With the Goodies setting up as an agency that does "anything, anytime, anywhere", it is perhaps inevitable that many of the great guest stars that are invited on the show get to play the role of the villain, while it is up to the Goodies to foil their evil schemes and put things right again. While the likes of Henry McGee (The Music Master / Nasty Person) and Patrick Troughton (Doctor Petal) excel as wonderfully fiendish characters, the only drawback is that they also tend to get the best lines, reducing the Goodies to the role of the straight man on many occasions, particularly in the first two series.
In my view, it's therefore no coincidence that two of the most memorable Goodies episodes from this period are "Radio Goodies" and "Gender Education" where Graeme and Bill respectively flip out and become the baddies of the piece, causing the other two Goodies to desperately try to keep the situation from getting completely out of hand. Although there are many instances throughout the run of the show where one or more Goodies go a bit loony for various periods of time, I'll focus this particular article on those occasions when the megalomania really kicks in strongly and the affected Goodie's behaviour is anything but good, much to the concern of his colleagues.
Graeme's "loony scientist" streak is reasonably subdued in the opening six Goodies episodes, perhaps only really coming to the fore in "Snooze" with his antidote concoctions and in "The Greenies" where he briefly gloats over the army's cruel experiments on mice as if he wishes that he'd thought of the idea first. However right from the start of "Radio Goodies" it's obvious that he has grander plans in mind when he can barely muster a soulless "boom" as his contribution to Bill's radio jingle, instead concentrating intently on building his transmitter.
The warning lights are flashing when Graeme responds to Bill and Tim's praise of his newly-constructed Radio Goodies headquarters with "Well it is the work of a genius!" and when he concludes his own piece of self-praise on the new postal service with a somewhat deranged "I'm working well tonight!", it prompts worried loony signals from Bill and Tim for good reason. Graeme's inner loony finally breaks out in full glory however after Tim has had the ruddy nerve to tell Radio Goodies listeners that the pirate postal service is closing down owing to staff shortages. Resplendent in black postal pirate garb, Graeme, who has just been listening to the radio, saunters back in, grabs Tim by the jacket and barrels him. Graeme (forcefully): "What do you mean by closing down the post office?!" Tim (petrified): "Ah, well … I ah …" Graeme: "Why did you have to close it down?!" Tim: "Ah, well … we're overloaded!" Graeme (sarcastically) "I'll tell you why you closed it down! Because you are an ineffectual, petty, interfering, unimaginative, useless little lackey! WHAT ARE YOU?!" Tim (scared witless): "I - I - I'm an ineffectual, intellectual ..." Graeme (enraged): "THAT'S NO EXCUSE!" Bill (piping up): "Look, we've got far too much work …" Graeme: "SHUT UP! How can I create a new world when I'm surrounded by fools?!" Tim & Bill (both panicking): "He's flipped, he's flipped, he's gone, now he's completely gone!":
After telling his "henchmen" to stand aside, Graeme then uses Radio Goodies as his forum for delivering the following utterly memorable tirade to the unsuspecting public: "This is your leader speaking. Here is an important announcement. It has been put about by back-sliding 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. 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 ... (reaches for record player) A Walk In The Black Forest!"
Graeme then reveals his astounding grand plan to take over Britain by towing the whole country outside the five mile limit (however that works!) and after shrieking at Bill and Tim to "get out", he delivers another classic line of "Today the post office. Tomorrow ... the world!" along with a mad stare and fiendish eye-rolling! Thankfully Graeme's bid to tow the country away single handedly is foiled by Bill and Tim wounding his pride by repeatedly yelling "You're a megalomaniac" at him, causing the good ship Saucy Gibbon to spring a leak as he jumps up and down on its deck in furious denial. At least they seem to have foiled his plans until the foghorn sounds and the Statue Of Liberty looms large outside the office window!
