Series One, Episode Seven

PROJECT NO. : 11/5/0/2527

SR: Th 19/11/70 (#07)

TX: Sun 13/12/70, 22.00 (#07)

ORIGINAL DURATION : 30’27"

BBC F&TVA : D3-PAL + BBC Enterprises back-up.

BFI: 2" CVT + viewing copy.

SCRIPT: Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden with Tim Brooke-Taylor.

PLOT: Graeme has devised plans for a commercial radio station, but they fail to get funding from the GPO. Tim suggests the dual operation of a pirate radio station and post office. Unfortunately the resulting workload is too much for Tim and Bill, whilst Graeme hides in the bowels of The Saucy Gibbon (a submarine five miles off the Essex coast) and plots world domination.

SEQUENTIAL ORDER : SS1, SS2, FS1 (SS3 insert), SS4, FS2, AD1, AD2, FS3, SS5, SS6, SS7, SS8, SS9, SS10, FS4, SS11

CAST: Tim Brooke-Taylor (all bar FS3, SS9); Graeme Garden (all bar AD1, AD2, FS3, SS7, SS8, SS9); Bill Oddie (all bar SS7, SS9); Brenda Cowling (old lady [SS7, SS9]); Lionel Wheeler (postman [SS1]).

UNCREDITED CAST : coast man and three assistants [FS1], five pedestrians, kid in distance, fondled housewife, smoking postman, another housewife, elderly woman and Ethel Higginbottom [all FS2], child and mother [AD1].

CREW: John Tiley, Max Samett (film cameramen); Alan Lygo (film editor); Ron Oates (visual effects); Betty Aldiss (costume); Rhian Davies (make up); Derek Slee (lighting); Bill Morton (vision mixer); Laurence Taylor (sound); Alan Machin (grams operator); Bill Oddie & Michael Gibbs (music); Jim Franklin (film direction); Roger Murray-Leach (design); John Howard Davies (producer).

STOCK FOOTAGE/MATERIALS: a backdrop of the Statue of Liberty appears through Rent-a-view (SS11).

MUSIC/FOUND SOUNDS: Linking segues of ‘The Goodies Theme’ (SS1/SS2 and bridging ad break), ‘Needed’ (FS1), ‘Hurry Postman’ (FS2) plus the jingle for ‘Goodies Plastic Spacemen’(AD1) appears to be sung by Michael Gibbs. What becomes obvious in certain spoof adverts is the predilection for soft easy listening/jazz backing which is then replaced by a jingle at the end, rather than as a constant musical piece. Laughter tends to disguise this and, particularly in AD2, almost everything is drowned out by laughter. Anyway, music, music.... ‘A Walk In The Black Forest’ appears in all studio sequences from the fifth onwards. This was a 1965 hit single written by Horst Jankowski and Karl Mann, two German composers who had signed to Mercury Records.Find out about Horst at Space Age Pop Music <http://home.earthlink.net/~spaceagepop/jankowski.htm > A Sydney-based comedy/indie radio station is named after this song, presumably in reference to The Goodies . Read their dirge at A Walk In The Black Forest <http://cgi.zipworld.com.au/~tripler/wbf.pl?cmd=index > .

Other things: FS4 features anthemic music for Graeme’s speech and a different, classical score for Tim’s which soon follows. Sound effects include a doorbell and arrow twang (FS2), gunshots (FS2, FS3 and mimed (?) in SS6), bubbling water and a foghorn (SS11). There are two honorary studio renditions, chiefly the ‘Radio Goodies’ jingle composed in SS1 and used throughout. The other is a very brief, excitable reading by Tim and Bill (SS5) of ‘Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips With Me’, a 1968 single by Tiny Tim which originally appeared on Reprise Records and later as part of his debut album, God Bless Tiny Tim (Reprise 1968). More information on the Eternal Troubadour can be found at The Official Tiny Tim Page <http://www.tinytim.org> . I was going to recommend Current 93’s tribute to the late man at www.brainwashed.com but it appears to be down.

