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The Goodies old days are back
BRIAN FERGUSON

COMEDY legends The Goodies will perform their first UK gigs for more than 25 years at the Fringe this summer.

The Assembly Rooms will play host to a full run featuring the cult trio, six months after they were reunited for a BBC TV special last Christmas.

Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor will host the show, with fellow Goodie Bill Oddie pre-recording sections and appearing on a giant screen before the live audience.

The trio will be reliving their heyday on TV by showing some classic clips from the archives and performing a series of brand new sketches in the 90-minute show.

The three Goodies made a stage comeback last spring in Australia, where they are favourites thanks to regular repeats of their TV shows.

An insider at the Fringe said: "There should be plenty of brand new material for the fans, updated classic sketches and a chance for the Goodies to explain how some of those original ones came about.

"Every show they've done in Australia has been a complete sell-out, and these will be their first ever in the UK since then. It should be pretty exciting for all Goodies fans."

Last Christmas they returned to the nation's TV screens in a special return of the Goodies programme, which saw them relive some of their best sketches, while celebrities including Rolf Harris, Martin Freeman and Phil Jupitus lined up to pay tribute to them.

It is the first chance Goodies fans have had to catch the trio live in the UK since the end of their TV series, which saw them become household names and even notch up a hit single, Funky Gibbon.

Speeded-up footage, film trickery and violent slapstick were all regular features of the programme, said to be about "an agency of three blokes, who do anything, any time".

The Goodies shot to fame in 1970 when their first series was aired on the BBC and they were favourites on TV until 1982, when they decided to call it a day after a controversial switch to ITV.

Michael Aspel, Sue Lawley, David Dimbleby, Terry Wogan Tony Blackburn, John Peel, Magnus Magnusson and Patrick Moore were among the celebrities to appear on the show.

Graeme Garden appeared in the 1963 Footlights revue, Stuff What Dreams Are Made Of, at the Fringe, while Tim Brooke-Taylor starred the following year at the Fringe in another Footlights show, A Clump of Plinths.

Steve Bennett, of comedy website Chortle, said: "The Goodies have actually been pretty badly treated by the BBC, as their programmes have never really been repeated. But they have an absolutely huge following and I'm sure this show will be massive in Edinburgh this summer." Last week, the Evening News revealed that The Krankies were to perform at the Fringe in their first major show since Jeanette Tough almost died plunging from a giant beanstalk in a pantomime.

Mel Smith is said to be playing Winston Churchill at the Assembly Rooms, while Alan Rickman is expected to be directing his play My Name Is Rachel Corrie, about the late pro-Palestinian activist, which was a huge hit in London. bferguson@edinburghnews.com