Goodies Still Rule OK! review from The Oxford Times
21/04/2007 00:30 GMT

Posted by lisa

The following review is from The Oxford Times website:

The Goodies Still Rule OK!
By Chris Gray

Having recently been less than totally impressed by performances from two of the current giants of comedy, Russell Brand and Ricky Gervaise, I welcomed the chance on Monday to spend 90 minutes in the company of a pair of old-time pranksters who really know their craft.

Graeme Garden (left) and Tim Brooke-Taylor brought their well-planned show, The Goodies Still Rule OK! - a hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe - to a packed Playhouse. With contributions on film from Bill Oddie, they provided a warmly nostalgic look back on their long-running BBC comedy series. Inevitably linked, since it ran through the whole of the 1970s, with the 'decade that taste forgot', the programme turns out - to judge from the clips we saw - to have worn very well. Always inventive, and much edgier than it seemed at the time (all those cuddly toys!), the show clearly deserves to be seen again. You can understand why its stars are miffed by the Beeb's refusal to give it a rerun.

But the evening reminded us, too, of Garden, Brooke-Taylor and Oddie's life before The Goodies. There were amusing insights into the world of the Cambridge Footlights where they cut their comic teeth. The success of the revue Cambridge Circus took them to the West End and later into radio in I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. To judge from the spontaneous applause that greeted the mere mention of this show, there were many of us present on Monday who had made a weekly date with the Home Service 40 and more years ago . . .

11:02am Thursday 19th April 2007