GRAEME’S INVENTIONS: Where to start. As Graeme gets more carried away with the pirate post office and radio station he produces even more blueprints for schemes that will never see the light of day. In order of appearance these are a Goodies Stamp Letter ("save on postage", SS5), a Pirate Bus Service with a request stop near Yarmouth (SS6), Bus Stop rafts (SS6), a Pirate Britain where he will tow the country outside the five mile radius using giant jacks, the navy and the QE2 ("I’m going to put Britain on the Equator", SS10) and finally a Pirate Church of England which he devises when funding finally arrives (SS11). On the plus side he builds the good ship Saucy Gibbon with his own hands in the space of a week.

LOONY COUNT: Graeme sets a trend for future episode by going completely mad towards the end of this episode, after feint hints of ego mania from the off. Here is the inevitable explosion, following a radio announcement by Tim that the post office is closing down due to an overload of work.

BILL
Look, we’ve got far too much work-

GRAEME
(thumps Bill) Shut up! (paces room) How do I create a new world when I am surrounded by fools?!

BILL
(muttering to Tim) He’s flipped, he’s flipped.

TIM
He’s gone now, he’s completely gone.

GRAEME
(darting for grams) Stand aside henchmen. (switches mic on and prepares to speak) This is your leader speaking. Here is an important announcement. It has been put about by backsliding, revisionary paper hyenas that The Goodies Pirate Post Office is closing down. This IS A LIE! (thumps desk) Our glorious post office gallantly continues to function. (gesticulates) We will get your letters through! These are dark days and the storm clouds gather around us, BUT NEVER FEAR! I PLEDGE THAT I, YOUR LEADER, WILL SEE YOU SAFELY THROUGH TO A BETTER WORLD! AND NOW, ‘A Walk In The Black Forest’.

REFERENCES: Pirate radio stations had hit their initial peak and died out when BBC Radio 1 launched and pinched most of the jockeys. The two key stations in the Sixties were Radio Caroline and Radio London, both of which were based out at sea and are directly parodied in ‘Pirate Radio’. Darrel Pardoe wrote a short tribute to such stations in 1996:

"‘Wonderful’ Radio London, during the Summer of 1967. At first there was just the BBC (unless you tuned into Radio Luxembourg at night) and for popular music the BBC was really awful. This was the golden era of wonderful radio comedy shows such as Round The Horne and I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again , but Auntie was still stuck in a bygone era when it came to music, and patronising with it. Then came the off-shore pirate stations: Caroline and London, which operated off proper ships, and all the funny little fly-by-night stations which transmitted out of the old forts off the Essex coast and were lucky if anyone beyond Basildon could hear them. Suddenly you could turn on the radio and expect to get reasonably up-to-date music coming out of it: chart singles, for instance, which were marginalised to a couple of programmes a week on the BBC."

For further information and proof that pirate radio is alive and well and located nowhere near Brixton, visit the world of Off Shore Radio <http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk >. Also, if you have any tapes of John Peel’s The Perfumed Garden broadcasts on Radio London, then do mail me. Ta.

There are other references in the episode, all of which are outweighed by the dominant theme. A favourite is the following exchange between Bill and Graeme upon arrival at The Saucy Gibbon (‘Army Games’ reference or just lazy writing?):

1. The first and only uncensored repeat of this episode that I am aware of.

1. The following transcript represents the whole of SS1. I was intending to transcribe the entire show. Maybe next time. This section appears for three reasons. The first is to illustrate the premise and highlight some writing typical of series one’s development. The other two aspects are edits. Both are indicated with square brackets, but the first is a cut made to UK Gold #2 and the second for this initial broadcast by the channel.

2. The second cut, landing at 2’14" on a complete copy is a surprising edit for a late night screening. The missing 10" are hardly the most offensive set to videotape, however this happened to every UK Gold broadcast. Knowing that they acquired a new copy for each broadcast it seems that a shorter edit resides in the archive perhaps designed for overseas sales in 1970 when Tim’s remark was deemed needless and too near-the-knuckle. Without a full copy it is an automatic assumption that a poor edit was made in production, as the dissolve between shots throws up an inconsistent frame and tiny jump in the soundtrack.

