SR: Th 29/10/70 (#04)

TX: Sun 15/11/70, 22.30 (#02)

RPT TX: Mon 12/07/71, 19.30, BBC1 (#02). FS1 reappeared as their fifth contribution to BBC 1's Engelbert and the Young Generation, broadcast on 06/02/72. This programme was subsequently wiped from the archives, which creates some mystery over the accompanying music. Archive records list the tune as ' Sleepwalking', rather than ' Show Me The Way' as heard in 'Snooze' itself. Even more curious is the preceding office sequence, which was specially recorded in January 1972. The Clarion & Globe #45 carried an article by Andrew Pixley which detailed the new material:

"Engelbert has terrible insomnia and so goes to see the Goodies for a cure. Graeme's main idea is to play Engelbert his own version of ' The Last Waltz', as this puts most people to sleep. While there is no effect on Engelbert, Bill is soon asleep and walking out of the office, so Tim and Graeme must catch him."

ALTERNATE TITLES: The chalkboard at the start of the archive print reads ‘Sleepwalking’, but all other evidence points towards ‘Snooze’ .

ORIGINAL DURATION: 26’22"

BBC F&TVA: D-3 PAL.

BFI: 2" CVT + viewing copy.

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

PLOT: The Goodies are approached to create a new marketing programme for Venom, the failed bed time drink from Bitro Products. After a swift name change to Snooze, Graeme hits on an advanced formula with a misjudged concentration. The entire nation fall asleep.

SEQUENTIAL ORDER: SS1, SS2, SS3, SS4, FS1, AD1, AD2, FS2, SS5, FS3, SS6 (FS4 insert), FS5, SS7 (FS6 insert).

CAST: Tim Brooke-Taylor [all bar AD2, SS5, FS4, FS6]; Bill Oddie [all bar SS3, AD2, SS5, FS4, FS6]; Graeme Garden [all bar FS1, FS2, FS4, FS6]; Roddy Maude-Roxby (Rupert Wynde-Cheater [SS1, SS3, SS7 only]); Corbet Woodall (newsreader [FS4, FS6 only]).

UNCREDITED CAST: Nicholas Ward, Julian Gray, Crawford Lyle, Clive Rogers, Michael Retnell ( five Bitro directors [SS3]) ; Paul Trobea, Sandra Knox, Kim Parker, Kim Spaughton, Marion Spanish, Paul Magnani, Kim Hawkins, York Mombrey, Toby Holmes, J Shane, ?? Alender, Graham Fleming, Mick Dillion (bridge-painter, bus driver and passengers, four children in park, the rest... who can say?[FS1]);Eileen Brody (woman knitting[FS1]) ; Iris Fry (woman feeding ducks[FS1]); Peggy Weston, Barbara Shackleton, Julia Stratton (three girls on beach [FS1]) ; Janice Hepworth (Recorded Answering Service [SS6]).

CREW: John Tiley (film cameraman); Alan Lygo (film editor); Ron Oates (visual effects); Betty Aldiss (costume); Rhian Davies (make up); Derek Slee (lighting); Laurence Taylor (sound); Bill Oddie and Michael Gibbs (music); Jim Franklin (film direction); Janet Budden (designer); John Howard Davies (producer).

UNCREDITED CREW: animal trainer for hen [SS1], dog [AD2], livestock [FS2].

STOCK FOOTAGE: ‘News On 2’ caption at the start of FS4, plus many more in the FS6 reprise. We see a cricket match in full swing, an athletics contest (the sprint), the Lord Mayor’s Show, newsreel of an elephant arriving at London Zoo and a speech by Enoch Powell. A full untangling of FS6 appears below.

MUSIC/FOUND SOUNDS: Oddie & Gibbs provide ‘Snooze Jingle #1’[SS1], ‘Show Me The Way’ [FS1, FS3], ‘The Goodies Theme’ [FS2], ‘Needed’ [FS2, FS5] and linking snatches of the ‘Snooze Jingle #2’ [SS1/SS2, SS2/SS3]. Another link is a horror stab (dur?/). There are sound effects of toilet flushes, a snatch of the Tony Blackburn radio show during Graeme’s noisy alarm [both SS1], nondescript music in AD1 and AD2 and some sped-up trumpet music during the news report [FS6].

