The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website

THE GOODIES CLARION AND GLOBE

THE OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF 'THE GOODIES RULE - OK' FAN CLUB

Issue No. 52 12th April 2000

thegoodies@oztek.net.au

'The Goodies Rule - OK!'

Chadstone VIC 3148, AUSTRALIA

THE LADS AND LASSES OF THE C&G

- Daniel Bowen and Danny.

1. BOFFO IDEAS - Club happenings and ideas.

2. SPOTTED!!! - The latest Goodies sightings.

3. GOODIES MUSIC REVIEW – The Inbetweenies

4. THE END – Improving Britain's Sporting Record

You can make it happen here. Liven up the club with a boffo idea for bob-a-job week. E-mail thegoodies@oztek.net.au with your comments, ideas or suggestions.

KITTEN KON - THE GOODIES CONVENTION

KITTEN KON will be a two and half day extravaganza celebration of The Goodies in honour of the show's 30th Anniversary this year.

TIM BROOKE-TAYLOR will be our special guest at KITTEN KON. KITTEN KON will be his only Australian public engagement so don't miss your chance to meet him!

GRAEME GARDEN and BILL ODDIE will join us for a live video link-up chat in which you ask them the questions.

Other happenings at KITTEN KON will include:

- QUESTION AND ANSWER sessions and AUTOGRAPHS with our guests.

- SCREENINGS of the RARE EPISODES "Hype Pressure", "Caught In The Act" and "A Collection Of Goodies", plus the London Weekend Television series and the two black and white episodes "Commonwealth Games" and "Come Dancing".

- SCREENINGS of all YOUR FAVOURITE EPISODES plus many RARE CLIPS such as The Goodies performing "Funky Gibbon" on Top Of The Pops, extracts from the 1997 "Where Are They Now?" interview and episodes of "If I Ruled The World", "Surgical Spirit", "You Must Be The Husband" and "Assaulted Nuts".

- PANELS to include THE GOODIES vs MONTY PYTHON, I'M SORRY I HAVEN'T A CLUE and "AT LAST! THE 1948 SHOW with panelists to include Matthew K. Sharp (author of "The Goodies Episode Guide" and "The Goodies Fact File"), Peter Tatchell (editor of "Laugh Magazine") and other Goodies know-it-alls.

- A QUIZ NIGHT with PRIZES to be won.

- A CHARITY AUCTION of rare Goodies and cult TV stuff.

- A groovy 70s DISCO with COSTUME PARADE, KARAOKE and a chance to try dancing to FUNKY GIBBON other Goodies classic hits.

- DEALER'S ROOM with stalls.

- FUN AND LAUGHS GALORE!

KITTEN KON will be held at the DALLAS BROOKS CENTRE, 300 Albert Street, East Melbourne, Australia and will run over the EASTER LONG WEEKEND at the followings times:

Friday 21st April from 4pm to 12am

Saturday 22nd April from 8am to 12am

Sunday 23rd April from 8am to 5.30pm

BOOK NOW for Kitten Kon, prices are as follows:

TICKETS AT THE DOOR

FULL WEEKEND: Not available for catering reasons.

FRIDAY ONLY : Not available for catering reasons.

FRI & SAT Not available for catering reasons.

* If you cannot afford to pay the full cost at this stage, you may pay in installments, however you will be required to pay the balance before entering Kitten Kon.

* Tim may not appear at Friday's sessions.

* Graeme and Bill's chat has yet to be scheduled, we will make this information available as soon as possible.

* Please ask about discounted prices for children.

BOOKINGS CAN BE MADE by sending a cheque or money order made out to "The Goodies Rule - OK!" in Australian dollars to:

The Goodies Rule - OK!

And if you have any questions please direct them to Tracey Baird - tra4ce@bigpond.com.

KITTEN KON is proudly supported by the UK TV channel available on the Australian cable TV networks Foxtel and Austar.

All proceeds from KITTEN KON will be donated to the ROYAL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, MELBOURNE.

CAN'T MAKE IT TO KITTEN KON BUT STILL WANT TO BE A PART OF IT?

Well that's not a problem because for the bargain price of $40 you can order the SUPPORTING MEMBER'S PACK which contains:

- A signed photo of the guests.

- Access to our exclusive Kon merchandise.

- And other bonuses.

And for only $20 more you can order the GOLD SUPPORTING MEMBER'S PACK which also contains the exclusive limited edition KITTEN KON T-SHIRT. And what's more postage anywhere in Australia is FREE! (Overseas postage by negotiation.)