In "Gender Education", the three Goodies are forced to defend their controversial sex education film (made for Mrs Desiree Carthorse of the "Keep Filth Off Television" campaign), which is brilliantly described by a BBC current affairs presenter as "Obscene, dirty, squalid, scabrous, salacious, lewd, randy, rude, outrageous, lubricious ... and a bit off!". They achieve this by disguising themselves as outspoken MP Sir Reginald Wheelbarrow (by all dressing in suits and hiding behind a massive moustache) and appearing on the BBC to reassure everyone that the film is "perfectly harmless and innocent". Rather than being annoyed by this ruse, the BBC presenter is delighted because he'd like the Goodies to produce some really violent and gory shows to satisfy the wishes of the viewing public – something that Bill is more than happy to oblige with (as he makes a flying start by trying to strangle Graeme!)
After a mere four days of filming, Bill is already totally corrupted – or as Tim puts it, "You're a mean, vicious, unprincipled little brute!" Bill's haughty reply of "Well I always was!" seems quite apt as he is already enjoying the trappings of his success (with fancy clothes and massively long cigars) and has only called back into the Goodies office to seek Graeme's "technical boffin" advice on how to "pep up the epilogue (using) exploding vicars". (Graeme (horrified): "But that's murder!" Bill (callously): " No no no, that's showbusiness.") Bill is already working on shooting "the death scene from Cinderella … the kids love it!" and Graeme's plea of "Oh you're not doing it for children, are you?" only draws a scornful "Well you wouldn't do Cinderella for adults, would you? You fools! Car. Car. Get me a car …" from an increasingly bombastic Bill as he rapidly departs the office for his filming set.
Graeme and Tim call in Mrs Carthorse in a vain attempt to halt Bill's violent filming, however after Bill silences her with the shock tactic of saying "Knickers!" to her, the brutal gunning-down of sadomasochistic Sinders by Buttons the clown flips Bill out and he also starts mowing everyone on the set down with a barrage of bullets from his camera. A brief interlude of sanity and niceness ends when Bill's gruesome playback gives him the urge to strangle Mrs Carthorse as well until Tim and Graeme intervene. Bill's final act of madness sees him overload the main power circuit and blow the BBC to smithereens, and he subsequently has to wear tinted glasses to hide any possible corruptive influences from his view. He does at least have a partner in boredom in his TV-less world – Mrs Carthorse, who is no longer able to spend all night turning her TV off in disgust – until he shows her a telescopic view of two lovebirds making their own fun which gets her moving at a great rate of knots … out into the street shrieking "Stop it! Stop it! …"
The successful plot formula of these two episodes and the obvious delight of the Goodies in playing the role of the over-the-top villain helped to change the whole direction of the show in the following series, and even in episodes which feature guest stars or relatives of the Goodies, there is still scope for one or more of the Goodies to flip out and become a baddie as well. After Graeme and Bill have had their turn, it's Tim's chance to go loony in "Hunting Pink" when he takes over the grand family tradition of fox hunting after his Uncle Butcher has snuffed it from the sheer exhilaration of actually shooting a rabbit himself (with the aid of an army tank!).
According to Bill and Graeme, "hunting is immoral, degrading (and) cruel" but Tim reckons "it's fun" and the bloodlust soon goes to his head in a big way. He firstly breaks up the Goodies by sending Graeme and Bill packing from Tally Ho Towers, only to re-employ them as his much-suffering servants. Tim plans to make the upcoming hunt "bigger and better and rottener and crueller – I'm sure it's what my Great Uncle Butcher would have wanted", a sentiment seconded by Butcher's head mounted trophy-style on the wall until Tim exclaims "My God, there's life in the old boy yet" and then snuffs out what's left of it by firing a pot shot at him! Tim intends to "make Tally Ho Towers the blood sports centre of the world" specialising in small game targets such as "international bunny hunts, squirrel trapping, vole baiting and a budgie pit with fighting budgies"; a prospect which Bill and Graeme find outrageous to say the least.
Tim also makes the startling proclamation that he is about to get married to his impossibly long-windedly-named fiancee ("known to her friends as Big Knockers"). Graeme: "Is she pretty?"