BILL
Called Venom.

TIM
Ah, but not for long! Now what shall we call it? Something sleepy, soporific, late-night...

BILL
How about Epilogue?

TIM
No.

BILL
(thinks) Er, Rolf Harris?

GRAEME
No! He’s not late night.

BILL
He sends me to sleep! (grins)

TIM
(embraces the words) A cosy kip?!

BILL
Nah! Snuggles?

GRAEME
I know. (as though it were patently obvious) Sleepy Bo-Bo’s.

TIM
(baffled) Wha-?

GRAEME
Sleepy Bo-Bo’s. Then when anyone ever says, "I’m going off to sleepy bo-bo’s"...

BILL
Nobody ever says "I’m off to sleepy bo-bo’s"!

GRAEME
I do. Every night (miming his routine) as soon as I’ve brushed my toothy pegs, put on my piggy-jimm-jams, I say "I’m going off to sleepy bo-bo’s" - EVERYBODY DOES!

TIM
Well, I do not.

GRAEME
(ashen) Honestly?

TIM
Yeah.

BILL
Ay! I’ve got it! Snooze.

TIM
(considers it) Snooze.

GRAEME
Yeah, Snooze.

(they gather together)

ALL
(harmony) Snooze!

(fade with ‘Snooze Jingle #1’)

2.  BILL’s COCK COUNT: Well, judge for yourself:

3.  CHROMAKEY: See account of BBC production below (notes 5 & 13).

4.  CORBET WOODALL: The first appearance of the newsreader who, over a decade, remains the most enigmatic and certainly one of the very few recurring characters in The Goodies. No previous research into the show has revealed Woodall’s other work or biographical details, but I’m sure someone out there knows. It would have seemed an obvious question for Robert Ross to have addressed in The Complete Goodies but he too offered a dead end on the subject. ‘Snooze’ offers a great debut for the ‘News On 2’ lynchpin, appearing first asleep and then in the grips of Graeme’s new formula which makes people operate at a hundred times their normal speed - just by drinking tap water. The resulting sequence (FS6) begins with a regular pace Corbet and ends with him zooming around the newsroom, high on adrenalin. The newsreel is also played faster, obscuring the dialogue completely. With the final two items, there are four separate speed changes, escalating on each occasion and edited so that the dialogue is frankly incoherent. Obviously, the priority was that the visuals would work and there are noticeable edits towards the end. Here, at last, is a deciphered transcript:

WOODALL
Good evening. Here is the news. (coughs) Excuse me. (drinks from glass)

TIM
(brief cut-away to Goodies office, he clutches temples) Don’t touch the water!

WOODALL
(glass thuds table on edit) This has been an extraordinary day for British sport. In the first day of play in the test match at Lords, both England and Australia (sped up footage of test match, with bursts of applause conspiring with audience laughter to obscure CW) ???? were beaten ???, England knocking up a century in under two minutes. Eighteen wickets fell before the two teams went in for tea, and after the tea interval only five minutes play was needed to knock up three-hundred-and-seventy runs for the remaining twenty-two wickets. (back to CW, quicker now but an affected voice)And at the White City Stadium (cut to speedy athletics footage) Britain’s Martin Pratt won the one hundred yard sprint for the new world record of zero point zero zero three seconds. (back to studio, CW taking a huge swig of water, voice no faster) Crowds lined the streets of London today to see the Lord Mayor’s show (comedically fast trumpet music accompanies the pomp and ceremony of footage) ???? on his way to the mansion house, where a gala luncheon was held in honour of the new Lord Mayor. (back to CW) Visitors to London Zoo today caughta glimpse of Zsa Zsa, the new baby elephant (footage appears) ??? to delight the crowd of visitors (back to CW, now totally obscured) At Wolverhampton Mr Enoch Powell made a controversial speech (attempting?) his figures (fades, noise of footage drowns CW out)

ENOCH
They never get it right, but we get stagnation, restriction and debt all the same. The truth is better, no? The truth is safer and the truth is freer, in this....as in so much decides today - our fears are our own worst enemy. Let us dare to face reality. (obvious cut) It is the road. (looped applause)*

WOODALL
(distance shot of desk, as he signs off and tidies papers) That was the news - goodnight. (gets up, lets out huge Tarzan-esque roar and runs back and forth across the studio, howling with a new found energy.)

