Latest / The Mitchell Brothers Revisit / The Monkees vs The Goodies

Transcript

The Monkees vs The Goodies · The Mitchell Brothers Revisit

• Luke: I was so tempted during that just to butt in and say "The Commissioner says hurry the fuck up!" Spit it out. Just tell us. This is the Mitchell Brothers Revisit where two siblings revisit the TV shows that shape their childhood and ask what it all meant then and what it means now. My name is Luke Mitchell and I'm with my brother Oliver Mitchell and have we got a pod lined up for you. Ollie: I am well excited about this but I gotta say that I was shocked by the golf... by the golf or even the golf or... Luke: By the what? The gulf. Ollie: fuck it! If I could finish the thought that would be quite nice. Luke: You mean watching? The gulf The Gulf the Gulf, are you talking about a large expanse of water? yeah, okay. Go on. Ollie: I am, yeah, yeah. Let me use the word chasm instead then. I was quite shocked by By the chasm between my memory of one of the particular shows we're going to be talking about and the revisit. What I remembered Luke: Ooh I would Ollie: was very different Luke: I reckon it's the monkeys, but you're not gonna tell me, are you? Ollie: I'm not, but it did lead me to question, and this is a central thread I think that's going to run through all my thinking today, are these shows naff or are they actually very clever? Luke: Well, I'm sure in the course of the next forty-five minutes we're gonna find out. I think you're gonna like finding out how the monkeys just all came together, how it all started. I think you're gonna like the purpose of the black box that they had built on set. you're gonna like discovering which iconic counterculture film was created by the monkeys producer. That might surprise you. And you're gonna like learning how they all got along after the end of the monkeys of T V show. Ollie: Great. I'm already thinking about that counterculture film now. Writing a few notes down. Luke: You didn't write anything there, I c you're just doing that fake You got a pen, but you didn't write anything. Ollie: Okay. Luke: I wanted to first of all find out what did you what do you remember about the monkeys before you watch this? And also what were your impressions of the episode? Ollie: So. I there were four of them. I remember thinking Davey was always the cutest and that was born true on the revisit. Very fondly, the opening credits after the cold opening. I remember some of those fast cut scenes of them larking around in the opening credits were very memorable. Notably then walking down, crossing over their legs. of like in a three legged thing, aren't they? But crossing over their legs. Yeah. Luke: Yeah, yeah, it's sort of a like a can can almost. Ollie: Then running like sped up, sped up tape. with them running in and out of the sea that came flooding back and the one that flooded back most vociferously was the monkeys dressed as the foreign legion in the desert. That's very memorable. Yeah. Luke: Yes. Yeah. Hi there, it's Luke here. Just a quick one to say we did want to put in excerpt of the monkey's theme tune, that wonderful theme tune. Unfortunately, Spotify made us take it down. We thought it was fair use, but hey-ho. Ollie: So that was lovely. I smiled to myself as those credits came on thinking, this is lovely. Luke: yeah. Shall I tell you about the origins of the monkeys right. There's this up and coming writer director called Bob Raffleson and he's had quite a colourful life. And as a young man, he'd run away to be a rodeo rider in Arizona. He fled to Mexico to play in a jazz band. And then he got drafted in the US Army Army and he served in Japan. And at that time he became fascinated with Japanese cinema. So he came back to America and he wanted to get into the Hollywood industry. And he started out as a junior writer and a script reader. And he quickly worked his way up to associate producer. Then he fell out with his employer, which was one of the studios in Hollywood, and he left. And he left with a colleague that he'd met working at the studio, and that was another producer called Bert Schneider. And they set up their own firm, which they called Rayburt Productions. And their very first idea was to create a TV show about the misadventures of a rock and roll group in a similar style to the Beatles A Hard Days Night film. Although Raffleson insists that he actually conceived of the idea before the Beatles even existed. But it's just that the Beatles then came along and but but Raffleson basically said that he was inspired by his time. In a jazz band in Mexico and all the sort of adventures that they had. But by this time he's then become blatantly interested in leveraging the popularity of the Beatles. And in fact, I saw an interview where Peter Talk from The Monkeys talks about it. And they they didn't see it as kind of ripping off the Beatles, but more that the Beatles had created a market and that they couldn't serve the demand for. Like they th the the Beatles themselves could not serve the interest in the Beatles. people wanted more Beatles-y kind of material. So they what they did, these two guys they set out to audition for actors who would play the role of the monkeys. And actually the all the original audition tapes from the monkeys are on YouTube and they're a really interesting watch. the producers are quite provocative and quite pushy with them I mean, they get Davy Jones, who's the I I don't know if you're familiar with the different names of the he's the the British one. he's quite small, he's five foot three, and they are really like almost humiliating him about his height. and they're asking him if girls like it the fact that he's so short. And they get him and they get him it's quite like circus like, they get him to do a little jig on the spot. They're like, do us a dance. Do us a dance. and he does a little dance and they you can they're all trying their best because they want really all of them you can tell they really want the gig, they really want to get the job. There's an air of desperation across the whole audition, but he does his little dance and then they're like, Davy Jones had previously been a jockey because he was so small. They Ollie: You Luke: said, Yeah, yeah, you should have stayed a jockey, you sh you you're not an actor. 'Cause they're trying to see how they respond to provocation. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: And then Mickey Delenz, do you remember Mickey? He's the one who most physically resembles a monkey. In a yeah. Ollie: Yeah, I saw him as like the Marlon Brando figure of the quartet. Luke: Yeah. he's been a child actor in his previous life. and he was in a sort of quite a well known show which was about a circus. And at one point while he's just doing his bit, he's just like riffing. They just shout out, elephant boy And he's like, just to see how he responds. so it's definitely w worth a watch. But anyway, they recruit the four monkeys. So two of them are actors. You've got Mickey and Davey. And then the other two are actually coming from a musical background. Mike and Peter are predominantly musicians. however, much to the later frustration of both Mike and Peter, they never they don't actually do their own music in the monkeys. They they get in existing musical performers to per to create the music for the monkeys. So you most of the tracks or a lot of them are written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who were actually reasonably well known double act at the time. They did Hey Hey With the Monkeys they did Not Your Step in Stone I don't think there are any tracks that they did themselves independently that you'd be aware of, but they nevertheless did a lot of the monkeys popular songs. But they also had Neil Diamond wrote a song for the monkeys, he did I'm a Believer, and Carol King, who had that hit You've Got a Friend. she wrote some stuff for the monkeys as well. Davy is seen as the romantic, the cute, also ambitious one, but he's put forward as a sort of heartthrob. So He would often be trying to impress girls, he would write love songs. He was often worrying about his appearance, he'd get jealous a lot and he'd complain about being short in the show. So they were have doing one on him in the show as well, getting him to moan about being short. in the show, he's always trying to establish himself as the band's leading man. just as a f I f I find this funny, I don't know why, but his autobiography. I just do you like autobiography now titles? They're quite they're often quite funny, aren't they? His autobiography It references the Ollie: Does it reference the shortness, does it? Luke: monkey I I I don't think you'd be able to get it, but if you imagine you sat down, you're you're his publisher, you know he's a monkey, you know his story. What are you gonna call his autobiography? Ollie: Thanks Go on. Luke: Like why is it so funny? They made a monkey out of me. Ollie: Ha Luke: They made a monkey out of me. dear Ollie: You Luke: He's so funny, it's so clever because they're manufactured. But anyway, Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Luke: Davy's background. He started as a child actor. He was actually so he's obviously British. He was born in Manchester. I should say now because we're gonna do obviously hopefully do many of these shows I am the slightly autistic researcher here who goes into s ridiculous deep dives. I actually went and looked at Where Davy grew up in Manchester on Google Street View. House has been knocked down. But I know that you'll be interested to know that it was quite near the Etiad Stadium in Ollie: okay. Luke: in on the east side of Manchester. ru it's a rough area. He grew up in poverty. He lived in He had I think it was two siblings that lived in the same they had a two up, two down house. yeah, he was a child actor and obviously is what he got as a child actor in Manchester, he got a role, a short role on Coronation Street. Then he went to London and was the artful dodger in in Oliver. And then the how he ended up getting in the monkeys is the musical The Oliver went to Broadway. So he became a an actor that was now working and operating in the US. he was a ha relentlessly hard worker all of his life. He I I'm sure that we'll talk a bit about the narcotic influences on both the monkeys themselves and the show. But Davey took a lot of diet pills to stay awake. And actually diet pills at that time were basically speed, amphetamins. Ollie: not helping himself then is he? He's complaining about being small and then he's taking diet pills. Luke: they all do seem quite permanently wired, don't they? They're like so Ollie: Yeah. Luke: zany. you just walk out of the room, it's like you guys are too much for me. but actually as we're on the topic, I mentioned at the start of the show that black box on set. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: So they had a black box that you could literally a big box that you could get inside of built on the set of the monkeys. What do you think that might be for? Ollie: Just linking to what you've just said, just some, some respite, some rest. Luke: respite. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: I'm having some respite. Yeah. yeah, it's a place I used to go and smoke weed. Ollie: That's a certain type of a spite. Luke: Yeah, they get in the box because the smell was like permeating across the studios and stuff. They were like, let's get them inside this box and keep it away from everyone. It but it was actually a place where they would go to retreat to get away from the funny thing is you said about the girls in Paris, right? Clearly it's so meta, this whole monkey thing because they made the I this this band and it was like, let's have them being chased by girls in Paris. At that time, nobody in France knew who the monkeys were. So they're all this is this is a contrived situation. The monkeys are not famous. So these girls are models that have been hired to chase them. However, fast forward like something like twelve months, they come to London and they're getting chased by girls in real real life across London, and they can't there's a lovely story with Mickey. 'Cause it's like a Beatles situation. They've got them all outside the hotels, permanently camped up, waiting for them to come out, taking pictures. He comes out of a hotel when they're in London one day. He just wants to go for a walk and get some headspace, but he can't get away from them. There are just these girls, packs of girls are following him. And he goes into the park and there's a lovely story where he's like, All right, I I'm not gonna be able to get rid of them. So he takes them and gets they all get onto this bandstand in the park and they all sit down And he orchestrates a a singing session where they're like all singing songs, including like school songs, you know, the sort of songs that you'd sing at primary school. I really warm to Mickey, sort of looking some they see some of his interviews, very genial guy. Ollie: That connects with something I was thinking is that they're all really nice guys aren't they? all... It made me kind Luke: Yeah. Ollie: of pine for what men used to be because they're lovely blokes aren't they? Luke: And the the wit that they have as well there's so there's so many little things that they do. Mickey's really funny. Mike comes in. He's the one that wears the bobble hat, Mike. because he was a motorcycle rider and he used to wear the bobble hat to keep the hair out of his eyes when he was riding. And he just thought, I'll keep it on at the audition and then that became his kind of Ollie: a woollen moniker. Luke: Monica, yeah. he comes into the audition room he just walks up to this portrait on the wall and it's as he pretends that it's a mirror and he's like doing his hair in the mirror. And it's just like it's just all these clever little things that they do to get, you know, to