Tim: "Pretty? Hmph! She's hideous! She is Horsewoman Of The Year - more horse than woman, but then ... looks aren't everything and in her case they're nothing! We're gonna get married and breed horses!" Bill (incredulously): That's impossible!" Tim (bluntly): "You haven't seen her!"
As Tim's fiancee enters the room clad in her new wardrobe (a large wooden one which hides her from view) a horrified Graeme exclaims "You can't marry THAT!", to which Tim replies " Yes I can. It's gonna be a traditional hunt wedding. We're gonna slaughter a rabbit, hang the giblets around her neck, paint her cheeks with blood and slap her round the kisser with its bladder. All very sloppy and sentimental, I know. But I love it ... the blood ... mwaaahahaaa!", forcing a panicked "He's gone loony!" from Bill.
Graeme and Bill realise that the only way to foil Tim's dastardly plans is to embarrass him in front of his fellow hunters in a bid to make him pack it all in; a plan that gets a little easier when Tim reveals that he doesn't know how to ride a horse. With Graeme and Bill forming a pantomime horse for Tim and then later disguising themselves as rabbits, they eventually create sufficient mayhem to bring the hunt to a screeching halt. However in order to "destroy all memory of the events of this unfortunate weekend", Graeme and Bill need to put an end to Tim's bloodlust once and for all. This is achieved by Bill squirting oil into Tim's mouth to fix his raucous voice, Graeme popping his padded posterior with a large needle, Bill joyfully smashing his wardrobe fiancée to smithereens and them finally using aversion therapy to stop his love of fox hunting which involves thumping him with mallets and continues long after he is cured because "it ain't half fun!"
After all three Goodies have had a chance to play the role of the baddie, the next opportunity falls to Graeme in "That Old Black Magic". Returning to the office from a hard day out flogging his 'Orrible 'Airy Spiders with a hearty "Cor, I'm knackered!", he encounters the batty Witch Hazel who insists that he "has the power". Her own magic powers are somewhat awry though, as thanks to her zookeeping ambitions prior to becoming a witch she is only able to conjure up the spirits of "little furry animals" instead of those of departed loved ones, which is naturally bad for business. The Goodies offer to help her by holding a séance, with Graeme pretending to be possessed and Bill hiding under the table to provide the mystic voices in a bid to secure the money which she has tempted them with earlier.
By chance somehow, Graeme does become genuinely possessed and takes on a number of different personalities including Walter Gabriel from "The Archers", Eddie Waring and Eammon Andrews ("And tonight Witch Hazel, this is your life!"). Graeme gets carried away with his new-found talents and tells the others and Witch Hazel that "I don't need any of you. I have the power! I have the power! …" until Bill belts him over the head with a mallet again to calm him down and knock him out. However after the others have gone to the pictures, Graeme rises from the floor with a loony expression on his face and when they return they are horrified to find a new "I Do Anything Anytime" sign stuck on the office door. Further horrors await inside, like voodoo needles stuck into Tim's dolly, Bill's favourite tomato ketchup splattered blood-like all over the floor and witchcraft manuals featuring "A Bum In The Coven" and other naked campfire dances, all of which proves that Graeme has sold his soul to the Sunday papers.
Tim and Bill head to a creepy Clapham Common and interrupt Graeme's pagan worship session just as he is preparing to ritually sacrifice a frozen chook in front of his followers and they then have to disguise themselves as white-robed, long-haired virgins to foil Graeme's ultimate deed of darkness - the summoning of the Devil … none other than David Frost! Witch Hazel soon banishes Frosty ("Got to go now, byeee!") but her white versus black magic duel with Graeme only succeeds in turning him into a gibbon, setting off a prolonged but enjoyable chase scene.
