The Goodies

The Goodies......British Comedy Legends Go LIVE in SYDNEY!
Tim, Bill and Graeme live up to their catchphrase "We go anywhere anytime!"

Legendary British comedy trio The Goodies will appear live in their first ever touring stage show at Sydney's Big Laugh Comedy Festival in March 2005.

The most-loved and prolific of all the UK's great comedians, The Goodies - Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke Taylor, and Graeme Garden - are creating a live show which will have its world premiere at The Big Laugh 2005.

The Goodies will open the Big Laugh Comedy Festival at the Riverside Theatres at Parramatta on March 3, and at State Theatre on March 4 and 5.

Their show will be a heady and hilarious mix of insights and reminiscences, sketches and clips with tall tales, audience talkback and possibly explosions.

It will include Goodies bits banned by ABC TV, The Funky Gibbon sung live, sketches from the student revue that took Tim, Bill and Graeme to Broadway (and New Zealand - but never Australia), on-stage trandem riding (subject to insurance) and Tim's Union Jack waistcoat. There will be a Goodies question time and the Goodies will sign programs at every show.

Big Laugh Comedy festival director John Pinder spent five months luring the members of The Goodies into the show.

"This is a real comedy coup," Pinder said. "The Goodies are British comedy royalty. I've always been a fan - and I'm definitely not alone. I asked literally hundreds of people which legendary comedy artists they would like to see and The Goodies topped the list, particularly with the 30-somethings who religiously watched their shows five nights a week on the ABC."

Pinder had been talking with The Goodies for several months when figures for the first Goodies DVD were released - showing a massive 50,000 had been sold in Australia.

"It was then I knew I was onto a good idea," Pinder says.

The Goodies started out together at Footlights, The Cambridge University revue club, touring with the Cambridge Circus comedy revue. They have writing and performing credits that include the cream of UK comedy from the 60s to the present.

The Goodies television show - which ran for an astonishing178 episodes - started out with a traditional sit-com element, but evolved quickly into a joyous, unrestrained, lightly satirical festival of visual humour with special effects, explosions, giant props, camera tricks and violent slapstick.

In the world of British humour dominated by verbal dexterity, The Goodies were classic visual comedians. The Goodies ran for over a decade before they called it a day in 1981, creating an unprecedented library of shows. The Goodies twice won the Montreux Silver Rose and made guest appearances on every major British tv show including the legendary first Amnesty benefit show A Poke In The Eye With a Sharp Stick.

A second DVD and a new range of merchandise will be released by the BBC to coincide with their live shows in Australia in March 2005.

Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden currently present Beat The Nation, one of the UK's most original TV quiz shows, on Channel 4, and are panelists on the long-running radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. Bill Oddie has been called 'Britain's best-known bird-watcher' and in recent years has presented a number of bird or general wildlife programs including Bill Oddie Goes Wild and three series of Birding with Bill Oddie.

Tickets to The Goodies Live go on sale on CHECK DATE, through Ticketek (www.ticketek.com.au, ph: 02 9266 4800) and the Riverside Theatres (www.riversideparramatta.com.au, ph: 02 8839 3399).