The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website

The alarm clock signals the start of a new working day and sets off a remarkable automated sequence which sees Graeme prepare and eat breakfast, shave, get dressed and make his bed while he hardly has to move a muscle. This spectacle also takes place in near-silence after Tony Blackburn's rowdy Radio Times program is swiftly and mercilessly halted by a robotic hammer that smashes the radio to smithereens. A half-awake Tim can only stare at Graeme's ingenious time and labour-saving routine in disbelief, with a quizzical "Why do you have to go through that rigmarole each morning?!" as close as he comes to paying it a compliment.

In contrast, Bill is wide awake and rather grumpy as he pulls the covers back from over his head and claims that he never sleeps, prompting a curious Tim to enquire "What do you do in there every evening then?!" According to Bill, he never sleeps because he has been scared of sleepwalking since he tried to walk through his bedroom window when he was a kid. He then had to sleep in the basement, where there were no windows - only solid walls - hence, as Graeme notes, his stunted physique!

Tim claims that he is always perfectly relaxed despite getting less sleep than Graeme, but panics when there is a knock at the door. A man strides in and introduces himself as Rupert Wynde-Cheater, the Marketing Executive of Beechrow Products and claims that he is frightfully busy and that his secretary didn't have time to book him an appointment with the Goodies (to which Bill snaps "Oh, don't apologise. Get out!") and that "(his) firm would like to exploit you … employ you." Rupert's company produces a bedtime drink named Venom that has been on the market for a year but is selling poorly and he wants the Goodies to help boost its sales, which could make up to 50 million pounds for Beechrow … "oh and there could be ten quid in it for you!" Tim and Bill's suggestion that the name of the product obviously needs changing gets Rupert marching rapidly around the desk in the middle of the Goodies' office as he praises their "positive thinking" and "obvious thinking", and after much repetition of the words "okay" and "right", he offers them the job of promoting his product.

The Goodies consider several name changes for the product including Epilogue ("sleepy, late night, soporific") and Sleepy Bo-Boes, before they settle on the name of Snooze. Sales of the renamed product soon treble, but Graeme decides that it's time for the next phase of the Goodies' advertising campaign by bringing out New Improved Snooze. G: "Well, the old Snooze just gave you deep refreshing sleep, but this stuff … pow!" B (impressed): "Pow!" T: "Pow … (puzzled) … what?!" B (also puzzled): "What?" G: "It'll knock you out like a light!" Insomniac Bill is the perfect guinea pig for Graeme's chemistry set concoction and when he rapidly hits the deck after one swig of New Improved Snooze, a worried Tim yells at Graeme, "What have you done? … What's happened to him?!" G (smugly): "He's gone to Sleepy-bo-boes." T (revolted): "Sleepy-bo-boes … Uggh!"

Tim and Graeme attend the Beechrow directors' meeting where Rupert is delighted with New Improved Snooze and plans to flood the market so that "the whole country will be drinking it by 4pm." However he and the other directors soon fall into a deep sleep after sampling New Improved Snooze and Graeme starts to get worried that his revised potion is too powerful, especially when Bill is still asleep three whole days after drinking it. Graeme nervously starts to put together an antidote (while reassuring Tim with "Don't worry, the effect is only temporary. It'll wear off … in two or three weeks!"), but Bill wanders off on an epic sleepwalk across the countryside and Tim has to head off in search of him. Tim firstly tries to ride the trandem solo only to immediately fall off it, so he jumps into the Goodies' car and drives off looking for Bill; eventually catching up with him in a cow paddock after noticing a cartoon-like human-shaped hole in a fence that Bill has sleepwalked straight through in his travels.

Meanwhile Graeme has successfully created an antidote to his potent bedtime brew and he is ready to test its effectiveness. Speaking into his tape recorder, he utters "First I take a big swig of New Improved Snooze …" only to be cut short ("And now for the antido …") when he collapses on the floor in deep slumber before he can swig the antidote to counteract it! Graeme goes sleepwalking as well and just as Tim finally marches Bill back to the car, he sees Graeme stride past and has to chase after him as well; firstly having the bright idea of laying Bill on the ground, with feet kicking in the air, so that he can't wander off again. Tim also interlocks Bill and Graeme's arms so that they counteract each others sleepwalking and can't walk away as he gets in the car, only to get them both to push the car home when he discovers that it has a flat battery and won't start.

Upon arrival back at the office, Tim eventually manages to wake Bill and Graeme up by giving them a sip of Graeme's antidote. Graeme resumes his announcement that he is about to test his antidote until Tim tells him that it's already been done, while Bill complains that his legs are tired. They tune into the BBC News bulletin only to find the newsreader snoring at his desk. The entire country is paralysed thanks to the effects of New Improved Snooze (which a nervy Graeme explains away with "Well, every new invention has its little side effects."), so Graeme makes a large batch of antidote to put in every reservoir in the country in a bid to wake everyone up again.

