The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website

Thanks to Alison Bean for passing along the following info about series 2 of "What the Dickens". It appears Tim will not be one of the panelists (he was a team captain in series 1).

WHAT THE DICKENS?

What The Dickens? is an exciting and lively panel show about the arts, covering films, books, music and theatre. This brand new series is presented by perhaps Britain’s - and definitely Denmark’s - funniest woman, Sandi Toksvig, who delivers more laughs per inch than any other performer working today. The team captains are Lab Rats & The Ape that Got Lucky comedian Chris Addison and this year's Maestro winner Sue Perkins.

Following on from the successful first series, which included, among others, Dave Gorman, Marcus Brigstocke, Robin Ince, Rich Hall and Dom Joly, the panellists will again hail from the worlds of comedy and TV, with a sprinkling of writers and actors, who will take part in a series of hilarious and witty rounds, with the emphasis on getting laughs as well as getting the answers right. This year's panellists will include Richard Herring, Jenny Éclair, Stephen K Amos, Dave Gorman, Mark Steel & Jackie Clune.

This series will be recorded at Sky’s studios in West London (nearest tube: Osterley in zone 4 of the Picadilly line, nearest station: Syon Lane) on Tuesday 7th, Friday 10th, Monday 13th October & Monday 10th, Monday 17th, Tuesday 18th November 2008 at 7.00pm. If you would like to join us, then apply now!

Booking is now open and may apply online via our website at http://www.sroaudiences.com

Posted by lisa at 30/09/2008 19:00 GMT

the latest upcoming shows list

To see a list of upcoming TV & radio shows of interest to Goodies fans use the "click here for more" link below.

Posted by lisa at 30/09/2008 00:00 GMT

NZ Sunday Star Times article about Bill

more from same (The Goodies)

The following article from the Sunday Star Times appears online at http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4700048a6619.html (the page has a recent photo of Bill):

An Oddie, but a Goodie
Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 21 September 2008

BILL ODDIE was the shouting Goodie - the strutting beardy one with a northern accent and a problem with authority, whose voice seemed perpetually hoarse from ranting and raving. A quarter of a century since the demise of the The Goodies, he's still noisy.

From his home near Hampstead Heath in north London, Oddie is talking to the
Sunday Star-Times loudly enough to distort the telephone speaker. He chunters and chuckles and laughs wheezily, full of chumminess and chirpiness as he talks about his autobiography, which reveals that he has spent his life being highly strung to the extent of plucking the hair from his own head, terrified of his fans to the point of phobia, feared in turn by colleagues because of his grumpiness and ill temper, and latterly prone to clinical depression.

The odd thing is it took until he was 60 - he's now 67 - before Oddie realised there was anything wrong with him. Perhaps no one felt brave enough to tell a man with multiple wildly successful careers - actor, writer, comic, composer, musician, celebrity bird-spotter - that he was in fact a psychological wreck and a bit of a bully. Perhaps it was that everyone was misdirected by the fact he was forever being unnaturally cheerful.

"The one thing I never was was lugubrious," says Oddie. "You see someone like [depressive comedian and suicide Tony] Hancock, and you think Jesus Christ - you can see it all there."

Not that Oddie's problems are particularly secret now. His memoir, One Flew into the Cuckoo's Egg, published in New Zealand next month, is a portrait of the artist as a damaged child, interspersing boilerplate northern English childhood memories (uncomfortable school shoes, collecting birds' eggs, playing cricket with milk crates for wickets etc) with tales of family dysfunction - notably his mother Lilian's long-term incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

In 2000, decades of suppressed anger and stress caught up with the motherless man, triggering the first of a series of crippling bouts of depression. A few years later Oddie learnt more of Lilian's story, finally developing some empathy for a woman he barely knew and felt only resentment towards the few times they met.

It turns out Lilian's decades of mental illness probably began as postnatal depression, triggered by a late miscarriage and then the death of a newborn girl after a difficult birth. Most disturbingly, Lilian's deeply unpleasant live-in mother-in-law had refused to call for a midwife as the birth went wrong, and had stopped Lilian from comforting the crying baby during the five days she lived. Oddie was born the following year.

Little wonder, writes Oddie, that Lilian ended up in the institution locals called "Barmy Hill". "You didn't have to be mad to live there," he writes, "just heartbroken."

The second half of the memoir, rather more cheerily, is a freewheeling collection of observations and vignettes from a life of celebrity and success, written in the form of an interview of Bill Oddie by Bill Oddie, in alternating typefaces.

Oddie's worldwide fame peaked with The Goodies, the madcap TV series co-starring Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden that ran from 1970 to 1982 and attracted audiences in the UK of up to 15 million people. The trio also wrote three bestselling annuals and had five top 20 singles and a top 20 album - Oddie wrote all the music.