In the same series there is a neat little cameo at the end of "Way Outward Bound" where Tim is tending to the babies that have been brainwashed by the Matron. The power that he commands over them, especially getting them all to bring up wind on cue ("Wait for it, wait for it!") quickly leads to delusions of grandeur. To Bill's worried calls of "He's going … he's going … he's gone!" a crazed Tim spurts "Just think, in a few years time they'll be able to do the housework and then maybe, yes, my own private army of slaves. Don't you see, I can rule the world, ([sings] If I Ruled The World), If I had my own private army I'd be unstoppable. I can see it now … Tim OBE, King Of The World! I shall start training them tomorrow. I'll take over the world, the universe, Mars, maybe even the Radio Times …!", requiring Bill to forcibly shove a bottle of milk into Tim's mouth in a bid to pacify him.
The next major act of Goodies villainy is a joint one by Tim and Bill in "Invasion Of The Moon Creatures". Graeme is initially the power-mad one with his loony lunar experiments on Flopsy, Spiro and the other rabbits in his space program and he is at his bossy boffin best as he prepares the launch, especially when Bill irreverently offers to "peel the potartoes" for him. However the tables are turned spectacularly when Bill and Tim are captured on the moon by Flopsy (now known as "Big Bunny") and his cohorts. As Bill so eloquently puts it: "I used to have a pet rabbit once, you know, when I was a little kid, and at no stage did he ever strap me to the couch and stick carrots in my ears!", but the carrot torture works a treat and he and Tim are sent back as Bugs Bunny-sounding rabbits themselves to take over Earth.
A worried Graeme desperately tries to figure out their motives: "At least, tell me what you're gonna do!" Bill & Tim (in rabbit suits, munching carrots): "Nyaaah!" G: "Are you gonna take over the world, is that it?!" B&T: "Nyaaah!" G: "That is it, isn't it? Oh dear, I do wish you wouldn't!" B&T: "Nyaaah!" G (exasperated): "Can't you say anything but 'Nyaaah'?!" B&T (pause, look at each other, then reply sarcastically): "Nyaaah!!" Their demonstration of "wabbit power" in all of its Clockwork Orange-style glory aboard a motorbike leaves a trail of victims including a stomped cat, a battered old dear (who at least puts up a good fight using her umbrella) and a young lady who is dragged inside her rabbit's hutch for "a touch of way-hey-hey and a spot of bunny fun".
Graeme finally puts a stop to this nonsense with the help of a fleet of Highland Ferrets to flush the rabbits out of their burrows and then with a "scrummy glummy" pie which just happens to be a rabbit one, making Tim and Bill cannibals and more than ready to sink their knives and forks into Big Bunny himself when he comes to the door – "Dinner!"
The classic episodes of Series 5 showcase two of the very best examples of Goodies turning into baddies: Bill as "High Priest Ee Bah Goom" in "Kung Fu Kapers" and Graeme as "Greedy Graeme" in "Bunfight At The OK Tea Rooms".
Bill firstly makes a mockery of Tim and Graeme's kung fu lessons and then teases them by not telling them the secret of "the infinitely more subtle and superior Lancastrian martial art of what I happen to be a master". In hindsight they would have been better off letting him keep his "little secret", however by taunting him the supposed martial arts skills of their relatives( like Graeme's " wee cousin Hamish who has a black sporran in the Scottish martial art of Hoots Toots Och Aye The Noo!"), they provoke Bill into revealing the mystic art of Ecky Thump at dawn on Primrose Hill. Bill's joint ability to absorb whatever pain his opponents inflict on him, then belt them over their unsuspecting heads with a rock-hard black pudding not only wins him bragging rights among the Goodies, but also launches the Ecky Thump craze right across the country. In no time at all everyone is bopping each other senseless with black puddings and Bill has cashed in by releasing a string of "gratuitously violent and very badly dubbed Ecky Thump movies" as his previously-secret martial art is causing chaos everywhere.
Bill takes his martial arts prowess a step further by becoming "High Priest Ee Bah Goom", releasing a Mao-like "little red book" of wise sayings and preparing to lead a black pudding rebellion march to "take over t'Parliament". Graeme's pleas for him to stop are met with a disdainful "Stop? Stop? No, nay chucky, can't stop now. Not for all t'hot pot in Oswaldtwistle!" Fortunately Graeme has planned some crafty schemes of his own (though falling head-first into the black pudding vat probably isn't one of them!) and Bill's rebellion march is eventually derailed by Graeme's remote-controlled puddings, Tim's revival of kung fu and finally the Goodies' wild ride to their doom over a quarry cliff on a runaway tea trolley.