The limited edition KITTEN KON T-SHIRT is also available separately for only $25 (postage to anywhere in Australia is included in the price, overseas postage by negotiation). Available in sizes S, M, L, XL & XXL.

To register your interest for either the SUPPORTING MEMBER'S PACK, the GOLD SUPPORTING MEMBER'S PACK or KITTEN KON e-mail Tracey Baird - tra4ce@bigpond.com and then send your cheque or money order in Australian dollars ONLY and made our to "The Goodies Rule - OK!" to:

The Goodies Rule - OK!

But please HURRY as stocks are limited!

'THE GOODIES EPISODE SUMMARIES'

For those of you attending Kitten Kon, you will have the unique opportunity to obtain a copy of 'The Goodies Episode Summaries' from our GROK stall for just $20 (ie none of the usual postage costs) and people who have purchased a copy of either the first or second edition will be able to buy the updated third (and final) edition at the special discount price of $15. A limited number of books will be brought to the convention for general sale, so please e-mail Brett Allender <bretta@wimmera.com.au> to pre-order a copy so that you don't miss out. Payment is not required until the book is collected at the convention and there is no obligation to purchase the pre-ordered copy if you then decide not to buy it once at the convention. Further details about 'The Goodies Episode Summaries' can be obtained from http://thegoodies.oztek.com.au/summary.html .

More exciting than getting your wig-spotters badge! If you've seen a Goodie recently, e-mail thegoodies@oztek.net.au with the details. Here's where we've Spotted!!! The Goodies this month:

WHERE TO SPOT A GOODIE

If you're looking to spot Tim in Australia prior to Kitten Kon, then here's your chance to do so, as these are his confirmed publicity appearances and interviews at the time of going to press:

* 'The Age' Green Guide – there will be an article / interview with Tim this Thursday (13^th).

* 'Today Tonight' – Channel 7 - Melbourne and possibly national - interview with Tim on Thursday 20^th from 6.30pm.

*Good Friday Appeal – Channel 7 – Telecast only shown in Melbourne and rural Victoria. Tim will appear on it in the early afternoon.

* In addition, Alison will be talking up a Goodies storm at about 9.30am, next Tuesday(18^th) on Radio JJJ's Morning Show with Francis Leech.

THE GOODIES - IN PERSON

Part of the National Film Theatre's Send in the Clowns season, "The Goodies - In Person" is an evening to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Goodies. Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor will re-unite on the National Film Theatre stage and tell the behind-the-scenes story of the show. There will be screening one whole episode (Movies) and several illustrative clips to accompany the presentation. Comedy authority, Robert Ross, author of an upcoming book on The Goodies, will be the host of the event.

"The Goodies - In Person" will take place at The National Film Theatre, Southbank, London on Tuesday 23rd May 2000 at 6.30pm. Tickets cost £5.50 each. Book now as seats are limited.

STUFF AND NONSENSE

by Catherine Sumnall

Spotted in a recent 'This Week In Radio Times':

BBC Radio 4 mixes its traditions of humour and high art by turning Graeme Garden loose on the silly musings of serious writers in Stuff and Nonsense (Saturday, 20:00).

And now a review …

I should make it clear from the very beginning that this was a perfectly serious programme, and merely because it was presented by Graeme Garden, it was not an excuse to play classic archive clips from the Goon Show - okay?

Having shocked (and stunned) his already malleable Radio 4 audience into submission with the scandalous admission, not that he took money from bookies to rig rounds of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, but that he…he appeared on Celebrity Countdown (evidently something even the most ardent spotter could not bear to relate), we were pacified with the infamous and frequently imitated ISIHAC quick fire buzzer round. Jabberwocky was incessantly broadcast – amazingly the backwards version did NOT contain the expected “I killed Paul” messages – what a devilish piece of reporting that was. Evidently the intention was to indoctrinate impressionable listeners: a quite miserable, mimsy and frumious misjudgement in my opinion.

The ability with which the 13^th century’s Feast of Fools “…in which participants chanted confused and inarticulate gibberish”, and the slithy toves of the Goon Show were linked was highly commendable, though perhaps footage from the London Mayoral Race would have better illustrated the point. Maybe I’m just over-critical…

My radio dial then seemed to slip into Pick of the Pops, and I picked up a bizarre rendition of Ivor Cutler’s “Bounce, bounce, bounce”: the most enlightening comment to be made is that “my womAHn” was repeated with the same gusto one would expect from a frabjious Bob Marley. Things were moving along beamishly in the hands of John Lennon and Bob Dylan, but a sudden lapse into egregious humour brought “Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep” to the brillig airwaves.

