After 38 years, The Goodies ride again! 1970
IT’S 50 years since they made their debut and 38 since they rode into the televisual sunset on their three-seater bicycle.
Now The Goodies have reunited to mark their golden anniversary – and be honoured for one episode that was so funny a viewer actually died laughing.
Bill Oddie, 78, Tim Brooke-Taylor, 79, and Graeme Garden, 76, celebrated their milestone at the Slapstick comedy festival in Bristol.
Their 1975 episode Kung Fu Kapers was named their greatest ever at the event following an online survey of fans.
It sees Brooke-Taylor and Garden attempt to learn kung-fu before Oddie introduces them to the littleknown Lancastrian martial art ‘Ecky Thump’ – which involves fending off attackers armed only with a black pudding while wearing an oversized flat cap and braces.
Chris Daniels, from the festival, said he was delighted that fans had picked ‘such a creative and innovative episode’.
Speaking at Saturday’s event, Garden said he had expected Kitten Kong – the episode in which a giant kitten scales the Post Office Tower before crushing Michael Aspel with a paw – to win ‘as that’s the one people seem to remember’. ‘Kung Fu Kapers is a worthy winner – some nice set-pieces, a bit of parody, and one or two gags that were very much of their time,’ Garden said.
‘Filming the fight sequences, I don’t think any of us got hurt, which was miraculous. My abiding memory is falling headfirst into a vat of gunge, live in front of the studio audience. Not much chance of a retake if it went wrong.’
Kung Fu Kapers made headlines worldwide after it was reported that viewer Alex Mitchell, of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, had suffered a fatal heart attack after laughing constantly throughout the episode.
Mr Mitchell’s wife Nessie later wrote a letter to Brooke-Taylor, Garden and Oddie thanking them for making her husband’s final moments enjoyable.
The Goodies ran for eight series on the BBC from 1970 to 1980 before switching to ITV for a final series ending in 1982.
The BBC hosted a 40th anniversary reunion special in 2010, but the trio and their fans frequently complain that the corporation does not repeat the series.
‘Falling into a vat of gunge’