Graeme's baddie credentials are established very early on in "Bunfight At The OK Tea Rooms", as while Tim and Bill sit shivering and stony broke in their cold and dimly-lit office, he has been out buying a stack of equipment for a gold prospecting trip. An annoyed Bill protests "Oi oi, wait a minute! What do you mean mules, mine detectors, all that stuff, I mean … that must have cost you a fortune!" Graeme's smug reply of "Yeah of course it did. Why do you think we're broke?!" has Bill ready to kill him until Tim intervenes ("No Bill … later!"), so it's a case of "Go west, young man" in search of gold.
Eighteen days of fruitless gold prospecting in the "wild and woolly west" (Cornwall!) has the Goodies readying to pack it all in and go home until Graeme makes a discovery. G: "I've been out looking around and you'll never guess what I've just found in an old tin mine." T (excitedly): "Gold?!" G: "No. Old tins! And this." T: "What?" G: "Gold ore." T: "Ore!" G: "Or something else ..." The ore does indeed turn out to be filled with something else – pure Cornish cream – and Graeme sets up an elaborate production line with Bill and Tim doing all of the heavy work, then he tries to shaft them by preparing to file a claim for the cream mine in his name only. His attempts to play Bill and Tim off against each other (such as "And do you know who pinched the ears off your life sized model of Prince Charles?" T (shocked): "Not Charles's ears!" G: "Where else do you think he got them mudguards for his Mini!") don't succeed, so Graeme sneaks out of the tent at dawn (leaving a double which briefly fools the others) and flees for town on the stubborn mule to file his claim.
Tim and Bill are left broke, disconsolate and ready for home, but the dismantling of their tent reveals a rich deposit of strawberry jam and scones ("No, scOnes!"), which is the catalyst for Greedy Graeme to challenge them to a winner-take-all showdown at the OK Tea Rooms in Pennenink. The townsfolk flee in terror as the three Goodies ride into town and Graeme has plenty of dirty tricks up his sleeve, notably the toaster hidden under the table which deals him a fresh "card" when Bill appears to have the winning hand, and then getting Tim and Bill to "walk eleven paces" while duelling so that they crash into a wall on the final pace, allowing him a free squirt of lethal tomato sauce at them. All of his scheming appears to have paid off as "his gal ran to his arms" afterwards, but a final desperate squirt of sauce from a dying Bill finishes her off and leaves Greedy Graeme with no option but to lather himself with sauce and exit with one of the most spectacular "death dives" ever.
The Series 6 episode "Hype Pressure" wasn't shown on the ABC in Australia during their lengthy series of Goodies screenings and remained well-hidden until pay-TV station UKTV started screening episodes in the late-1990s. The rediscovery of this episode has been well worth it just to see Tim in his most dastardly and obnoxious series of roles in the entire run of the show.
Sporting the same strange boofed-up hairdo from "2001 And A Bit", Tim initially ignores Bill's lamenting of his own inability to keep writing chartbusting songs and Graeme's accompanying unhelpful sarcasm. It's only when Bill moans "I'm gonna give up music. I'm gonna become a folk singer!" and starts some very off-key wailing with Graeme joining in for the heck of it that Tim suddenly takes interest, declaring that the two of them will be ideal for his new TV show. The charmingly-titled "New Faeces" specialises in the ritual humiliation of pathetic acts (who often don't even get to actually perform!) by a panel of abusive judges with Tim actively egging them on to deliver maximum insults and minimum scores.