stand out. but going back to Mickey, in terms of his character, so he's meant to be crazy, mischievous, impulsive. He's a sort sort of the clown of the group. he does impressions, makes funny noises, falls over a lot, pulls faces. he generally misunderstands things and he's he behaves like he's full of caffeine. but he's also probably the most pure actor of the four of them. So then you've got Mike, who I mentioned with the bobble hat, Mike Naismith. he's kind of the co what actually what would your impressions I know you've only watched one episode, what would your impressions of Mike be? Ollie: Well, I had him and Peter as just the sidekicks and it's interesting now that you say that they were the only two who were the musicians. Yeah, I just had them as the lesser interesting of the four. Luke: clearly if you're an actor, this is what you want to be doing, but they're thinking we want to be musicians, but we're doing this T V show for the time being about about being a musician. So maybe they carry that energy into the show with them a bit. But Mike is supposed to be the cool, cynical, intelligent one. He's like the brains persona. and there is an element of truth. He was kind of he actually was the kind of leader of the monkeys if there if there was one. He was like the alpha of the pack, really. He was quite also contrarian. He's quite a in real life, he's a less obliging character than the others. his he was actually rich. He didn't need to do the monkeys, but he was coming from a very wealthy background. His mum invented TIPEX. Well, she invented liquid paper. Which as we know as Tip X. so their whole family was loaded he was the one that was the least comfortable with the whole concept that they were a manufactured. boy band, he's always pushing to bring their own music to the show. Ollie: I'm sure it's... so the set up for the episode is that they're fed up with doing the same scripts all the time and they decide they're just going to go to Paris to give the producer and the director time to come up with something more creative. I'm sure he's the one that instigates the discontent about what's going on, which rings true, doesn't it? Luke: He is. Yeah, he is. It's ve and it's entirely true. but the fact that the direct the producers encouraged and wanted that to be the script is really funny as well. Like they almost self destructed their own show you hate this show, yeah, like you want to get off of it and that's you're gonna go to Paris because you're bored of the script and stuff. Like they wrote that script. And but just to finish Ollie: Yeah. So, Luke: sorry, go on. Ollie: well, this, you know, I said at the start about the through line here is, is this naff or is it, is it very clever? Like that fits with the idea of it being very clever. It's the meta element of we know what we're doing. We know it's really boring. So we're going to send you to Paris and then we're going to do something that's equally boring, which is having women chasing you around. It's like the art is eating itself, isn't it? Luke: Yeah Yeah. Just yeah, let's do that for twenty it's a like look l look at like twenty minutes gone. Yeah, a bit more chase and then we're done. We'll wrap this up. Ollie: So in that sense, you see in this as a complete parody of the genre. Luke: Well what was the genre? Ollie: the genre feature of women chasing pop stars around cities. Because that's the Hard Day's Night and that was four Luke: Yeah, that was a joke about Ollie: years before. Luke: that was a joke about yeah, Beatles Mania really. just to finish on the the four monkeys and then we'll get into the actual episode. So Peter Talk was the final one. actually I thought you were gonna say that he was the nice guy of the four, maybe, but he played a sort of innocent Naive, slightly dim character, although clearly he wasn't an idiot in real life. He actually came in with a background, he was very much involved in the Greenwich Village sort of beatnik hippie scene, and he'd been a musician, folk musician on that scene. and he had quite a sort of gentle, in real life, a gentle, eccentric personality. He actually developed later in his life, he developed quite a long term alcohol problem, which he eventually got on top of. So just in terms of the episode itself to explain what happens, so we've kind of touched on this a little bit already, but yeah, the monkeys are tired of saying the same monotonous lines week in, week out, and they decide that they're gonna leave the studio. travel to Paris, and then when they get to Paris they're gonna Find that lots of police and amorous women are gonna pursue them while they're away. And while they're away, the director needs to think about ways to make this script more unique for when they come back. interestingly, this was one of the Monkeys episodes that had no laughter track. So traditionally when they were filming entirely within the studio, an episode you would have laughter tracks on there as well. And also the first 32 shows of the monkeys, of the first 32, 29 were directed by people who'd never actually directed before. So the idea of using new directors meant that they weren't. encumbered by any traditional ways of thinking. so this is kind of what gives that the series that sort of sense of experimentation and novelty. yeah, what did you make of the episode itself? Ollie: Okay, so I really enjoyed seeing Paris, actually. Luke: Me so. Ollie: I really enjoyed two particular locations. The market with all the hanging meat and the people go... Luke: Yeah. Yeah, the butchers with the blood on their coats. Ollie: Yeah, people going back to their business. And I liked and thought it was very funny, actually. There's a... I think the shop was Comptoir Paris and there was a... a shot that was repeated about four times with the monkeys coming in to shot from the left hand side of the screen in a different vehicle every time but on the pavements were just these bemused Parisians watching on. The producers had clearly commissioned this area of Paris for an hour and they just thought right let's just have you coming into the same shot. On the Parisians, kind of bemusement versus their willingness to collaborate I thought was lovely. Like you said before, they don't know these guys. All they know is that something's being filmed and yet they're very, very happy to go along with it. I'd be part of it. I thought that was cool. Luke: Yeah, I loved the Paris street scenes. and I thought, yeah, the people they start off kind of like seeing a b seeming a bit like, this is interesting, be mused. But then you do wonder sometimes where they're quite getting quite irritated by the monkeys. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: it did seem quite arrogant the way that s they're sort of just driving their motorbikes across plazas and stuff. There's so much running around. I actually another weird thing I looked into is did they smoke? 