3. A boom shadow appears within a shot of Graeme (4’58"). This is marked in the above transcript.

4. Another tiny production edit is in the final shot of FS2 (17’22"). As Bill and Tim collapse with exhaustion on the beach, there is a jump cut prior to them getting up again and wobbling onto the boat. This must have been a retake as there is no obvious reason for splitting the shots.

5. UK Gold’s commercial break lands between AD2 and the establishing shot of ‘Part Two’. The cut totals three seconds and loses very little.

6. Another error in the original edit lands at 20'53", during Graeme's demonstration of the Pirate Bus Stop. A flare, rather than a dissolve, tarnishes the cut from Graeme to Bill after the line "by bus, stupid!".

7. A lazy vision mixer forgets to fade up the screen ident leaving 8’30" of unspoilt Goodies viewing in his wake. It returns at 27’10" for a couple of minutes, then disappears again.

8. Bill’s "no he bluddy wouldn’t" (27’37") is silenced, again betraying the UK Gold tape to be the wrong master. Only with the UK TV screening has it avoided censure.

1. The title-sequence and half a second of the dissolve into SS1 are removed in the usual way. With callousness.

2. As referred to in the previous transcript, a 34" edit is made to trim the jingle rehearsal (1’11") and an admittedly over-running show. The same 10" as before is absent.

3. The first film sequence and its two studio inserts are completely removed, adding a cut of 1’56" to the one-hundred-and-six seconds already accumulated. Very briefly, this section involves the Goodies travelling to the Essex coast by trandem, meeting the coast man and helpers who guide them to their paddle boats. They next travel to the wooden boat which disguises the good ship Saucy Gibbon. They enter through the rather obvious portal in the boat and descend on ladders (SS3 and SS4) to the bowels of the ship. No obvious cut is made to the start of SS5.

4. FS2 drops a further 32" from 12’58" onwards. By means of a quick explanation, FS2 sees Bill and Tim embarking on their first collection and delivery service. It works very simply : they arrive on shore, go back to suburbia dressed as pillar boxes, return to the beach, sort, then go back and deliver. All of which fails to translate quite as effectively in this edit:

SHOT A: Tim and Bill disembark paddle boats dressed as pillar boxes.

SHOT B: Tim follows a man unwilling to post. He reaches another box and posts there, boasting a smug expression to Tim. The still box moves over to Tim and Bill’s hand emerges to shake him by the hand.

[SHOT C: close on ‘GOODYPOST’ masthead which is stuck on the top of both boxes.

SHOT D: Same street. Two women approach separate boxes and jump with fright when they start to move. Two men also appear and Bill tears round street after the whole lot. One man scuttles past but gets cornered by Tim. They start concentrating on the men.

SHOT E: Bill opens a garden gate and hobbles to the front door, rings bell and waits. A delighted housewife opens the door.

SHOT F: Close-up as she posts letter.

SHOT G: Closer still as Bill pinches her bottom.

SHOT H: offers her a free Stamp Envelope.]

SHOT I: A postman empties out a pillar box and turns his back to light a cigarette. Bill darts forward and steals the sack.

5. AD1, AD2 and FS3 are removed completely to make way for a day’s break in transmission. In the process we lose 1’21" a brief film sequence of Bill shooting some mail from the boat and these two adverts, which are both clouded by audience laughter. I’ve done my best...

AD2: MIDRIFF BULGE

(Brooke-Taylor as bulging woman dressed in black with elaborate perm. He pouts at camera in full profile, on a bright white backdrop.)

V/O (Americanised Bill Oddie)
Do you have midriff bulge? Then slim the [difference off]. Try the finger tip test. (Brooke-Taylor presses stomach in.  Backside inflates instead.  Looks relieved until stomach pops out again.) Yes, slim the Goodies way.

7. "Bloody" is still censored.