The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website

1/6 (#6) CECILY

PLOT

The Goodies scan the 'help wanted' sections of the newspapers in desperation for work, but Tim refuses to take any jobs as caretakers or which involve mother's help. Bill suggests that they contact three men who have advertised that they do "anything, anytime" for help, but Tim scornfully points out that it's their own ad! Tim wants to secure any kind of job offer just so that he can have the satisfaction of turning it down, but eventually they all agree to take on the next job offer that comes along and it just happens to be a position for mother's help and caretaking, much to Tim's annoyance! Graeme initially takes down the details from the phone call ("start tomorrow" … "one day only" …"terms good" …"will I stop repeating everything you say?!") and a female nanny is essential, which therefore launches Tim into another of his many drag roles, starting with a rather flirty phone conversation with the person requesting his assistance.

Graeme and Bill dress as domestic servants and with Nanny Tim looking suitably frumpy, they set off on the trandem to a massive old house in the country. The kooky elderly couple have been called away on urgent business and are grateful that the Goodies could come at such short notice. They will be back the next morning and want the Goodies to tend the house and garden and also look after their young niece Cecily, who lives with them but "may be leaving us very soon". The lady has a very strange nervous giggle while the man is rather stern and abrupt, so the Goodies find them a "teeny bit weird" and are relieved when they have left.

Before they wake Cecily, there are numerous other domestic chores for the Goodies to complete. Tim cops the housework including dishes, laundry, dusting and vacuuming, while Bill gets cooking duties and attempts to make an egg and cheese savoury pie for Cecily's lunch with the help of an extendable rolling pin and a record turntable as a mixer. Graeme takes the supposedly soft option of heading "off to potter in the shrubbery", but finds to his dismay that the garden is an overgrown jungle complete with giraffes nibbling the treetops, zebras roaming loose, primitive tribesmen fleeing and lovers canoodling in the long grass for good measure!

Tim tries to help Bill with his pie, but is attacked by the rampant ivy that Graeme has sprayed and although Bill tries to mould the pastry using the turntable, he only manages to create a spectacular urn which has to serve as a casing for the pie once the ivy wraps itself around the stove and Graeme drags the whole tangled mess outside. Graeme plants some flowers in a window box (only for a hand creepily snaffle them while he is looking away) and he eventually gets the stove back inside, commenting "That's a pretty weird garden they've got out there!" to which Bill responds "Yeah, well you're a pretty weird gardener!"

Nanny Tim gets the task of waking Cecily (a girl of about 10 wearing a black school tunic) and after she initially screams and throws things at him in fright, she tells him that her real nanny is locked in the cellar. A hair-raising trip down the creaky stairs for Tim carrying a torch and candle reveals a skeleton sitting in the rocking chair, which totally freaks him out. Cecily reveals that twelve nannies have been done away with so far and left in places where she will eventually find them, as her uncle and aunt are trying to scare her to death so that they can collect her 50,000 pound inheritance from her grandfather, which will go to them in the unlikely event that they outlive her. When the Goodies ask her why they have been hired to look after her, Cecily replies "Oh they always hire incompetent servants so that if anything happens to me, you'll get the blame." and tells them that the whole house is full of horrors, especially at night. A sceptical Supernanny Tim vows to protect her and takes her outside to play; in the process saving her from obstacles such as leopards, pitfalls, gun-toting neighbours and a badly-placed river while kite-flying, as Graeme unearths a further Nanny skeleton while trimming the hedge and rapidly covers it up again!

A worried Tim returns and says to the others "It's true, it's almost as if there was a curse on the poor little thing!" When Cecily heads to bed, Graeme promises that nothing will happen, but she claims that "Oh it does, it always does!" Indeed the house gets even creepier at night, as the eyes light up in the portraits of the uncle and aunt on the wall, dogs and ghosts start howling, cupboard doors swing open to reveal another Nanny skeleton and a head on a plate among other things, a massive spider drops from the ceiling and a clock signals midnight by a pair of gloved hands emerging from it and striking a gong. However the Goodies are too blissfully engrossed in their card game (Happy Families!) to notice any of the strange goings-on around them.