'Cause I was thinking these guys are fit these guys would absolutely rinse me at park run. they're just constantly running. three of them smoked, one of them didn't. Ollie: Which one? Luke: which one do you think I say that. He smoked weed, he didn't smoke cigarettes. It was Ollie: Probably Davey. no, Davey was small when he said he definitely smoked. Peter. Luke: It's Mike Mickey, Mickey. Yeah, Ollie: Mickey, okay. Luke: Mickey. yeah yeah, no, it it sort of feels like a nineteen sixties pop art film, doesn't it? More than it does sort of a conventional American sitcom. Ollie: I've got a question for you. Luke: Yeah. Ollie: might have covered this off already to some degree but how typical was the episode of other monkeys episodes? Luke: it was typical in the sense of the story. basically every story would start with some sort of ridiculous predicament like they need some money or they're being pursued or they Peter's accidentally inherited something or That they're being mistaken for spies. and then they'd spend basically twenty five minutes running around trying to solve the problem. Ollie: Thanks. Luke: That was that was what every episode did. So in that respect, it was the same as all the others. And there was always, Ollie: Brilliant. Brilliant. Luke: or usually a central guest character or who was some sort of antagonist. And I think in this episode you'd say it was the director. Ollie: I know it wasn't the same person because the times don't fit but he weirdly reminded me of the police detective from The Usual Suspect. You know you said about the episode being quite close to the end of the second season and there were only two seasons so what happened beyond did they just stop as a band or did they continue musically or what? Luke: So the monkeys in Paris that we watched, you clearly get the sense that they're try almost self destructing the monkeys TV show, and that very much was based on reality. They kind of wanted to do that. So there was all these tensions going on. You've got particularly the two musicians in the band wanting to do their own music. They're they've got frustrated with being this manufactured because people used to mock them for being a manufactured band when actually there were plenty of other of manufactured bands around at that time, but they hated the fact that they were seen as being inauthentic like that. and they were very kind of artistically restless that the monkeys could be more than it was at that point. However, the monkeys TV show was also really popular. So it was it could have gone on. but they creatively didn't really want to. They wanted to do a different iteration of the monkeys. So immediately after the that season ended, they didn't disappear, they went away and they made a feature film. 1968, a film called Head. this is where it's interesting. I mentioned at the start it's like watching Easy Rider, and that is in that exactly what I thought when I started watching The Monkeys Paris. Raffleson was the producer on Easy Rider, which came out Ollie: Ha! Luke: roughly around Or just after head actually. this whole trippy music playing while they're wandering around sort of slightly eerie locations like the graveyard and kind of like slightly spaced out and s psychedelic. This was all stuff that we would see in Easy Rider and was in the Monkeys Film Head. The Monkeys Film Head was super meta. It was all about this manufactured pop band hating being that and trying to escape it. and it's quite surreal to watch and it came out and it really had just gone too far as a concept for the audience. The monkeys enjoyed making it and so did the directors, and it had been clearly been quite experimental, but it absolutely bombed everybody hated it. And they all yeah. Ollie: Because with the audience, we actually like you. So why do you have to keep on telling Luke: Yeah. Ollie: us that you hate who you are? Luke: Yeah Yeah. Everyone was happy with and they liked these kind of constructed characters and just stay with these characters that you've made, it's funny and and endearing. but they didn't want to be these characters, so they made this film, that bombed. They also coincidentally had won the battle to make their own music. So they start Peter and Mike and particularly Mike are composing tracks. So they're making their own songs. They reeleased their own album. but again, won't be as memorable in terms of the songs that are on that as to the ones that we remember now from the Monkeys TV show. whilst critically I think there's some people that would say it was a a good album now. I'm not i again that it slightly bombed with the audience. So things were starting, and this is a bit of a failure now. They've they've b packed up the TV show, they've changed direction and nobody's interested. So it starts to break down, and Peter, the one I mentioned to you later, had a bit of an alcohol problem. Peter was the first to leave. He was just exhausted by how it was all going. the other three continued for a bit and they released a couple more albums, one called Instant Replay and one called The Monkees Present. But Each time the commercial momentum of these of of the monkeys they weren't a TV show anymore, they were a band. They'd made themselves into a band with their own music, and the commercial momentum was just dropping all the time. Then 19 so it's a fairly short time span, nineteen sixty-nine, because I think the episode we watched was sixty-eight, Ollie: Yeah. Luke: Michael Naismith leaves the monkeys. And this is probably the most consequential departure because you're then just left with the two actors. Ollie: Yeah, that's what I thinking. What are we gonna do? Luke: Yeah, yeah. So he's left to pursue his own career in music. he went on to become an influential musician, a songwriter, a producer, but also an early pioneer of the music video business. His production company helped develop the format that eventually became MTV's territory. so the guy that had been making all of those weird little film sequences in the monkeys suddenly ended up becoming an important figure in the development of music video. so by 1970 you just had Davy and Mickey. they released a final album called Changes, they did pick up the ability to play, although I think Davy's speciality was tambourino and maracas. Davy did sing, but Mickey could play the drums quite well by this point. final album out, again, another flop, really, and then they dissolved the the group. Mickey moved to Britain. This is weird. he's obviously coming from a T V background. He'd been involved in TV all of his life. He became a director himself and producer on TV shows. And was the director of Metal Mickey. Remember Metal Metal Mickey? The TV show, yeah. The r yep. And Ollie: Yep, that's the robot wasn't it? Luke: it just a coincidence that it was called Mickey. from then on, really it was just a case of so the monkeys has ended, but they had a number of reunions. So they would periodically they'd get back together. Mike, as you might imagine, Mike