PLOT
The Goodies read magazines in their office as they tune in to Pick Of The Pops on the radio, but the songs are so rude and obnoxious (with "When I Poke Out Your Eye" by the Rutting Sores actually being one of the cleaner ones!) that the program is rapidly taken off the air. Tim reads out the hit parade from the magazine with the help of a machine which sounds buzzers and bells in the place of the many rude words, and complains that the music industry is following "a [buzz buzz] awful trend" (a view further supported when Bill comments that Julie Andrews is in the charts with "Be true to me … or I'll break your fingers!"). Foolishly encouraged by Graeme, Tim (by this time wearing Mary Whitehouse-style glasses and speaking in a similarly haughty manner) decides to write his own squeaky clean songs in a bid to restore pop music's clean and wholesome image.
As a result, the Goodies form a new group called The Cherubs and pay a visit to the Isabel Chintz Star Agency. They are immediately told to "get out" before they can even start to sing by Isabel (a manipulative Australian-accented character substantially based on Germaine Greer), who is on the phone haggling over a gig involving nude alligator wrestling with Cliff "Mr High & Mighty" Richard! Bill re-enters the agency as Rock Bottom with his new band called The Goodies and they perform Tim's revoltingly sugary 'Sparrow Song' (with Bill on tambourine, Tim on washboard and Graeme on guitar), then offer to "get out" themselves straight afterwards! Isabel calls them back in as she reckons that the song could be a smash with the kiddies ("Give it new words, new tune, smash!") but turfs them out when they don't have a vicious stage gimmick – such as "a turkey in a sleek black leather suit and heavy eye makeup" that has a red-hot poker shoved up an unmentionable body cavity!
The only outlet for "nice tunes with clean healthy lyrics" is the Maxie Grease Show, hosted by the "sincere, wonderful, nice" Maxie ("How wonderful I am to be here tonight!") who is a real smoothie on-camera but shows his true colours when the camera isn't running when he gets cranky with the Goodies (who are running late for their act), ill-treats other contestants backstage and repeatedly yells at the "old crones" who make up his elderly audience. The judging is based on the ability of each act to "make Granny cry" inside the Granny-O-Meter, so Bill ensures that the Goodies' song 'Mummy I Don't Like My Meat' is a real tearjerker. Unfortunately the lyrics (about a poor family that sacrifices and cooks up its pets to avert imminent starvation) so gross that the song is almost a stomach-jerker for Tim, Graeme and most of the audience as well (with Maxie considerately handing out sick bags to his audience and Granny almost drowning in her own tears!)
Back at their office, the Goodies are paid a visit by Isabel, who flings the door wide open (knocking Graeme off his feet in the process) and wants to hire Bill after seeing his star performance on the 'Maxie Grease Show'. After telling Tim and Graeme to "get out" of their own office, Isabel privately tells Bill that she wants to make him a pop star and totally exploit him in the process so that she can make herself rich in turn. Bill is so blinded by the dreams of fame and fortune that he meekly follows along, despite Tim and Graeme re-entering as record company agents (Brian and Roger, with glasses, cigars, big noses and Yiddish accents) to point out the many loopholes and rip-offs in the contract. Bill departs the office with Isabel - both singing a rousing 'Once In A Lifetime' - which prompts Tim and Graeme to comment (still in their agents' voices) "That kid's got a good voice!" and that they should get him a spot on a crummy gameshow before they regain focus and declare that they need to stop Bill before he goes too far.
Bill is inside Isabel's office surrounded by sexy, lingerie-clad girls and a knock on the door advises that "two more girls from Rent-a-Groupie" are outside. Bill invites them to "take your clothes off and come in", but Tim and Graeme enter fully-clothed instead (prompting Bill to remark "Dear oh dear, what a couple of scrubbers!") and tell Bill that they have "come to take you away from all this" (to which Bill not surprisingly says "No, thank you!") He has been given a whole new image makeover as 'Randy Pandy' by the unscrupulous Isabel and despite being "fat and hairy and horrible", he dominates the pop charts after just one day (despite not having even released a record yet!) and fills the gossip mags with stories of being "clapped out at 19". As the pop industry moves so fast that the public has already become bored with him, Randy Pandy already needs another image change (according to Isabel) which will see him become the star of the new rock musical 'St. Augustine Superstar'. In this musical, "pure, holy and unbearably sexy" Randy Pandy will become a monk, enter a monastery and become a sex symbol for everyone – "butch fellas … sheilas … and you even score in the twilight zone!" – a concept that Graeme in particular finds appalling ("Oh come off it, Saint Augustine wasn't a … nancy!")
Tim and Graeme are determined to stop this madness and attempt to enter Top Of The Pops to "screw up" Bill's musical preview number; however the BBC studio is heavily fortified with barbed wire, plus armed guards that shoot wildly at anything in sight. A sign advises that the audience for the show must be girls that are "over 16 years of age and under 17 with big knockers", so Tim and Graeme tart themselves up accordingly, but they are quickly found out by the armed guards (when the bayonet tips of the guards' guns pop their inflated breasts) and shot at as they rapidly flee the scene (with a busload of appropriately-endowed groupies having already entered the studio bleating like sheep and tearing to pieces some hapless pop star who tries to sneak in under cover around the same time) . Tim and Graeme can barely bring themselves to watch Top Of The Pops on the TV set in the office as St. Augustine (Bill dressed up wackily looking like a quintessential androgynous pop star) unleashes a colourful rendition of 'I Don't Want Your Love' in a monastery setting (with help from the Soul Sisters, Pan's Nuns and the Mincing Monks!) to an audience of hysterical screaming teenagers. St. Augustine gradually strips off most of his sexy stage gear before being covered with a simple robe and led away by besotted monks and guards, with his screaming groupies being dragged off the stage as they try to follow him.
