The Goodies name their favourite episodes (at least, of those released on DVD):

After watching the shows again, all agree their favourite episodes are Earthanasia and The End in which the three spend their time together in confinement and without their often wild film excerpts.

“Ironically they were brought about by the fact that we ran out of money at the end of each series,” Oddie says. “I actually think that some of those have stood up better than some of the film things.”

These are two of my favourite episodes, too, really bringing out Oddie and Garden’s superb dialogue-writing skills.

My favourite Goodies episodes (in no particular order):

• Earthanasia — “ha ha ha Your little faces!”
• The End — “Is he going into a monastery?” “No, into a lavatory.”
• the Lighthouse one — like the two above, pretty much a three men stuck in confinement story, with a bit of space travel thrown in.
• U-Friend or UFO — Star Wars, Close Encounters, Superman, Doctor Who, they all get a look-in. “EBGB, how do you talk to aliens?” “Exterminate! Exterminate!”
• Radio Goodies (pictured) — I can never hear “Walk in the Black Forest” without thinking of it.
• String — such a wide-ranging parody of advertising I don’t think I’ve seen on any other comedy.
• The Cream Mine — that whole card game and sauce bottle fight at the end cracks me up. It brought the pointless argument over pronounciation of “scones” into popular culture.
• Saturday Night Grease — was particularly funny after I’d seen the movies that inspired it. Just about every classic musical ever made gets spoofed.

Yup, I’ll be buying the new DVD release. Like the first one, it’ll sell like cupcakes in Australia.

Somewhere, possibly retired now, there’s an ABC staff member or two who were responsible for scheduling The Goodies constantly through the 70s and 80s, embedding it deeply into the memories of most Gen-Xers.

Whoever you are, and wherever you are, I salute you.

• April 2000: The Kitten Kon convention — meeting Tim Brooke-Taylor
• The Goodies Rule OK — fan club, news
• Kay’s Goodies photos (which is where the above pic came from)