Judge Tony Bitch describes comedian Dennis Droll's non-act as "absolutely pathetic … his eyes are too close together and he probably smells … he's a washout!" and indicates that the fact that Dennis only came on the show because his wife needed an operation shouldn't influence his score because he'd heard that she had died half an hour ago, much to Dennis's understandable distress. Tony gives him no marks at all, as Tim glowingly comments "Well that's quite generous for you Tony!", while obviously eagerly anticipating Bill and Graeme receiving an equally vitriolic tirade for their upcoming act; a stumbling, tone-deaf folk song called "The World Is Full Of Women And Men" However the judges are reduced to tears by its beautiful purity and Tim's ranting of "Shut up, you can't have liked it!!" sees him booed and pelted with vegetables by the incensed crowd, causing him to froth at the mouth in anger and seethe that he'll never forgive Bill and Graeme for humiliating him.
Back in the office later, Tim sits on his throne in shock with a frozen glare on his face and nothing can make him snap out of it until he finally announces that he's merely been thinking of reviving the 1950s again as a new TV gimmick. Not content with achieving this, Tim also messes with all of the TV schedules and turns into a fast-talking, sock-selling spiv who brings back both the death penalty and national service as part of his revival campaign. He then becomes a crazed TV producer and wants Bill to sing "a death song about a kid, a blind kid on his motorbike, a learner, blind learner with one arm who falls off his bike and gets smashed by a steamroller in front of the very eyes of his little pet hamster Percy", however after Bill has kneed him in the groin and called him a "vicious little loony", "William and Grayfunkel" insist on singing a peaceful hippy song about flowers instead.
A rather camp and bossy Tim terrorises them in the recording studio by cueing for all sorts of objects to dropped on them, as well as interfering with news bulletins and other programs on various channels, before blowing the whole studio up with landmines. He then tries to revive World War 2 in a very realistic manner as a loony TV director, however Graeme and Bill employ Vanessa Redgrave, Alfred Hitchcock, a giant Dougal and finally multiple images of Margaret Thatcher to finally bring about Tim's downfall.
The episode "Scoutrageous" subtly features all three Goodies as baddies at different points, with Graeme and Bill firstly performing "boyish pranks" in order to obtain their new scouting badges, which include wigspotting, forcing little old ladies across the road and stealing a pair of Margaret Thatcher's knickers. Naturally these activities bring shame on their scout troop (plus lots of extra cold showers!) and Brown Owl Tim is forced to drum Graeme and Bill out of his patrol
Graeme's parting words of "We're going to start a platoon of our own" prove to be prophetic as Tim is happily washing his scout uniform in the Goodies' office when he is menaced by two masked scouts who bear more than a passing resemblance to Graeme and Bill. G: "Bob a job chief" B: "Only owing to inflation and the present economic climate, shall we say 500 quid a job, hey?" Being a scout himself, Tim doesn't particularly want a job done, but the masked scouts do quite a nasty job on him; setting fire to his hat by rubbing two sticks together, slicing his woggle and whittling away his splendid scout staff with an ill-disciplined pen-knife, knocking starch into his soft-soaking shorts and "As a little favour, as one last special job, I'll give them (Tim's shoes) a nice little finish … with my Brillo pad!"
A terrorised Tim finally gives them 500 quid (plus his Jubilee mug!) and utters a shocked gasp of "Who were those masked scouts?!" as they rapidly flee from the office. Graeme and Bill's success in fleecing Tim spurs them on to even more hard-core crimes as they use their knot-tying and stick-rubbing skills to rob a businessman, clean out the coins at the zoo and hold up a petrol station, upgrading to a flashier mode of transport each time. With the ruse of having a "premium bond come through" they are even able to use their new-found wealth and influence to gain further revenge on Tim for kicking them out of his patrol by dobbing him into the police for boy scout-like activities, now that the scouts are an illegal organisation following their own criminal behaviour.