Naismith was often a bit of a problem. There was one he didn't turn up at, he didn't want to get back involved. He said he was busy, but it was quite clear he was like the least enthusiastic I think inevitably with these watching these programmes we're gonna wonder I wonder if they're still around, what they did, and then you'll find out if they're alive or dead. and of Simon Mayo, do remember Simon Mayo on BBC used to do the Dead or Ollie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Luke: Alive game on the morning show? So I think it's fine. I wanted you to who do you think's I was I was thinking of do you remember The game Mastermind where you'd put the four pegs and and then I would sort Ollie: Yes, yeah, yeah. Luke: of if I'm playing against you, I'd tell you which of the pegs are in the correct position. I'm gonna tell you that there's only Ollie: Yeah, I've been. Luke: one monkey that's left alive. So you've got a what's the combi well, I've now told you the combination, but who do you think that is and who are the three that have passed? Do you know any Ollie: Okay, so. Luke: did you know it before watching the show? Ollie: What, have they passed away? Luke: Yeah. Ollie: No. So this is completely... Yeah. Luke: I'm sorry to s bring you the bad news, bro. Ollie: On the basis, so I've got a border terrier and one of the good things about having a small dog is that they have longevity On that basis, I'm gonna say that Davey is the one who's still alive. Luke: Just buckle up and prepare yourself for this. Ollie: Don't upset me, it's our first pod. Luke: Davey was first to go. Ollie: fuck. How did it happen? Luke: Well, remember the smoking. Ollie: Yes. Luke: Died of a heart attack, age 66. Remember the the diet pills as well? His heart was Ollie: Yeah. Luke: took some pound him. yeah. W Ollie: You said they were speeds, didn't you? You said it was speed. Yeah. Luke: workaholic. died of a heart attack after riding his horse around the ranch. So he got off his horse and promptly Yeah. He Ollie: He went back to being a jockey. Luke: did go back to being a jockey. He actually raced in his fifties Ollie: Ugh. Luke: he raced profession like a professional and won. He I don't know if they let him win just to 'cause he is a monkey. But yeah, he went back to being a jockey for a bit. He loved horses Ollie: He died doing something he loved. Luke: Indeed. So h so you gotta try and weed out this living monkey. Ollie: What did you say was the most reluctant was Peter or Michael? Luke: Michael. Ollie: I'd go Michael then because in getting that creative distance away from the monkeys he's managed to sustain his life. Luke: Right. he was the second last to go, Michael. died seventy eight of heart failure also. Ollie: I'm going Mickey then because Mickey has left America and has sculpted a new life amongst various TV corporations in the UK. Yes. Luke: You got it. Mickey's still out there, he's still alive. the only monkey that didn't smoke, of course. Ollie: Is he still mogging? Luke: Is he still mogging? Smogging isn't quite so effective these days. Visually. Yeah. Ollie: Jowdybogging. Luke: Okay, just need to take a break. All to credit our sponsor who's kindly sponsored today's show. Al, I wanted to ask you how do you feel when you find a comfortable chair? Ollie: Relieved? Luke: Relieved. For me, it's grand to find a comfortable chair when you're getting on a bit or you've got aphritis. My niece actually got me the Shackerton's original high chair. I never thought it would be so easy to get in and out of Ollie: You Luke: It was really easy. First she sent for the brochure, then she went to the showroom, and they had over a hundred chairs to choose from. You know, we never recommend anything on this podcast that we wouldn't use ourselves, and I was delighted that Shackleton's wanted to sponsor today's show. Their high seat is lovely. Ollie: Okay bro, originally produced or made four years before I was born. Aired on Saturday evening TV when I was tucked up with the Beano on a Saturday night. I know very little about the goodies so you please tell me what I'm going to like Luke: You're going to like hearing why the episode we actually watch is a remade version of Kitten. It was killed called Kitten Kong, and it's a remade version, and you're gonna like hearing what actually happened to the original recording. You're going to like a BBC conspiracy theory about why the goodies was hardly ever repeated. I'm afraid more controversy for the Beb here. I'm not sure they can take any more. and you're gonna like finding out how. The goodies are connected to Monty Python. Ollie: Okay. Luke: I mean, y yeah, you said that you watched it in the early eighties. It it was on just to give set the context, it was on TV from nineteen seventy to nineteen eighty-two. But it's likely that when we were watching it, it we would have been catching up with its final series when it was switched from the very final series it switched from BBC to ITV. And it was on six fifteen on IT V on a Saturday night. and then earlier in the evening, just to set the context, we'd had happy days before. and then after the goodies you've got three two one with Ted Rogers. So two shows I'm Ollie: Don't forget. Luke: sure we'll cover on another episode. Ollie: Don't forget Pink Panther directly after the final score. Luke: Yeah. Yep. Although this is we're we're over on I T V here, so Ollie: 505. okay. Luke: we've got a conflict going on if you wanna watch that. You go upstairs, yeah. Yeah. Try Ollie: I'll go on the black and white TV with the dial. Luke: and tune that bugger in. Ollie: BLEH Luke: what were your memories so you you don't really have any memories of the goodies you're saying? Ollie: got literally none. the episode feels like a Benny Hill episode. A more mature sophisticated Benny Hill for sure but certainly got that kind of feel to it and obviously Bill Oddie from Laterly from Nature Watch which makes the entire episode Luke: spring lunch. Ollie: really, yeah, Spring Watch, Autumn Watch. Makes the entire episode quite interesting considering, doesn't it? Luke: Yeah. Yeah, that speeding up thing, that was in the monkeys as well, wasn't it? A bit. Or what was it with Ollie: Yeah. Luke: that? They loved to speed stuff up, didn't they, in those days? You don't really see it anymore. Ollie: I was wondering about this, I was wondering about the special effects including the speeding up, it was just producers playing with the technology they had. I can't think Luke: Yeah. They had to Ollie: that that was cutting edge technology though. Luke: Well, they probably had quite a limited palette, didn't they, of what they could do. So Ollie: show. Luke: speeding up was the obvious go to. it only started in nineteen seventy. The first series established the basic idea of the goodies, but and Kit and Kong comes in the second series, and it and by this time they're like fully in their stride. They're more than just three comedians