Shortly after midnight, the lights go out so the Goodies have to light candles and are soon required to investigate a loud maniacal laugh that comes from the direction of Cecily's room. Bill stays in the kitchen while Tim and Graeme split up, but they merely end up scaring the hell out of each other when they almost collide from opposite directions. An ear-splitting scream sends them running back to the kitchen to find that Bill has passed out after the massive spider has again lowered itself from the ceiling and landed on him, and his further screaming when awoken just serves to panic all three Goodies even further, especially when they are then surrounded by ghosts and other creepy critters. The hands inside the cuckoo clock rub together with glee and give the thumbs-up signal amid all of the mayhem at a quarter past midnight.

The rooster crowing (and subsequently being shot!) signals the arrival of morning and the Goodies are relieved to see that Cecily is already up and eating breakfast; unharmed from the ghostly goings-on that took place during the night. The Goodies are desperate to get Cecily safely out of the madhouse by helping her to run away and arrange to meet her in the summer house in five minutes time. At that moment, Cecily's uncle and aunt return early and the Goodies are looking to be off, even before they "get what's coming to you!", according to the uncle. Meeting Cecily at the summer house shortly afterwards, the Goodies wish her luck and send her away with a few belongings that they have packed for her, but her uncle and aunt are watching out the window and get rather stressed. (A:"We can't let them go!" U: "I can see them in the summer house." A: "Is Cecily with them?" U (worried): "No, they're alone!") The uncle and aunt hurry out to the summer house and admonish the Goodies for "let(ting) her loose" as she is a "rather a strange little girl".

In a bizarre twist, "Dear little Cecily" then pushes a detonator and blows up the summer house with her uncle, aunt and the three Goodies still inside it and giggles loudly as they all stagger away from the explosion. She then runs to the next detonator (with Bill yelling in vain: "Oh no, that's going too far!") and repeats the dose to the main haunted house, blowing it to smithereens as the blackened and bedraggled Goodies run out the gate as fast as they can!

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Graeme (reading the "help wanted" section): "Three men wanted to share houseboat with three raving Dolly models. Interested swingers ring 7..."

Tim (horrified): "That is NOT what we're after!"

Graeme (reaching for phone): "You speak for yourself!"

* Bill (scanning the newspaper): "Hey, there's an advert here from some people who say 'We do anything, anytime', so maybe they can help us get a job."

Tim (scornfully): "That's our own advert, you twit!" (whacks Bill with the paper)

* Tim (as Nanny, flirting on the phone): "I look forward to the pleasure ... but I doubt I'll get it!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* Graeme going mad in the garden - thumping weeds with a mallet, acting the loony sorcerer with his Tommy Cooper impression, pumping up the vegies, spraying rabbit statues with fertilizer causing a population explosion, catching Bill's omelette with his face, flying backwards off the mower before riding it into the house and growing a giant creeper which attacks Tim in the kitchen.

* Tim (as the nanny) running with a kite and taking a flying leap into the river - a memorable scene which frequently bobs up in the opening credits for most future episodes.

* Tim and Graeme frightening the daylights out of each other while investigating the strange goings-on in the house and Bill being attacked by a giant spider hovering above him, then screaming his lungs out when woken, scaring Tim and Graeme even more and causing the hands inside the cuckoo clock to rub together with glee

* Cecily blowing up the summer house with the Goodies and her aunt and uncle inside it, then finishing the job by exploding the main house to bits while giggling away merrily.

GUEST STARS

Ann Way, Robert Bernal, Jill Riddick, Lena Ellis

GOODIES SONGS

Needed

Are You Coming Out To Play?

MOCK ADVERTISEMENTS

Bob Murray's Supermatic Camera

Razz 2 for 1 Swap

(Note: The entire Supermatic camera ad has been deleted from the ABC version)

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

A reasonably interesting spooky send-up of the 'haunted house' theme with plenty of nice visual effects (though not much memorable dialogue) and an unexpected twist at the end.

RATING