After being busted by the intimidating Scoutfinder General and sentenced to 5 year jail term (only to be let off because he went to a public school!) Tim wants to overcome his scouting shame by joining "the only organisation left for people like me" – the Salvation Army! However becoming the commander of a troop of Salvation Army ladies brings out the baddie in Tim as he harangues them relentlessly while they are at inspection. He barks at one: "What have you got on your head, soldier? Your bonnet is a disaster area! Call that a bow? Looks more like a pregnant butterfly having a crafty kip!" and finishes up blasting them all with "And if you lot turn out again on parade looking like a bag of mucky laundry I'll have you in that guardhouse quicker than you can say 'Halle-bloody-lujah'! Understand?!" However he soon adores his "lovely ladies" again when he is given permission by the Scoutfinder General to use his troops to go after "the notorious Masked Scouts"; a job which he also performs with over-the-top relish until he is a little too charitable to Graeme and Bill after he finally corners them.
One final baddie role that is worth a look at is that of Bill as an obnoxious, loud-mouthed soccer hooligan in the LWT episode "Football Crazy". Initially content with chanting "What a load of rubbish! What a load of rubbish!" ... "The referee's a fairy! The referee's a fairy!" in true yobbo fashion from the terraces, he then directs his ire at a player who is felled in a tackle. "Get up, ya great nancy! Get up! He's not hurt! You great big poof! You girl! Get up! (at this stage the player is lying on the ground being examined by trainers) Faking, faking, he's faking! Get up! Time wasting! He's acting! (as a stretcher is brought out onto ground) Get up, ya great nancy! Up! You great big soppy girl!". The next scene is in a hospital operating theatre with a team of surgeons doing some rather grisly-looking work on the injured player, while Bill is somehow in there too, pulling off his surgical mask and giving the player another burst of "Get up, ya great nancy!" before being ushered out by the doctors, with the life support alarm going off and the patient flatlining during this distraction This is followed by a graveside funeral service for the poor chap, with the priest and mourners just walking away as Bill appears from nowhere, jumping up and down on the grave still bellowing "Get up, ya great nancy ...!"
Bill later receives the "Twerp Of The Month" award from soccer commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme, who comments that "you set a big match record because last month, Twerp A, Twerp B, Twerp C and Twerp D all turned out to be you!" B (rather chuffed): "Oh ... oh ... oh ... pretty exciting, yeah!" KW: "Well it was in fact as Twerp C that you actually got most votes for, when you threw a broken bottle at your captain and sliced his ear off!" B (still trying to be humble): "I ... I ... I dunno, I just seem to be gettin' em right at the moment, Ken!" After smashing his trophy over the head of the fan standing next to him, Bill also states that he wants a transfer to Spain because the police there have riot shields, masks and guns and would therefore present more of a challenge for him! Tim is sufficiently appalled by Bill's violent behaviour and the fact that the police now refuse to work at soccer matches anymore to become the new Chief Of Police in charge of football hooliganism, whose duty is to rid the terraces of mindless yobbos like Bill.
Tim implements various new measures to take all of the excitement and sexiness out of the game, like banning modern-style uniforms and flowing hair, sending players off for mouthing mild curses like "damn" and ultimately limiting crowd numbers to just one – a bored-out-of-his-brain Bill who is going nuts in the stands from the lack of on-field action. Bill entertains himself by smashing beer bottles over his skull, headbutting the railing in the terraces and then madly charging at Tim, who neatly sidesteps and flexes his knees at the right time, leaving Bill tangled in the goal net until he is bopped on the head with Tim's baton – a repeat of Bill's earlier charge at Tim in the Goodies' office where he takes an instant dislike to Tim's new image as "The Fuzz!" but misses him and crashes through the wall of the office instead!
Graeme sets to work with an appropriately loony science experiment with white mice on a mini football field, who merely "go eek and wash their whiskers" after an 18 hour bombardment of simulated soccer, and he arrives at the conclusion that violence is inborn, as displayed by his hooligan hamster who heaves a streamer out of its box in sheer frustration! The thousands of hooligans that are now banned from watching the soccer need to find some sort of alternative stimulation and Tim's civilised evening watching the ballet at Covent Garden is soon spoilt when Bill and his fellow troublemakers turn up in their droves at the ballet instead.
As good as the three Goodies are playing their usual character roles, it's on occasions like the ones I've just described that really allow their darker sides to flourish and provide some of the memorable and enjoyable moments of the entire show.
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