delivering jokes. just to give you a bit of the background on the origins, you've got Timbuk Taylor and Bill Oddy. They they meet at Cambridge in nineteen sixty, they both get involved in in Cambridge Footlights, the legendary extracurricular comedy acting troops still going to this day. Graham Garden was a year behind them and joined Footli Footlights too. Brooke Taylor became Footlights president in 63 and then Garden became president in 64. So they're very much involved in that world. And then also at the same time Interestingly, you've got John Cleese there, Cambridge from nineteen sixty. In the same nineteen sixty-three Footlights as Brooke Taylor and Oddie. You've got Graham Chapman from Monty Python. He was at Cambridge in 59. He joined the 63 review show as well. And then you've got Eric Idle. And he came a little bit later in 62 and he succeeded Graham Garden as the Footlights president in 65. So they're very much part of that Monty Python world. Footlights The annual review show that it had was so good in that particular year that it was transferred to London's West End and it was renamed from Clump of Plimps to Cambridge Circus. And then that cast bec was Brooke Taylor, Oddie, John Cleese, and then two other people, David Hatch and Joe Kendall. the success of that Cambridge Circus led to a BBC radio series in nineteen sixty four, which was called I'm sorry, I'll read that again. so that's kinda like how the goodies came together. They deliberately didn't want to make when they sort of came together as a threesome, they deliberately didn't want to make just another conventional sketch show. Brooke Taylor later explained that the problem with sketch comedy is that every sketch essentially is like an individual item which needs a beginning and an end. They their solution was to have three re recurring characters themselves. And then build the sketches into the stories. So whereas Python would feel like a sort of surreal sketch comedy, the goodies is more like a s almost like a live action cartoon. So what were your impressions of the the three characters? Ollie: I enjoyed Graham Garden more than the other two, Certainly the most naturally comic, I thought his timing was the best. I thought his mannerisms and his delivery was almost flawless, actually. He felt like the threads that held everything, tied everything together, I think it would have felt very loose without him, actually. Luke: He's such a funny guy. I don't want to like make an assumption and put down the ri the other goodies, but some of the funnier bits in the show I would have a a suspicion they came from him just in terms of the type of humour that he had. He was very, very witty. Ollie: So just to contextualise, the premise of the episode is that they set up a laboratory to look after animals or... yeah. Luke: Yeah. L Loony animals, I think they call them. Ollie: loony animals, animals that have got something quirky about them, there to help them. And the scene where he's introducing the other two goodies to some of his collection is just beautiful to watch. The middle animal, the bush baby, how... the set up of him taking that out and it's very affectionate and then it's nibbling his neck, it refuses to let go of his hand and then that bush baby recurs at various points throughout the rest of the episode to beautiful comic effect doesn't it? Luke: It it does, but didn't you feel some of the treatment of animals was a little bit dodgy for for today if you were judging it on today's standards? Like, you know, when they go around collecting them all Ollie: Absolutely, so go on Luke: up and the in the basket and they just shut they shove that dog in several times. Ollie: The dog, yeah. you know, the visual ridiculousness of the dog being the biggest dog they could find. I don't know what the breed is, but it's huge on its legs, isn't it? But more than the dog, I felt so sorry for that guinea pig at the start that Bill Oddie's trying to feed a kind of three-course dinner to. they're carrying, the three of them are carrying on with this great joke that... The guinea pig's getting all the best food and they're eating the guinea pig's food which I think is potato skins and cabbage While they're putting this really top quality food into the guinea pig's cage or box, all the guinea pig's doing is just shitting itself in the bottom corner. It's just not moving. I'm thinking Bill Oddie. Luke: I must admit Yeah. Ollie: And then I wondered whether he's actually alright with it because they're all domestic animals and his kind of... great love is animals from the wild, isn't it? So he's quite happy to mistreat domestic animals, perhaps. Luke: Yeah, he's supposed to be an animal lover. I must admit I watched the whole of that scene just thinking about that guinea pig and like just quest just questions like, has he got access Ollie: Yeah. Luke: to that trifle? Is it actually eating that cream off the top of there? Ollie: Yeah. Luke: What did you make of Timbrook Taylor? Ollie: Well, Tim Brooke Taylor and Bill Oddie, I found very unfunny, actually, apart from one scene which we could talk about. I wondered whether the fond... I know that both Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke Taylor are thought of very fondly in kind cultural consciousness. And whether their thought of us funny because they're household names. almost like Rose Tinted Glasses household names rather than actually for the quality of their humour or of their comedy. Luke: If you look at the careers of Timbrook Taylor and Bill Oddy, they're quite similar in the sense that by the later stages, if there's any kind of show like Pointless or Through the Keyhole or Nevermind the Buzzcocks, you're gonna get Oddy or Tim Brook Taylor turn up on it at some stage. That's their that's what they become. so, like you say, that probably helped establish their the fondness from the British public. Tim Brook Taylor, he plays the role in the show and there's some elements of reality as well as being this sort of p slightly pompous, respectable, upper middle class Englishman and also a patriot. and then you've got and Bill Oddy is a sort of scruffy, hippie, animal obsessed guy. Graham Garden, he was actually medically trained, but was also an established comedy writer. He went to the same boarding school, Repton, as Jeremy Clarkson. And it's quite funny, there's a really good later interview which is conducted by Stuart Lee with the three of them at a comedy festival in Bristol. and they talk about going to school with Clarkson and Stuart Lee reads from Clarkson's biography and Clarkson saying how awful it had been at the school and how bullied he'd been sadistic bullying and that a a kid wants shit in his lunchbox. And after finishing like reading this all out, he t turns to Graham Garden and Graham Garden's like, Yeah, no, I think it was just him. Like it was fine for me. It was just 'cause he was Jeremy Clarkson. So what about the episode itself? Did you