* So much is written about Powell, but no one has actually bothered to provide complete speeches on the internet. If anyone recognises this passage, then do let us know. Thanks.

5.  GRAEME’s INVENTION : Graeme is gleefully smug over an invention. On this occasion, his morning alarm is enough to make Tim jealous. More modest is the success of his "super concentrated" new formula for Snooze.

7.  ORIGINS/REFERENCES: A distinct nod to an It’s Marty! sketch, ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Golfer’, during FS1. Admittedly Feldman’s sketch was a reference to silent comedy, but Bill’s wander atop bus roofs, onto bridges and across water rings bells heavier than his own. Later in the episode, during the supplanting of an antidote into the water supply, there is a feint reference to the fourth episode of BBC 1’s Doomwatch, an ecological drama starring Robert Powell which was broadcast earlier that year. ‘Tomorrow, the Rat’ (series one, episode four - 02/03/70) involved an epidemic of carniverous rats reaching British suburbs. They had been bred by scientists and, as with Grame’s Snooze formula, the experiment was miscalculated and, as they bred rapidly, rat poison was administered into reservoirs and drains, itself echoed in the solution to the Goodies’ problem.

8.  TRADEMARKS: More of a failed trademark on this occasion, with the one and only appearance of the Goodies van during the first three film sequences. It was a useful device for a solo expedition by Tim as he hunts down Bill - the trandem was obviously out of the question. Curtains were already called with a tax disc that reads ‘OCT 1970’ (19’22").

2. When the newspaper falls through the letterbox onto a primed trolley, this is preceded by another off-mic cue of 'do it slowly' (2’52").

3. TIM’s first line - 'morning' - begins off mic.

4. Graeme’s bedside mirror could well have been a source for concern, given its ability to swing back when unattended. The worst case is at 2’36" when the reflection captures part of the studio floor and a crew member.

5. Two cases of blue-screen occur during the first scene, when Graeme pushes his bed into the wall (4’27") and Bill loses control of the dartboard wall, revealing a studio space and step-ladders (6’15"). This recurring problem is strange in light of how little Chromakey (C.S.O.) is actually used in ‘Snooze’. Certainly the problems with Rent-a-view are kerbed with blue blinds, but little suggests itself beyond that. Was there a studio problem during the entire recording that caused all of these mistimed cues? Surely something was intended to appear behind the walls?

6. When Bill proclaims that 'I’ve done a jingle!', Graeme snaps 'There’s a good boy' (SS2). A decent freeze frame will capture a jump cut between the two shots. Both lines are in full view, yet a blip of Bill at a different position lasts a couple of frames after the correct shot (9’35"). This just points to a clumsy edit, or failing that a fault with the monitors. There is no detectable cut in the audio of this section.

7. At the board meeting, studio lighting is reflected into the glass which covers the pictures on the wall (11’56").

8. The final director to collapse into sleep visibly looks for his cue from the actor sat opposite him (11’52").

9. The first film sequence attempts many edits to cover up lapsed time during recording. Nothing unusual about that, but the film ripples caused by the edits are more noticeable than usual. These occur during Bill’s submerging and his pushing the tree over. The instabilty suggests an attempt to re-edit the material.

10. The camerawork on the landmines shot which closes FS1 is notably unstable. Ostensibly an excellent take, this was presumably a peripheral concern.

11. AD1 begins with an uncertain stop/start zoom into the action.

12. During FS2, there is a clumsy edit which attempts to marry separate shots of Graeme sleepwalking and Tim running on the basis that they are in the same position on screen (18’35"). It doesn’t work.

13. The dialogue dubbed onto FS5, when the trio spill the "super concentrated" antidote into the water supply, is mixed rather strangely. It’s too echoey and non-ambient for an open air shot, with Bill’s parting line coming across as the worst ("Now look what you’ve done" - 22’59").

14. The inset on Rent-a-View is out of line during the establishing shot for Corbet Woodall’s news report (SS7/FS6). The ‘News On 2’ insert is played in a fraction too late, causing a sudden appearance on the blinds rather than being created by Bill shutting them (23’40").