After delving into the psyche of Eddie Izzard, and the wondrous world of Professor Stanley Unwin, the show closed with the inimitable “Ying tong iddle i po” – why can’t the rest of the schedules be that sensible?

Apologies to Lewis Carroll and Graeme Garden for the blatant plagiarism!

VALE PETER JONES

by Catherine Sumnall

At the risk of feting dear old Nick Parsons, it should be lamented that the entirely great Peter Jones (best known for the Rag Trade and Just A Minute, but also an excellent Goodies guest star) died on the 10^th April, aged seventy nine.

THE NEARLY COMPLETE AND UTTER HISTORY OF EVERYTHING

The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything will air on BBC America on May 6th at 10pm Eastern Time. Tim Brooke-Taylor is one of the many guest stars in this Millennium sketch comedy show. Other guest stars include Stephen Fry, Angus Deayton, Harry Enfield, Nigel Planer, Steve Punt, Peter Davidson and The Two Ronnies.

SOUNDS OF THE 70s

by Daniel Bowen and Danny, from Goodies-L.

"Sounds of the 70's", a BBC programme made in 1992 is currently being broadcast every Friday night at 7:30pm on SBS Australia. It's made up of vintage Top Of The Pops footage linked with commentary mainly from shows of the time - early to mid 1970's. Just before showing an old Suzi Quattro performance, they showed a few seconds of The Goodies with the Instant Pop Star skit....lovely!

MORE BIRDING WITH BILL

The following article and interview appeared in the British newspaper “The Express” on Saturday, 19 February 2000, pages 53-55.

Last Night’s Television

“We’re in Majorca, it’s spring and the island is packed with birds.” What I would have given for Bill Oddie to follow that up with a Sid James cackle. It never happened.

The weather’s been gorgeous this week. Crisp and blue and clear. I love this time of year. The nights are getting longer, there’s less of an oppressive darkness in the air. Buds are budding, and there’s been a skip in the step. It’s the time of year when birds stop looking so sorry for themselves and start twittering again, the perfect time of year for a new series of Birding With Bill Oddie (BBC2) to start.

I guess I should admit from the off that I love Birding With Bill Oddie, that to me it’s very nearly the perfect programme. There are more animals than people, there’s no canned laughter and it’s short. Really, if they could work in a car chase and maybe a bank heist, we’d be away.

Bill Oddie - isn’t that just the perfect name for a birdwatcher? Bill Oddie. There he is, dressed in shrubland-shaded fatigues, all ruffled hair, scraggly beard and glasses. Short stumpy legs for a low centre of gravity. “I can hear them. Can you hear that?” said Bill as he looked around a shrubby landscape. “A bee eater,” he said as the camera focused in on this pretty little finch-sized bird. “When they fly, they’re like a rainbow, so sleek,” he said as the camera spun from the sleek bee eater to a hoopoe idling away a few minutes in a nearby tree. And on he walked, taking us through the Majorca the tourists never see, telling us about a land that was “alive with migrants”, completely alone, just him and the birds. “There should be a few warblers in the trees,” he said pointing his ever-ready binoculars on the trees. “No, it’s a firecrest.” As chance would have it, one of Bill’s favourite birds.

And on he walked, through a landscape that looked like something out of a Spaghetti Western, all alone, just him and his binoculars, telling us about the Sardinian warbler (that isn’t just confined to Sardinia) and the rare Audouin’s gull. To me it looks like the gulls I see every day in Brighton, but to Bill it was a passion and that sort of passion is inspiring and not a little enviable.

At one stage, Bill went to the tourist zone, because that was the only place he could find the blue rock thrush, and he looked completely alien. People were walking around doing what tourists do and there was Bill with his ruffled hair, scraggly beard and glasses and short stumpy legs and his blue rock thrush. “I’m getting too claustrophobic. I’m going to go.”

It’s hard to reconcile this Oddie with the Bill Oddie who was in The Goodies all those years ago. He’s happier now, I suspect. It’s a curious thing with The Goodies. I’ve got a telly which kicks out 140-odd channels - no, really, it does. There’s still never anything on. 140 channels. Maybe if I had 141 channels, it would be better. Soon it will get to the stage where I’ll sit down at eight o’clock to watch the telly and by the time I’ve finished checking what’s on, it will be time to go to bed. 140 channels. It’s a bit mad, isn’t it? Anyway, I’ve got 140 channels and there are dozens of retro repeat channels but never have I seen The Goodies being repeated. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.