Tim and Bill are poised at the top of a reservoir bank holding a huge barrel of superconcentrated antidote while Graeme delicately tips a teaspoonful of it into the water body. However an ill-timed sneeze from Bill sends the barrel hurtling towards Graeme (who takes a spectacular dive to get out of its path) and into the reservoir, spilling the whole load in the process. Quizzed by the others as to the likely effect of the antidote overload, an evasive Graeme tells them that it will make people "think faster, move faster, do everything faster." T (worried): "How much faster?" G: "Ah, well …" B (demandingly): "How much faster?!" G: "Well, ten, twenty times faster maybe …" B (alarmed): "How much?!" G (panicking): "Maybe a hundred times faster!"

The Goodies again tune into the BBC News, but wince when they see the newsreader take a sip of water to relieve his cough. Sporting records in cricket and athletics are being smashed by turbo-charged athletes and other news events such as the Lord Mayor's Parade and televised Parliament are taking place at breakneck speed. The newsreader talks faster and faster after each sip of water until he sounds like one of the 'Chipmunks' (before he beats his chest with his fists and utters a Tarzan-style yell, then runs away) and in Tim's words: "The whole country's gone completely loony!", though Graeme prefers to take the mad scientist slant of "This is an important scientific breakthrough. Absolutely fascinating." instead!

An enraged Rupert then bursts into the Goodies' office again and chases them round and round the desk with arms waving madly, complaining that the government has commandeered all of his stocks of Snooze to bring everyone back to normal speed and that his company has had to hand it all over for nothing. He roars: "We're ruined! "I'm ruined! And now ... (produces a pistol and points it at the Goodies) … I'm going to ruin you!" The Goodies each take a big swig of the antidote solution and as Rupert fires the gun into the air like an athletics starter pistol to send them on their way, they race off up the road at top speed.

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Tim (seeking a new name for Venom bedtime drink): "Now what shall we call it? Something, sleepy, soporific, late night …" Bill: "How about Epilogue?" Tim (unimpressed): "No." Bill: "Rolf Harris?!" Graeme (scornfully): "No, he's not late night!" Bill (cheekily): "Sends me to sleep!"

* Graeme (also suggesting a new name for Venom): "Sleepy Bo-Boes. Then whenever anybody says 'I'm going to sleepy bo-boes...'"

Bill (scornfully): "Nobody ever says 'I'm going to sleepy bo-boes!!'"

Graeme: "I do!"

Bill (disbelievingly): "What?!"

Graeme: Every night, as soon as I brush my toothy-pegs and put on my piggy-jim-jams, I say 'I'm going to sleepy bo-boes'. Everybody does!"

* Bill: "I've done a jingle!" (for Snooze bedtime drink)

Graeme (patronisingly): "There's a good boy!"

* Rupert (enraged): "What have you done to me?! … I'll tell you what you've done! First of all you knocked me out with your foul bedtime drink. Then when I wake up I find the whole country going around at 75 revs a minute. The government has come down on Beechrow like a ton of bricks … and I tell you … the Prime Minister at ten times his normal speed is not funny!" Bill (smirking): "Oh, he must be!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* Graeme's entire automated early morning, 'rise and shine' routine, including drinking tea from his hot water bottle, cooking an egg (from a chook in his bedside cupboard) by attaching it to a fishing rod and line, grabbing salt and pepper shakers from the chandelier and a napkin from the painting above his bed, and putting his suit on in one motion like a pair of overalls before tipping his bed up to reveal a doorway to the toilet. This prompts a bemused Tim to ask "How on earth did you manage that?" to which Graeme smugly replies "Ah, the magic of science, dear boy."

* Bill's epic sleepwalk; where he walks along the window ledge and onto the roof of the double decker bus before stepping off onto a painting scaffold, to the shock of the painter next to him. After holding a lady's knitting yard and interrupting a children's soccer game in the park, he heads underwater across a river and after bikini-clad girls on the beach before his trek across a minefield with mines spectacularly detonating all around him.

* Graeme taking a huge swig of New Improved Snooze and then collapsing asleep on the floor before he can reach the antidote he is trying to test.

GUEST STARS

Roddy Maude-Roxby, Corbet Woodall

GOODIES SONGS

Show Me The Way

Needed

MOCK ADVERTISEMENTS

Snooze

Snooze For Dogs

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

An early taste of the sort of comedy which made their mid-70's series so great - an abstract plot with some brilliant stunts and visual effects backed up by some good verbal humour. A little surprising that Max Bygraves didn't score a mention, given their lampooning of his sleep-inducing capabilities in later episodes!

RATING