Tag: The Goodies

One Flew into the Cuckoo’s Egg

One Flew into the Cuckoo’s Egg by Bill Oddie (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) Bill Oddie’s autobiography largely omits both birdwatching and The Goodies, preferring instead Oddie’s rather bleak childhood and pre-celebrity years (an engaging reminiscence by someone who’s come to terms with his demons), then his post-celebrity battles with depression (detailed honestly and without self-pity).  

The Seventh Man

The Seventh Man: My Part in the Defection Scandal by Geoffrey T. Alsop, as told to Graeme Garden (Eyre Methuen, 1981) Judging from this clever satire on official deniability, in which a senior MI6 operative misinterprets and overlooks at every hapless turn (and even unwittingly participates in) the now-infamous defection of British diplomats Burgess and Maclean, Graeme Garden should have…

42 Word Retrospective: The Goodies, Season 1

The Goodies, Season 1 by Graeme Garden & Bill Oddie (with Tim Brooke-Taylor) (BBC 1970) In 1970 comedy trio the Goodies arrived under their own names, riding a trandem bicycle and pioneering a freeform sitcom where they claimed to do anything, anytime. Exuberant, irreverent, chaotic: Tim, Bill and Graeme soon found themselves (to quote their song) needed.