Oddie appears to live in a strange little world, at once enviable and a little bit sad. A man alone, just him and his binoculars and his birds. The bird watching thing is a little bit strange too. Standing alone, naturally, he peered at the sky and pointed at a distant shape. “Be honest. It’s not the closest you’ll get to a black vulture” - want to bet? - “but I’m happy. Black vulture. Good. Saw it,” he said as if this was an explanation and maybe to him it was.

Bird Brain - John Ingham wings his way to meet Bill Oddie as he tracks down the rare and the beautiful on the island of Majorca.

With grey fur peppered with ginger, the rare specimen twitched his nose and bustled off like a lone hedgehog. He had spotted his prey - and nothing was going to divert him from subjecting it to closer scrutiny. Bill Oddie, former Goodie and one of Britain’s top birdwatchers, had found a flock of bee-eaters flitting about in trees on a patch of wasteground and was determined to bring them into your living room.

With cameraman, sound recordist, producer and fixer in tow, he stood under the Mediterranean sun for a couple of hours, giving an unrehearsed commentary while short-toed larks, corn buntings and fan-tailed warblers provided a musical backdrop.

Bee-eaters, summer visitors from Kenya, are arguably Europe’s most colourful birds. Their chestnut crowns are offset by yellow throats and backs and turquoise tummies. In flight, with a dark blue sky as a backdrop, their wings look almost transparent. Their exotic appearance is completed by a sky blue line above the eye, almost as if they had put on make-up just for the cameras.

With looks like this, they can’t help but become instant stars as Oddie launches his third Birding With Bill Oddie series. This time he is going international, taking viewers to Poland, the Netherlands, America and Israel. I joined him while he was filming the first episode on Majorca. Oddie was there for the peak of the spring migration, when the island becomes not just a sunworshipper’s paradise but a long-haul refuelling station for millions of birds heading north from Africa for the summer.

Everywhere we went we came across British birdwatchers, some on organised tours with firms such as Sunbird. All were eager to see the first swallows arriving, or get close-up views of flamingoes or the bizarre hoopoe. Often we were just a few minutes’ drive from beaches more famous for their lager louts than their larks.

For birdwatchers, the island in springtime or autumn is bliss. With car windows open we ranged from salt pans to cliffs, reedbeds to maquis, driving past woods where nightingales belted out their deafening but beautiful song, spotting a red kite wheeling over the fields and then a booted eagle soaring over the hills.

Then there were the bee-eaters. Their beauty helps explain Oddie’s lifelong passion for a hobby that is relentlessly growing in popularity. Witness the success of the first two Birding series, and the one million members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

“The appeal of birdwatching for me is the unpredictability,” he says, “You never know what you are going to see. This makes it very exciting because you may see a bird that you have never seen before.”

“Equally, that brings frustrations. On an earlier series we wanted to film capercaillie - a large black game-bird - in Scotland. We got up at 3.30am and drove around for seven hours, and we didn’t see a bloody thing. The closest we got was when a local expert showed us some droppings - only for him to realise that they were from a dog.”

These kind of frustrations, however, only make the successes more satisfying; the biggest bane of his life, he admits, in unexpected - usually man-made - noise. Before the bee-eaters could be filmed, a couple of leatherclad motorcyclists had to be persuaded to stop practising their off-road wheelies. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to what happened in Israel’s Negev desert. There Oddie suffered a “mild form of torture” having to reshoot his lines over and over again because the Israeli Air Force used the spot to train for bombing runs.

His aim is to show the beauty of birds to as wide an audience as possible, in the knowledge that many have no intention of going out birding. “A lot of people who watch cooking or gardening programmes have no intention of doing either. I hope I have proved that, if you present a hobby in an entertaining way, people will watch even if they are not likely to take the hobby up.”

Oddie hopes that his approach will dispel the myth that birdwatchers are all twitchers - a tag that has clad the pastime in layer upon layer of anorak in the public mind. Prickling at the thought of it, Oddie says: “I have nothing against twitching but twitching is rare bird chasing on a frantic scale. That is not what we do. Anyone who goes birdwatching knows that twitchers are only a minority. My hidden agenda is to show what birdwatching is - watching birds in their habitat.”

His interest began at primary school where he started out through egg-collecting. But he soon learned that he had more interest in the birds than their eggs. Birdwatching may also have provided a release from his home life. His mother suffered from mental illness and his parents separated when he was young, leaving Oddie to be brought up by his father and paternal grandmother. “There might have been an element of birdwatching as a refuge,” he says. “Home life was boring more than anything else. I was an only child and I had to make my own entertainment.”