15. Roddy Maude Roxby has great difficulty removing the gun from his pocket, snaring it on the lining of his suit (SS7 - 25’35"). He carries on like a trouper, but his rabid threats to kill the Goodies seem a little dampened, given that his hesitation left them plenty of time to run away. If you were generous to him he may have done this deliberately.

16. The most troublesome edit of the show ruins the final joke. Terrified of Rupert Wynde-Cheater, the trio perform an athletics motion as though his gun is a starting pistol. Unfortunately early technology proved too much of a challenge for the intercutting of a deranged Roxby. If the starting block joke had ran without deviation the problem would have been averted, but as it stands the Roxby shot appears to confuse the monitors. The resulting judder makes the spaces between their motions uneven (25’41").

Okay, so what am I getting at? If other 1970 episodes had tended towards avoiding fluffs with a couple of retakes, why did ‘Snooze’ fail to recoup on extra material? Only SS5 (Graeme’s fall after swallowing the antidote) comes across as a perfect take. Without a first-hand account of the recording process - or an audience member with a photographic memory - speculation would point towards a lack of rehearsal time or, more generously, studio planning.

On the face of it, ‘Snooze’ looks like a string of first takes, with hasty blocking, some pretty unimaginative editing in the film sequences (endless establishing shots) and unstable camerawork by Messrs Tiley and Studiolackey. This isn’t hateful, sinful or reprehensible - it just brings the show down a little. Hell, what do I know. Lots of people love this episode and good luck to them. If they can get past the lazy production, the clumsy attacks on advertising, or even believe that it is an attack on advertising, then full speed ahead for the canonisation of crap.

The use of marketing as a tool with which to satirise consumerism and it’s insatiable need for a new, improved formula is fine if it were done properly. But then of course they did that in 1976, with ‘It Might As Well Be String’(#54) - a breathtaking attempt to dissect what they had been crystalising over six series of parodic ad breaks and invented slogans. Just as they returned to old ground in ‘South Africa’(#46) and ‘A Kick In The Arts’ (#65), there was an unexpressed but tangible need to revise early ideas and scripts. 'South Africa' cherry picked scattier offerings like ‘London To Brighton’(#19) and ‘The Lost Tribe’(#11);’A Kick In The Arts’ revisited ‘The Commonwealth Games’(#09). As much as they became adept at concentrating on a single idea and pursuing it to a surreal dead end, the thread was lost much sooner in earlier shows. In the case of ‘Snooze’ this is within the first three scenes, returning briefly for the ad break - itself an extension of the sleepwalking joke which has by that point taken over the story.

Nor is it a satire on advertising if the product never enters the market place. Oddie and Garden make this the expressed intention of the episode and then ditch it within ten minutes. Or was this a cunning twist in the plot? No. For ‘String’ they revisited the half-decent brainstorming session (‘Snooze jingle’, advert designs) and the second ‘advert’ (dog food), but revised the targets completely. Which was wise, because it saved us having to sit through what is effectively a simplistic fifteen-minute run around all over again.

Ultimately this stems from series one’s lack of a voice or assured focus. The limitations of the dialogue in 'Snooze' suggest that any kind of extended discourse was beyond their capabilities. Or were they even concerned at that point? Probably not. Michael Mills had given free reign for them to do anything and they occasionally over-reached themselves through trial and error. In series two Oddie and Garden fell in love with the format, creating deft satires in episodes like ‘Free To Live’ and ‘Gender Education’ - both of which brimmed with confidence as they tackled sexual liberation and sex education respectively. They honed their craft and saw the way forward, which could nonetheless accomodate naughty bits, running around and Tim panicking. A balance.

Realistically I can’t make any claims until I’ve seen the various versions of the ‘Snooze’ script and any production logs which still exist. And I will read them with an open mind, eager to understand why this episode resulted as it did. Certainly the duration of the episode and a flawed production combine to suggest two imponderables - was material dropped which would validate/worsen the episode or was it a hurried, filler script which simply ran undertime? Either way it seems stupid to place it after 'Beefeaters'(#01) in transmission order, suggesting The Goodies to be a harmless proposition even though 'Playgirl Club' (#04) was already in the can.

2. The first part of this two day screening ends with Bill sleepwalking across a mine field (FS1). Everything remains intact, but as opposed to the first screening by UK Gold, we lose the fade in for the ad break, rather than the fade out. The second half rejoins the episode with AD1.