Isabel gets carried away with Bill's success as "Randy Pandy – Superpoof" and labels him as "Steve McQueen and Raquel Welsh rolled into one", but Bill starts to have doubts about his meteoric rise to stardom, especially when Isabel suggests that he needs to change his image yet again - to "Big Fat Nellie" in order to "keep 'em guessing"! Bill starts to embrace the idea but his initial doubts are confirmed when Tim and Graeme activate Plan B (raiding their costume hire kit) and ponce into the dressing room as very camp admirers; where they offer him a posey of flowers for his "fantabuloso" performance, praise his makeup ("It must have taken him hours to put on!" – to which Bill scowls and Graeme further adds "Ooh that man appeal!") and tell him that they're "absolutely thrilled to bits and pieces" with his success. A cross Bill tells Tim to "Get off!" (to which Tim minces "Hmm, playing hard to get, I like it!") and even when Tim and Graeme's ruse is uncovered, Bill says that "they're put me off the whole idea" of stardom to a horrified Isabel. With the admission that he's not a pop star but "just me, boring old Bill", he makes an emotional speech (ending with "The dream is finished and I'm gonna get changed. Put on my wellies and I'm going home.") and exits from the studio only to still get chased by the pack of screaming girls waiting outside. Graeme and Tim also leave with their work being done, but find that their camp getup attracts the unwanted attention of a bunch of sailors and the security guards who are still waiting outside the studio.
CLASSIC QUOTES
* Radio announcer: "BBC Radio have banned all Top 20 records on the grounds of offensive language and bad taste ... eeeewwhh ... nasty, disgusting filth made by spotty weirdos who should be lined up against the wall and have their hair cut! ... and that's that! And now in place of Pick Of The Pops, we shall be joining Radio 3 for a performance of Valdoni's opera 'Il Borrolio De Minisculi' ... the disembowelling of a dwarf!"
* Isabel Chintz (on the phone to a client): "I'm sorry honey, but that's the deal. They want you in the nude or not at all. Yes, in the nude, wrestling with a live alligator! Listen, don't come the raw prawn with me, sport! No, you look here, Mr High and Mighty Cliff Richard ... (pauses) ... Cliff! Language!" (then hangs up)
* Bill (singing 'Mummy I Don't Like My Meat'): "Hush child. Bonzo is in the oven ... (rapidly corrects himself) IN HEAVEN!!"
* Isabel Chintz (regarding Bill's pop career): "Trust me William, I want you to be big."
Bill (innocently): "I could wear stilts ...!"
* Isabel Chintz (to Bill) "Tonight you're gonna perform the big showstopping, amazingly tasteless number on Top Of The Pops. Oh kid, when Tony Blackburn sees you, he's gonna drop dead from embarrassment"
Graeme (matter-of-factly) "Oh well, at least some good will come of it!"
CLASSIC SCENES
* Maxie Grease (a send-up of Hughie Green from TV talent show 'Opportunity Knocks') oozing his slimy charm to all when the camera is running then turning into a really nasty piece of work off-camera; such as storming backstage in a huff when the Goodies don't appear on stage in time, telling an old lady waiting to perform to "Get out of the way, you old ratbag!", vigorously pushing a young lad on crutches across the backstage area and snapping at Tim "Don't call me Maxie, you creepy little upstart!" when Tim innocently tries to tell him that Bill is still working on the Goodies' song. Maxie then re-emerges onstage and roars "Shut up, you old crones" at his audience of old ladies when they start chanting "Why are we waiting ...?" during the delay between acts, before quickly returning to his 'sincere, nice, wonderful' self when back on-camera again.
* The Goodies performance of 'Mummy I Don't Like My Meat' on the Maxie Grease Show, with Bill as the father, Graeme as the old mother and Tim as the little baby daughter. The family is so poor that they have had to eat their household pets - a poodle, cat and budgie - in desperation (with lyrics such as "I collected his feathers and stuck them together / She's asking me why he don't sing" and "Tomorrow we'll curry the poodle / That should last us a couple of days ..."). This brings Graeme and Tim to the verge of throwing up in revulsion, the studio audience reaching for the paper bags supplied by a moody Maxie and old Granny almost drowning herself in tears inside the Granny-o-Meter.
* Tim and Graeme getting tarted up in a bid to stop Bill's dreams of stardom; firstly as busty young groupies trying to join the Top Of The Pops audience, though miserably failing when the guards pop their balloon busts with bayonets, then shoot at them! They then later dress up as very camp groupies ("Ooh when I think of all those wasted years ... kept it to yourself, you naughty thing!") who succeed in putting Bill off the whole idea of being a rock star, but are then chased away from the studio by a bunch of admiring sailors and security guards when they emerge still clad in their lairy clothing.
GUEST STARS
Barbara Mitchell, Julian Chagrin, John Peel, The Fred Tomlinson Singers, Wanita Franklin, Ruby James
GOODIES SONGS
Sparrow Song
Mummy I Don't Like My Meat
I Don't Want Your Love
MY 2 CENTS WORTH
Very colourful and dynamic program in keeping with the rock music theme, but the overall plot is far from 'Superstar' by nature with it being quite uneven and fluctuating wildly between being very funny and rather ordinary at different times. Good guest star roles from Julian Chagrin as the slimy Maxie Grease and John Peel with his cameo of Jimmy Savile prior to becoming a 'target' for the lads. Barbara Mitchell plays Isabel Chintz well, but her voice really starts to grate on the nerves after a little while!
BLACK PUDDING RATING
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