>From this side of the world, Oddie faded from view along with The
>Goodies,
but he was still writing and presenting for British TV through the 80s.

Then in the 90s he parlayed his life-long obsession with bird-spotting into a career as a wildlife presenter. His enthusiastic and knowledgeable on-camera extemporisations on the marvels of blackbirds, grebes and the lesser spotted tit have made him famous all over again. He is recognised almost as often as during the height of Goodies-mania, only these days fans don't give him the screaming heebie-jeebies. Oddie and co may have asked for it by creating skits where they are attacked by a giant kitten or squashed with a weight marked "1 TON" but some fans had difficulty separating reality from fantasy.

"It was like meeting Tom and Jerry in the street," says Oddie. "They could punch us, knock us over and we'd still get up and smile at them. But of course that was not the case."

His new fans are far less dangerous. They include "little kids and grannies, and 90% of the time the approaches are really really nice, because you're not a cartoon figure any more".

The book's self-interview lets Oddie flagrantly boast about his talents and achievements, then save himself from appearing unbearably smug by switching fonts and accusing himself of being a "cocky little bugger". It's not as irritating to read as it might sound.

Oddie is less boastful, though, about the rivalry between the Goodies and Monty Python's Flying Circus, both of which grew from the ashes of the 1963 Cambridge Circus, the university revue that proved so popular it toured the world (including New Zealand). The Goodies never won the critical respect accorded their friends and rivals in Monty Python, writes Oddie. They were a pop group to Python's classic rock act; the Bay City Rollers of comedy versus Python's Steely Dan. How does Oddie feel about his team failing the posterity test while Monty Python passed?

"Bitter is the word, possibly," says Oddie. He pauses. "But not really."

Oddie sees the Goodies' legacy in the comedians who followed them, from The Young Ones in the 1980s to The Mighty Boosh this century.

"I get nothing but pleasure in thinking I might have influenced or even inspired a few people to have a bash. Though I've often thought the biggest inspiration for young comedians was to watch and think `bloody hell we can do better than that'."

Oddie has been to New Zealand twice. There was the 1964 tour with John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor and other members of the Cambridge revue, during which Cleese supposedly encountered the diabolical hotel service that would later inspire Fawlty Towers. And in 1981 Oddie was a Telethon celebrity, based in the Dunedin studio (other guests included Kamahl, Kenny Everett and Basil Brush).

He has fond memories of monstrous jetlag, charming locals and improvising a curled-lip punk version of the Telethon theme song, which to the best of his recollection was called "We're all looking for love". He also looked for birds. Once the jetlag was out of the way Oddie stayed on a little longer and hooked up with New Zealand's birdwatching fraternity, visiting Little Barrier Island and an albatross colony, and ringing yellow-eyed penguins.

He says he'd like to get back, perhaps make a wildlife programme or two. But his favourite Kiwis at the moment are the Flight of the Conchords. As the composer of hundreds of comedy songs and ditties for The Goodies and other shows, Oddie feels a strong affinity with New Zealand's hottest comedy export.

"I'm a big fan. I'm sure they have no idea that I used to write so many comedy songs... I doubt whether there's any conscious connection. But I'd be very proud to think that there might be, somewhere in the ether, because I love their stuff."

One Flew into the Cuckoo's Egg - Hodder & Stoughton, $39.99.

Posted by lisa at 22/09/2008 00:30 GMT

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Listen Again link for Bill on Saturday Live (plus other upcoming shows)

BBC Radio 4's "Saturday Live" from Sept 20th on which Bill was a guest can be heard through this Saturday from Listen Again at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/saturdaylive/media/latest_edition.gif

To see a list of other upcoming TV & radio shows of interest to Goodies fans use the "click here for more" link below.

Posted by lisa at 22/09/2008 00:00 GMT

Jeremy Hardy article from the Sunday Herald

In a Sunday Herald article at http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/display.var.2449984.0.0.php) comedian Jeremy Hardy talks about his experiences as a frequent guest panelist on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue". Use the "click here for more" link below to see the text of the article.

BTW, Jeremy is on tour through at least December - a long list of his stand up dates can be found at http://www.ents24.com/web/artist/12748/Jeremy_Hardy.html

Posted by lisa at 22/09/2008 00:00 GMT

Autumnwatch with Bill to return October 27th

The following is a mailing from the official I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue mailing list.

An additional piece of ISIHAC news comes from last week's BBC 7 Newsletter, which said, "Fans of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue will be pleased to know that the series (archive programmes of course) will be returning to BBC 7 later in the autumn."

-----Original Message-----
From: ISIHAC Info [mailto:isihac@btinternet.com]
Subject: I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Mailout 17.09.08

Dear I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Mailing List Member,

It seems an opportune moment to communicate after the hiatus caused by the death of our beloved Chairman Humph in April this year.