His book, Bill Oddie’s Birds Of Britain And Ireland, is one of the best around, full of tips about the idiosyncrasies of different species which helps make identifying them easier. When we spotted what birdwatchers call an LBJ - a little brown job - his skills as a communicator came alive again. “That’s a Thekla lark. It was named by a German ornithologist after his only daughter who had a delicate constitution and died at the age of 24.” That rather drab little bird is now firmly imprinted on my memory.

Oddie’s programmes, coupled with his lectures, also provoke a healthy response from the public. One of his most treasured e-mails was from a viewer who wrote: “I have just spent all my beer money on a pair of binoculars. Yours soberly but curiously contented.”

Oddie, then, is in the wonderful position of being paid to travel the world indulging his hobby. He has also pulled off the coup of reinventing himself after his success as a comedian in the Seventies. Yet, like many comics, he does not give the impression of being happy. He seems suspicious of the media, is an intense and private man and can be infuriatingly brusque.

He misses his family while he is away and, ironically, given that he has done so much to popularise birdwatching, has firm views about his ideal birding spot: “A good place to go birdwatching is somewhere where there is no one else.”

Asking why it is important to study birds makes him bristle. “You might as well ask why bother with painting, music, comedy or anything. It is the most stupid attitude. The implication is that something has to be useful in a materialistic sense. If that is the only attitude you have in life, what a sucker you are. The aesthetics of nature are just as important as the aesthetics of anything else. They make human existence more pleasureable.”

“I go birdwatching because I like it. It makes the world richer.”

THE COMPLETE GOODIES BOOK

by Robert Ross and Catherine Sumnall

'The Complete Goodies' is published on 23 May 2000, and is to be launched at the National Film Theatre...'Goodies - In Person' event. This event will take place in NFT1 (which holds 450 people) and is the centrepiece of the May season's Send In The Clowns presentation. Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie will be interviewed on stage by me folks...'Movies' will be screened along with classic clips. It's "a celebration of the 30th anniversary of that masterpiece of visual comedy" and the Goodies will "tell us the behind-the-scenes story of this classic" show. "Comedy authority, Rob Ross, author of an upcoming book on The Goodies, will be our host for this special event."

The book, 'The Complete Goodies', is fully endorsed by all three Goodies. A comprehensive 288 page reference work, detailing the careers – both together and apart - of Tim, Graeme and Bill - takes an A-Z look at everything from At Last the 1948 Show to The Zodiac Game.

Every television episode of The Goodies - from 1970 to 1982 - is reviewed and analysed, the Goodies chart busting singles of the 1970s, their albums, best-selling comedy books, charity stage performances, reunions and much more will be covered. Prepare to read about Comic Relief, Billy Bunter, Bananaman and the rise and fall of that masterpiece of comedy – The Goodies.

Did the BBC really present the greatest comedy show of all-time and still not realise it?

Cult favourites like I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Shooting Stars and One Foot in the Grave, classic shows like I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (the pioneering radio masterpiece, looked at in depth), Doctor in the House (mainly written by Graeme and Bill), Broaden Your Mind and many more are included.

There are the films (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, The Plank), the records (Distinctly Oddie, Marty), the television shows (Yes Minister, The Detectives...) everything...hopefully!!

Tim Brooke-Taylor comments...that Robert Ross "has done it and it's frightening. He has uncovered things that I had forgotten, things that were probably best forgotten!"

Graeme Garden explains that..."If we had realised someone was researching our lives and careers in such detail, we would have demanded police protection..."

While an exhausted Bill Oddie wheezes..."I didn't realise I'd done so much...no wonder I feel knackered!"

This is it - in their 30th year...the first and only complete celebration of three legends of British comedy...The Goodies...

Robert Ross is the author of: The Carry On Companion, Monty Python Encyclopedia, Benny Hill - Merry Master of Mirth, Carry On Uncensored and Last of the Summer Wine: The Finest Vintage...

3. GOODIES MUSIC REVIEW

Hi there pop pickers and welcome to this month's music review.

Your previous DJ Sir Johnathon Unappealing was bopping along OK on the hit parade until he had the ruddy nerve to slag off at the 'Funky Gibbon' and so we had no choice but to "send the boys around". It's unclear whether they've carted him off to the dungeon at Camelot to christen the torture chamber, threatened to lock him away in a cell with Rolf Harris or just belted him over the head repeatedly with a box of 'Low Suds Mold', but he deserved whatever he got for such high treason. A certain anonymous Queen even issued a royal command of "Off with his didgeridoo!" for good measure.

