This is where Toothpick Companion strides into view. Ostensibly a broadcast history, it exists for collectors who want to know what they’re missing (repeats are rarely complete), all the while serving as a full guide for the newcomer too. By documenting every transmission and commercial release of a Goodies product (plus some bits that were swept under the carpet or assumed lost) the principal aim is to bring to everyone’s attention the true worth of BBC Television’s most valuable comedy trio - Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.

Other guides exist and if you simply want an abbreviated episode guide, then there are plenty out there which will suit you right. Matthew K. Sharp and Brett Allender both provide sterling guides to the series and if you’re ever in your local library do borrow a copy of Robert Ross’s The Complete Goodies to satisfy your palate. The purpose of this guide is to well and truly ransack the series for every last scrap you could possibly want to know. Ever wanted to learn the dance steps for The Disco Heave, or the lyrics to ‘Make A Daft Noise For Christmas’? Hello!

So what can you expect? The first series, which is now available to digest, should give you a fair indication as to the nature of the episode guide. Each known broadcast is itemised for edits and points of general interest and, if that isn’t appropriate to a certain episode, then something else will happen. For example ‘Playgirl Club’ has never been repeated anywhere since 1975 and is so difficult to access that it barely exists. You can read the full transcript now. Other choice episodes will get the same treatment, with a new season appearing for each update.

Rather than leaving you amidst a sea of unclickable links, the full scale of Toothpick Companion will not be revealed quite yet. What you can expect are extensive entries on pre-Goodies projects (Twice A Fortnight, At Last! The 1948 Show, etc.), subsequent work (Bananaman, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue) as well as a look at their inspirations (Buster Keaton). Aside from the historicising there will be many articles on the show with real opinions and long words. It’ll be great.

If you’ve been living under a rock you may not even be aware of The Goodies until this page spurted into vision. And here lies a principal concern when compiling this guide - that I am working against a torrent of received wisdom and ignorance about a comedy series that once dominated popular culture, during a decade that Jamie Theakston, Jane Root and other PR plebs would rather you forget. Excising the show wholesale from such stigmas will prove a great challenge but, if you really haven’t heard of the show before, then come with me on a journey that will shake your existing comedy opinions to their very fibre. Throw those rose-tinted glasses away while you’re at it. You won’t need them either.

For the record The Goodies spanned the Seventies, ending in 1982 after an unhappy but productive alliance with LWT. Inbetween, the show evolved from humble beginnings into a weekly event - hit records, sumptuous books and invariably brilliant television. They were amongst the first multimedia comedians in Britain - back when the term meant something - straddling a wide audience which consistently peaked at over ten million viewers.

10 million viewers. TEN MILLION VIEWERS. This was BBC-2! In the good old days, before Jane Root had even started to experiment with other girls’ twats. A cursory look at contemporary ratings will show that the major stations struggle to get even a handful of shows into that bracket. The Goodies sauntered through TV land in a steady ascendance which propelled them into the nation’s consciousness. Face it. It happened.

And what are we left with today? What remnants of this staple Seventies show are actually available to newcomers? If you shift your satellite dish around (if you still use one) then you’ll find repeats on BBC Prime, but beyond that there a few deleted video releases, one selective compilation CD of their music and a misleading book.

There is a time for reassessment and it’s around now. The 30th anniversary in November 2000 went largely unnoticed. The committed Internet fanbase celebrated in their own way, but there was scarcely a squeak from the channel that gave birth to it. BBC-2 is hardly recognisable from the position it held in 1970 - a romanticised bastion of minority, left-field programming that could genuinely prove popular through persistence. The Goodies evidently doesn’t fit in with Jane Root’s digital vision of pallid documentaries, popularist arts programming and bad comedy. Progress, eh?