which day of the year?
Christmas Eve
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.
Q 19In The Goodies, a misread job advert lands the trio a five-year posting at which remote workplace?
A lighthouse
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.
Q 20In The Goodies' 'Saturday Night Grease', whose portrait replaces the Queen's on Tim's wall?
Olivia Newton-John
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.
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.
Q 24The Goodies twice won a Silver Rose at the Rose d'Or festival, held in which Swiss lakeside town?
Montreux
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.
Q 25In The Goodies, the trio run their do-anything agency from an office in which London district?
Cricklewood
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.
Q 26Which 1980s cartoon superhero series reunited all three Goodies as its voice cast?
Bananaman
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.
Q 27Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden of The Goodies were panellists for decades on which radio show?
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
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.
Q 28Which props stood in for horses in The Goodies two years before Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
Coconut shells
Coconut shells clopped through the 1973 episode 'Hunting Pink'. The same gag in the Python film is often credited to Michael Palin.
Q 29In The Goodies' 'Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms', what do the trio strike in an old Cornish mine?
Cream
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.
Q 30In 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk', what is all that Bill Oddie gets for selling the trio's trandem?
A tin of baked beans
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.