Anyway now that he's out of the road, we can cross to your decadent DJ Oliver Reed Of The Paper, Thanks Dear (AKA Brett Allender) and his review of "THE INBETWEENIES" by The Goodies.

On the 1997 CD "Yum Yum – The Very Best Of The Goodies, in the "Goodies Almost Live" episode, as a single (with 'Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me" on the flip side), and on their 70's albums 'The Goodies Greatest', 'Best Of The Goodies', and 'The Goodies Greatest Hits'.

When the Goodies were young, every song that they sung went "Boom sha la la la la" and it seems that songwriters haven't become any more original in the ensuing years since. However the Goodies find that their wish to sing their songs all over again is being thwarted because they've now reached that dreaded "inbetweenie" zone called middle age and nobody wants them any more. They're too old to be teenagers and shake it about like they used to (only drawing cries of "Push off Mum" from some youngsters unimpressed with Tim's drag act!) yet too young to be mothers pets, even though they can still compete with the best providing that they get a bit of time to catch their breath along the way.

It must have been a tough life for the Goodies, being "inbetweenie boppers" in the 70's. The teenagers of the day were hooked on groups like Bay City Rollers and the Osmonds (surely contravening some U.N. law regarding child abuse?!) while the oldies were sitting there with their hearing aids turned down listening to the likes of Max Bygraves and Des O'Connor (just as surely a great endorsement for euthanasia – of Maxy and Des, that is!). However it didn't seem to worry Tim, Bill and Graeme, as they knew that their time would come and just maybe it has now after a further 25 years. In Melbourne next week there will be a crowd of "young'uns" (plus a few over-30 "inbetweenies" like yours truly) who definitely wouldn't be rejecting an impromptu rendition of 'The Inbetweenies' (or any other Goodies song for that matter) by our special guests as part of an "inbetweenie" rock and roll revival, that's for sure!

Using the patented Black Pudding Ratings System:

MUSIC: III Goody Goody Yum Yum

SINGING/LYRICS: III Goody Goody Yum Yum

HUMOUR: II Fair-y Punkmother

ALL TOGETHER NOW: III Goody Goody Yum Yum

THE BLACK PUDDING RATINGS SYSTEM

IIII - Officially amazing.

III - Goody goody yum yum.

II - Fair-y punkmother.

I - Tripe on t' pikelets.

** The next music review will be in the June edition. Next month's C&G will feature an episode summary of Special #2 "A Collection Of Goodies (aka Special Tax Edition)". **

Once again, we conclude the C&G with a round from "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" the improvised comedy panel show staring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden and chaired by Humphrey Lyttleton, with Colin Sell at the piano and the lovely Samantha and Sven scoring wherever they go. "ISIHAC" has been going for more than 30 series and is an icon of British radio comedy and a number of books and audio cassettes from the series are available from http://thegoodies.oztek.com.au/shop.html .

This month's "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" round is "Improving Britain's Sporting Record" Resident trainer Sven found himself a little stiff from badminton that morning, and while they were busy (!), the teams (featuring Phil Jupitus as guest panelist) had to think of suggestions of ways to make British athletes more competitive either by modifying existing sports or devising new ones.

* Graeme:"We could have the 100 centimetre dash – because Linford Christie could break the tape without leaving the starting blocks!"

* Tim: "Drag racing – our contestants will be Lily Savage and Barbara Cartland."

* Barry: "Underarm javelin …"

Tim: "Girls, it really works!"

Phil: "Leave Barry Cryer in his bathroom with his underarm javelin!"

Tim: "As he calls it …!"

* Phil: " Give a medal to the first team home at the Olympics."

* Graeme:"Boxing to include other forms of packaging."

* Barry: "By the way, a word of sympathy for our English women's badminton team for whom this year has been all shuttle and no fun at all!"

Humph: "And so ladies and gentlemen, as the computer generated dinosaur of time gobbles up the licence fee of eternity …"

The C&G Team: "And as the Easter holiday of destiny is about to be celebrated with the Goodies Convention of magnificence, it's goodbye from us, though we look forward to seeing many of you at Kitten Kon next week!"

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This is an archive newsletter of The Goodies Rule - OK! International Fan Club (copyright The Goodies Rule - OK! 2000). Some of the information in this newsletter may now be incorrect. Current information can be obtained from http://www.goodiesruleok.com

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