laugh out loud at any point? Ollie: I didn't laugh but a lot of canned laughter did laugh. I noticed. Luke: Ha ha Ollie: I don't know if you picked up on it but with the canned laughter very much dominated by female laughter voices and you only could distinctly pick up a man's laughter if the burst of laughter was extended. So quite often there was short bursts of laughter. You could only hear female voices. when it was extended, it would always finish with just a man kind of, ha ha ha. Like, yeah, Luke: Wow. Ollie: this is genuinely the funny bit because it's a man finishing off the can. Yeah. Yeah. Luke: That's amazing. That's a really subtle, interesting observation. We should just say, by the way, what happened what happens in the episode, essentially the goodies is a business with a catch line, anything, anytime, anywhere, especially for money. which feels Ollie: Yeah. Luke: c that actually feels to me like a bill line, but anyway. Th in this particular episode, Bill agrees to look after the guinea pig for thirty pounds, I think it is. the trio then decide that there's money to be made by turning their office into an animal hospital. things then go wrong. Ollie: for loony animals. Luke: Graham develops a growth formula which turns the kitten called Twinkle into a gigantic like you say, King Kong type situation. goes goes on rampage through London. And then the climax sees London smashed up. that scene with the where the kittens on the BT Tower. it? It's a sort of iconic scene. I think for a while you could buy postcards in London of that kitten on the tower. Ollie: Wow. Tell me about the dog singing. So during the episode there's a moment where Luke: Yeah. Ollie: they've closed the doors because they're fed up of the dog singing and then they cut to the two breeds, one big, one small. for me that's like the first ever meme maybe because that's exactly the way that was staged. Luke: Yeah, it's like all nowadays you've got all these cat videos of cats dancing. AI videos of cats dancing and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Ollie: That's exactly what came to mind. And again, just playing about with that technology. Just producers having a play with what's possible, I suppose. Luke: Yeah. I mean it frankly, nowadays it looks really shit, doesn't it, to watch it. But what if you think I think their use of special effects back then, and actually probably on quite a limited budget as well, they're doing a remarkable job with very primitive tools. in terms of like the props, I know that they were entirely dependent on the BBC's prop department, which would have a like a modest budget. I was thinking like it's actually if you take a step back and look at what they would 'cause it's so special effects driven. you can tell that that is the passion on the show of like not just the humor, but how do we how can we do funny stuff by making big props and and messing about with the effects and how will we do that? But it's like they're trying to recreate the Mona Lisa using Microsoft Paint or something. Or or sculpt Mount Rushmore with a s plastic spoon. It's just like what they actually what they're trying to do is crazy and really ambitious and looks terrible. But you've got to admire Ollie: Yeah. Luke: the fact that they're having a go. Have you got anything else from the show that you wanted to mention? Yeah. Ollie: I know that's it for me. I just wondered about where in the chronology of the goodies this show came and we've spoken a bit about where their careers went on to and we all know about Bill Oddie obviously. Luke: Yeah, so as I say, it came this was the second series. so this was an earlier one, it went on up up until early eighties. interesting thing was it was on the BBC for the majority of the time. Then the BBC ran out of money essentially. They put all their money for stunts into Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was a bit of a flop actually. And they told the goodies, like, we're not gonna be able to do this of the same level that we've previously done, so that the the stump budget's much reduced. and it was quite clear, basically they were saying like we're not gonna be able to make the show. So the goodies then left the BBC because they're like, You can't make it, we're not we can't do it if you say we'll go to the they went to L W T, they went over channels. Ollie: London Weekend Television. Luke: Correct. But even though the BBC weren't prepared to make the goodies, they were really pissed off that the goodies had left, because it had been a really popular show. So this is why you never after that time, because the majority of the content had been made by the BBC, they then, through stubbornness, didn't want to repeat it again because it was an ITV show, it became an ITV shoe. So they locked that locked the the stuff away and never showed it or very rarely showed it again. The particular episode that we watched, it won an a an award, a TV film award, the Montreau. and it was also nominated for a BAFTA. Now you had to submit the program for the award. The reason I mentioned at the start about this being a remade tape, so what they remade a version of Kitty Kong just to enter into the film festival. So basically they improved some of the stunts, the quality of the stunts, added it was a little bit longer. they just sort of optimized it. And then they entered that and it won. However, some years later, and this was common BBC practice, the BBC would wipe the ta you know, like in the old VHS tapes, we'd wipe you tape over things. They wiped the tape of the original episode so that no longer the original episode that was shown broadcast no longer ep exists, it was wiped over. And this is the only one that exists. Ollie: So that was standard practice just to conserve tapes. Luke: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it, to lose that archive. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: So yeah, th that that's the the the goodies. in terms of like their careers after us, we've talked about what they did a little bit already. You've got Graham Garden popping up on Radio for panel shows, or at least until a few years ago. I was Ollie: I was so relieved that he was still alive because I'd enjoyed him more than the other two. I took a kind of perverse pleasure that he was the remaining goodie. Luke: so you were aware of who I was gonna play the game again with you. Live or dead, sorry. Okay, yeah, Ollie: Yeah, yeah. Luke: so yeah, he's still around. did you remember that he was the voice of Banana Man? Or a voice in Banana Man? Yeah. Ollie: Duh! Duh! Luke: Is it Acacia Avenue, that opening narrative that he would yeah. Although the other two Ollie: It is, yeah. And he's that voice. Luke: he's that voice, but the other two goodies also had roles in Banana Man. They did sort of work together on and off a few a bit, though, you they and they remained friends. obviously Oddy had Spring Watch and Nature Watch and all the other different