The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website

PLOT

Bill is busy cooking a sumptuous meal and takes a roast chicken out of the oven (prodding it with a fork only for it to cluck loudly, then commenting "A little bit longer, I think!") before he puts it back in and starts to sample the bottle of wine in his hand. Tim and Graeme arrive home in full soccer supporter-like battle dress and madly chant "We are the champions!" and "Grabowsky!" after they have formed the entire ecstatic cheering crowd at the International Chess Championships. Tim and Graeme are famished after all the excitement; however the wine and fancy meal that Bill has prepared is for Bunter the guinea-pig, who is fed up with his regular diet, and so Bill serves them soggy lettuce and potato peelings instead.

While the Goodies find their meal to be inedible, Bunter happily devours all of his new offerings (with Bill's successful little scientific experiment rather impressing Graeme) but the revelation that Bill has also prepared a lemon meringue dessert for Bunter sets off a heated argument between Bill and Tim. Tim argues that "we can hardly afford to feed ourselves and you're giving four-course meals to flamin' guinea-pigs!" but he is then mocked for his own culinary expertise at burning cornflakes by Bill; who then threatens to "go back home to Mother" as the row escalates. Graeme is firstly told to "keep out of this" by the others, but he eventually yells at them both to "Shut up!" (to which they go "Ooooh ...!" in mock surprise at his forcefulness). Meanwhile the revelation that Bill is getting paid 30 pounds to treat Bunter for his problem gives Tim a rare bright idea (as a bulb lights up cartoon-style in a thought bubble above his head).

The Goodies Animal Clinic is soon in business and Graeme stays at the office, while Bill and Tim take the trandem out with a large basket on the back to collect problem animals for treatment. To Tim's spiel of "Bring out your loony animals please. Crazy cats, daffy dogs, batty budgies, we accept them all, thank you!", they do brisk business, but the fur and feathers start to fly when all of the animals are placed in one large basket on the back of the trandem, including a gigantic strangle-happy python which Tim fights a running battle with for the entire sequence. Back at the office Graeme finds that his depressed mongoose isn't in a very playful mood (with his protective glove shredded to bits after he has tried to take the mongoose out of its box) and is attacked by his vampire bat (which has the tricky problem of being "afraid of the dark"); while he also has to repeatedly shake off an "overaffectionate" bushbaby that frequently latches onto his hand and has to lock two dogs out in the yard because they "won't stop singing" duets together.

Tim takes a tiny white kitten out of a box and fusses over it, but Graeme tells him that Twinkle is actually 23 years old and just hasn't grown properly. The Goodies take all of the animals for "walkies" to build their strength up; as Tim takes Twinkle on a leash, Bill has the responsibility of controlling a Great Dane and Graeme has a fruitless task to make his tortoise obey any commands other than "stay!" All goes reasonably smoothly until the Great Dane makes a lunge at the kitten (pulling Bill off his feet as he battles to hold onto the dog's lead) and Twinkle takes off, dragging Tim all over the park while he still desperately holds onto the leash. Twinkle ends up lodged up a huge tree in the park and Tim eventually climbs up a ladder (after a failed attempt to lure Twinkle down with a bowl of milk that keeps tipping over) and hands the kitten over to Bill, who climbs down to safety. Bill and Graeme then return to the office to test Graeme's new growth formula on Twinkle, but leave a bawling Tim stuck high up in the branches to fend for himself.

Bill tells Graeme that Colin the tortoise has done a runner from its shell, but Graeme doesn't particularly care ("Prise him apart; he'll make a nice pair of ashtrays!"); as he prefers to focus his attention on ensuring that a regular supply of growth mixture is shovelled into Twinkle's enclosure. Tim finally returns to the office after being treed for "four ruddy days" and is ready to wring Twinkle's neck for causing so much trouble, but Bill warns him that "He's not a kitten anymore." Graeme opens the shutters to reveal that Twinkle has grown to massive proportions, which draws a Psycho-like scream of terror from Tim; who then appears to wake from a nightmare; yelling "Don't lick me! Don't lick me" (with Bill – sleeping in the bed nearby - having no such intentions!) and demands that Graeme must get rid of this furry monster immediately. Graeme responds that Twinkle can't be sent home until it's well enough and produces a vitamin pill the size of a car tyre to feed to it. However the still-growing moggy isn't in its cage and a frantic Graeme firstly accuses Tim of taking him (loudly bellowing "What have you done to my pussy?!") before a contrite Bill owns up to having foolishly "put the cat out" for the night. This causes a panicking Graeme to quickly slip on his suit in one motion like in 'Snooze', flip his bed up to reveal a doorway and race off outside, as Bill and Tim quickly follow him while still dressed in their pyjamas.

