One of the greatest sorrows in my life is that The Goodies never made it to features like The Pythons. This is the closest they ever got, with a plethora of gags, many of them filched from classic silent comedies. The Goodies really knew their movie history. Watch Buster Keaton get the house front falling down gag from THEM and not the other way round. Note how they also influenced Aardman Films. Mr Bobo in The Pirates In An Adventure With Scientists also communicates with subtitles on boards like Bill does here, creating a perfect comedy ouroboros, with The Goodies being influenced by animation and animation being influenced by them.

As a side note, this is possibly funkier than The Funky Gibbon, and yes, I know it’s not Christmas. Bill genuinely loved funk and in every live performance they did, you can see he’s having the time of his life being a ‘pop star’, while the others seem a bit more uncertain.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ1386ytTjU