Firstly, on behalf of the team, I'd like to thank the thousands of you who sent us messages of condolence. There were so many I regret I have still not replied to 900 or so - I promise I will in due course. And belatedly, on Humph's behalf, I'd like to thank the thousands who sent Humph "Get Well" messages when he first went into hospital. I spent several hours printing out as many as I could and took a huge pile of them in for Humph to read in his hospital bed. I'm so pleased he was able to able to appreciate the scale of everyone's affection for him at what must have been a very worrying time.

You will probably have heard the various Radio tributes to Humph since his death. I do hope you caught the ISIHAC team's tribute to the great man on 15th June narrated by Stephen Fry. If you didn't, I'm pleased to say that BBC Audiobooks will be releasing it later this year, together with the show Humph In Wonderland which we recorded last Christmas. I will send further details of these in due course.

And you might also have read Radio 4's announcement that we will be continuing with I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue in 2009. We have all been slightly ambivalent about continuing the show without Humph, but have been greatly encouraged by the huge number of emails you've sent encouraging us to keep going. Despite the rumours, we've made no decisions about possible replacements for Humph, and are unlikely to make any decisions this year at least. Certainly I don't envisage us selecting anyone on a permanent basis for several series.

For anyone suffering withdrawal symptoms in the absence of their biannual dose of 'Clue', there are several programmes and publications either currently available or in the pipeline...

* On BBC iPlayer you can currently catch both the BBC4 tribute to Humph, and a half-hour excerpt from the ISIHAC Tour show we filmed at the Lowry Centre in Salford earlier this year. This is the only complete film of ISIHAC in existence and was the last recording Humph made before he went into hospital just ten days later. We will be releasing the entire show as a DVD in due course, hopefully by Christmas. The links to the iPlayer shows are as follows: For the BBC4 Humph Tribute it's http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ddwcy/ and for the half-hour tour show except it's http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dmpd2/

* On 10th October our publisher Trevor Dolby at Preface Books is bringing out the complete collection of Humph's introductions to all the places we visited over seventeen years touring the show, written by Iain Pattinson. The book is entitled Lyttelton's Britain and contains a large amount of previously unbroadcast material. As I say in a foreword to the book, I think the combination of Iain Pattinson and Humphrey Lyttelton has been the single most important writer/performer partnership in British Radio since Galton & Simpson started writing for Tony Hancock. It's a wonderful and hilarious collection and I confidently predict it will be a best-seller. You can pre-order a copy of Lyttelton's Britain now, and Trevor is offering this book at a special discounted rate of 35% off the retail price to members of this mailing list - that's less than Amazon. Just go to http://www.chairmanhumph.co.uk/ and click on 'Pre-Order Now', then enter the promotional code 'Lyttelton' before purchasing, and the price will amend to £9.74 plus £2.75 postage, so £12.49 in total.

* Finally, I must tell you that our good friend and Clue regular Andy Hamilton is touring his one man show 'Hat of Doom' around the country over twenty dates from now until early December. You will of course know Andy from his regular appearances on The News Quiz as well as Radio 4's Old Harry's Game. Andy was co-creator and writer of Channel 4's legendary Drop The Dead Donkey and has recently co-created and written the stunningly good BBC1 sitcom Outnumbered, which returns for a second series this Autumn. For the complete list of Andy's tour dates, go to: http://www.varietylives.com/schedule.html

And that's about it for now. I will of course keep you posted of any future developments.

With best wishes

Jon Naismith
Producer, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

Posted by lisa at 17/09/2008 02:00 GMT

September C&G now available

Thanks to Edna for letting us know that Graeme & Barry were interviewed on Les Ross's Show on BBC WM today (Weds, Sept. 10th) to promote their new book, "The Doings of Hamish & Dougal". This episode should be available on Listen Again until next Wednesday's edition airs from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/wm/aod.shtml?wm/les_ross_wed. Graeme & Barry's interview starts around the 2 hour mark.

Also, thanks to the good folks at the Saucy Gibbon forum who reported that Graeme & Barry will appear on the Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV 1 tomorrow (Thurs., Sept 11th); the show airs from 3-4pm.

Let us know if you spot any of Graeme & Barry's other radio interviews!

Posted by lisa at 10/09/2008 00:30 GMT

the latest upcoming shows list

Use the "click here for more" link below to see the latest list of upcoming tv & radio shows of interest to Goodies fans.

Also, be on the lookout for Graeme Garden & Barry Cryer's local radio interviews tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept. 10th) and their upcoming appearance on Alan Titchmarsh's TV show to promote their new book "The Doings of Hamish & Dougal". Let us know if you spot the info!

Posted by lisa at 09/09/2008 00:30 GMT