As the Goodies pedal along on the trandem, they call out loudly to Twinkle and follow huge paw prints on the road and increasingly menacing meowing sounds to come across wild stampedes of fleeing people and dogs (with a Lassie look-alike pointing the way and whining knowingly) to eventually find a monstrous Twinkle terrorising central London. Twinkle knocks over a lamppost that almost crushes the Goodies as they sit astride the trandem and they hurry back to the office in time to see a news bulletin of Twinkle's destructive rampage (which ends with reporter Michael Aspel crushed by a huge paw just as he is signing off!) Graeme claims that they need to get Twinkle back to its normal size by giving it an antidote to the growth food, so he produces a huge syringe of antidote and urges the others to leap into the quick change cabinet.

The Goodies emerge dressed as mice (much to Bill's concern; especially when Graeme responds to Bill's query about the costume choice by saying "Cats eat mice!") so that they can get close enough to Twinkle to administer the antidote. They return to the city centre to attract Twinkle's attention (forcing a scared, screaming cleaning lady to jump up onto a chair when they enter a building and run around the room before departing) and ultimately take to the sky via balloons attached to the trandem. Armed with the giant syringe, the Goodies cruise the city skyline until they spot Twinkle up ahead, but when Graeme changes seats on the trandem with Bill (in order to get a better shot with the syringe), Twinkle menacingly swipes at the balloon and grabs Bill in its paw as he falls off the bike. Thankfully Graeme's injection of the antidote (after applying a medically correct swab while Bill is being sized up for supper!) reduces the furry monster to a tiny harmless kitten again; though as the Goodies celebrate this success, Graeme accidentally jabs the balloon with the syringe and it spins madly through the air before getting hooked up onto the nose of a rapidly departing Concorde.

Upon their return to the office, the Goodies pack all animals up (including a dog neatly parcelled up in brown paper wrapping!) to return to their rightful owners. Graeme tells Bill to throw out all of the unused growth mixture, but Bill notices that at least half of the food is missing. Graeme comments that it has probably just been eaten by mice before he pauses to contemplate the ramifications of this. Several massive mice crash their heads through the walls of the office; which prompts loud shouts of "FEED THE CAT!!" as the Goodies grab Twinkle out of his cage and try to get him to tuck into a sizeable pile of growth mixture to become big and strong again.

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Bill (to Graeme, who has picked up his wine bottle): "No, don't drink that!"

Graeme (derisively): "What do you want me to do; have a bath in it?!"

* Tim (annoyed, after seeing the fancy food that Bill has prepared for the guinea-pig): "Ruddy hell!"

Bill (defensively): "Surely you're not resentful of a little kindness to one of our dumb friends."

Tim: "The only dumb friend I've got is you!"

* Graeme (about Twinkle): "We've got to find him and catch him before he eats someone he shouldn't."

Tim: "You mean something he shouldn't?"

Graeme (panicking): "I know what I mean!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* Graeme and his remarkable animation talents with making the mongoose, bushbaby and vampire bat spring to life. He finds the bush baby continually clinging to his hand at inopportune moments and eventually makes use of it by blowing his nose with it; though it is again hanging on tight when he is ready to charge out the door to look for the escaped Twinkle.

* The two talented dogs singing 'Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better', which is a brilliantly edited sequence reused from The Goodies' predecessor 'Broaden Your Mind'

* Exercising the 'dumb animals' in the park followed by Bill's huge dog chasing Twinkle all over the park and playground - with Tim being dragged along on a leash behind the cat - and up a massive tree. Tim goes headfirst down a slide and gets pulled into a length of pipe on a trolley, with his legs stretching to impossible proportions as he gets towed along, then he throws a small twig up into the tree at Twinkle, only to have to catch an enormous log which drops on him.

* The Goodies pressed together against a construction barrier pedalling furiously after the trandem has rolled on down the road from underneath them.

* Michael Aspel's BBC News report; with the memorable footage of Kitten Kong riding the Post Office Tower to the ground and then lifting the dome on the roof of St. Pauls. The report ends abruptly when he is squashed into the ground by a huge furry white paw immediately upon signing off.

* The giant mice crashing through the walls of the Goodies office in horror movie-style after pigging out on Graeme's growth mixture.

GUEST STARS

Michael Aspel, Corbet Woodall, Milton Reid

GOODIES SONGS

Needed

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Dumb Animals

Kitten Kong

MOCK ADVERTISEMENTS

Robinson's Paper, Butch Tobacco For Men

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

One of the first episodes that springs to people's minds (even for occasional watchers) when 'The Goodies' is mentioned, mainly thanks to the iconic imagery of Twinkle the giant kitten. Not much classic dialogue compared to many other episodes, but heaps of spectacular, humourous and memorable visual effects with two great backing songs from Bill and a solid script dealing with the panic and destruction caused by Twinkle terrorizing London after another of Graeme's increasingly loony experiments.

BLACK PUDDING RATING