variations of it. Tim Brook Taylor he was on a show in the eighties, which I'd like to look back at actually, because I again it's one of these things that you open the vault and it's like, yeah, I do remember this. Me and my girl, which starred Richard O'Sullivan, who recently passed away, which was about an ad executive father who had a teenage daughter and the two of them would you know just like hang out together. Do you know how Timbrook Taylor passed? Ollie: know how he passed, no, but he was the first to go wasn't he? Because oddies relatively recent, of Covid. Luke: He went during COVID. Yeah, Oddi Yeah yeah, Tim Brooke Taylor died in April twenty twenty. COVID. Bill Audie we passed away recently, aged eighty five, and Graham Garden's still going. Now that climactic moment that is part of this and every episode, it's time, Oliver to visit the Commissioner's Office. You've watched both shows, you've examined their merits in a new light, decades on from their original broadcast. The Commissioner here at Mitch Flicks Productions has asked for your considered recommendation. So the Commissioner wants to know which of these shows you would suggest we reboot for today's generation. We're seeking your expert advice. So Oliver, could you tell us which show will you be recommending to the panel today? Ollie: Bear with me with this one because I struggled with elements of both. Again, coming back to that idea, is it snaff? Is it lazy and generic or is it quite clever? Is it parody? Is it brave? And both shows have what a modern audience would find to be interminably long scenes without any talking that would be very difficult for a modern audience to sit through. Bearing that in mind then, by default, we're gonna recommission the goodies. And I'll explain why. And while I'm explaining why, maybe you could have a think about what recommissioning the goodies might look like. Let's take the monkeys then, because I said it's by default. For me, if you were to recommission the monkeys, there's two routes that you can take and both result in dead ends. The first route is that you manufacture a band and that is over. The X Factor generation is over. And in fact, the monkeys doing what they're doing, pranksters pranking around, you we've got social media that's full of that. The market is flooded. The second route, slightly different route, is conceptual. You know, what if we take the monkeys as the birth of what we now know as LADISM? nice guys liked by women larking around and track that ladism through the decades into the 90s when we were at our prime got loaded FHM what would that look like nowadays Mickey in a MAGA hat chasing the women around himself or Davey lurking on a Parisian street with his with his phone ready to post that secretly filmed footage on an Intel website. We can't do that either. So either route, the monkeys isn't happening, which brings us then to the goodies. I did think actually, away from the default, there is an absence of decent sketch shows on modern television. Quality of comedy, I find generally quite low. You know, you really have to search for good quality comedy on television. So maybe there's some room in the market. You'd have to have a more diverse trio. I asked you to think about perhaps what the goodies might look like. You'd have to have a more diverse trio. It certainly couldn't be three white men. And where would they be working? Would you put them in an AI lab so that they haplessly create something that might just end the world? I'm not sure. Help me out with that and we'll recommission the goodies. Luke: I was so tempted during that just to butt in and say "The Commissioner says hurry the fuck up!" Spit it out. Just tell us. No no, that's really really thoughtful response there, thank you. I think you you convinced me on the fourth I was actually previous to this I I'd struggled to think about who the monkeys would be, but actually it's much easier to think about people candidates to join the goodies. And the first one that came to mind was James A. Caster, actually. and then you said I made a very good point around diversity, and then I started thinking of women so then I was thinking about Diane Morgan. but I actually thought her character's probably too similar to James A. Castor to contrast. but nevertheless, no, there's plenty of I think lots of modern stand up maybe Romish Ollie: Reganathan. Diane Morgan of CUNK fame, right? Yeah, yeah. Luke: Ranganathum. Yes, yeah, yeah. So these kind of characters you could see getting involved. Okay, we hope you enjoyed the show. just a quick word about what we're looking at next week and also about our official members' club. First of all, next week we inspired by recent news that AI is going to kill all of us, we're gonna be looking at series one, episode thirteen of the Max Headroom show. That's the Channel Four show from nineteen eighty five, not the A B C series. we're gonna put that up against the 1980s show, whose tech was streets ahead of Siri and Tesla. That's Night Rider. And we're gonna be watching series one, episode nine. Both of these can be found for free on the internet, places like YouTube and archive.org. So if you want to watch along with us, go ahead and dig those ones out. Also, we want to say that we're gonna try and build here. If you like what we're doing, we're gonna try and build the best. Patreon in the world, and we want early members to be credited for their support. So join the club before all these bandwagon jumpers get on and get involved later on. We've got a Patreon that's already open, and here's what the early members are going to get. They're going get, first of all, access in advance to every pod before it's published to all the poorer people. Secondly, they're going to get a bonus weekly episode that's available only to the members. Thirdly, These episodes will be entirely ad free and in uninterrupted, apart from the likes of Shackletons, who I'm sure you'll all be wanting to hear from anyway. You're going to have ongoing access to the members only archive. And crucially, You, as a member, will get detailed show notes every week, which will include links to the episodes we've discussed and those that are coming up. So that you don't need to waste your time searching out for the links. All of this comes in at a price of just four pounds a month to join. That's one pound a week, or the equivalent of a match latte in a month, and you don't even need that match latte. I mean, what's happened to you? You used to just be grateful for a scolding hot cup of Maxwell House. We're gonna be seeing how we can build further on this and possibly add some other member options in later, but the important thing is. You are the early adopting pioneer, so we're gonna lock you in at that price. You pay four pounds now, you'll never need to pay more. We will keep you on that tariff forever. This offer won't be around forever, so lock in now. Go to revisitpod.com to find all the links.