Goodies have the last laugh

With their giant cat demolishing the Post Office Tower, and their Funky Gibbon dance song, they provided some of Seventies TV's most memorable comic moments.

But while other comedies from the time have been endlessly repeated, the surreal exploits of The Goodies have languished in a BBC archive ever since. Not only has the corporation refused to ever re-run the show, it has even been reluctant to sell it in the shops.

Now, frustrated at what they see as Auntie's self-imposed censorship, The Goodies trio - Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor - are fighting back the only way they can. With the help of an independent distributor that has bought the rights from the BBC, the trio are re-releasing the show on DVD and video themselves.

Brooke-Taylor, who believes they have been the victims of a high-ranking BBC conspiracy, said: "The BBC has re-run just about every popular show from the Seventies - Dad's Army, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, the Good Life.

"But for some reason they let The Goodies gather dust on a shelf. People are constantly stopping us in the street and asking why they can't see it anywhere. They think we've thrown some artistic fit and prevented it from being re-run. Far from it - now, hopefully, we'll have the last laugh."

While most of the viewing public may only have distant memories of The Goodies, they were undoubtedly cult figures throughout the Seventies, with nearly 100 episodes in 10 years.

Pitched somewhere between Monty Python and The Young Ones, the show was an odd mix of political satire and slapstick, employing the BBC's special effects department to produce some of the most bizarre sketches ever seen.

Best-remembered is the giant white cat called Kitten Kong who chased the programme's three heroes around London before climbing up and toppling the Post Office Tower. In similar fashion, a gargantuan puppet version of Dougal from The Magic Roundabout - pushed by 16 sweating BBC staff - rampaged through the House of Commons.

Brooke-Taylor, 62, concedes that some of the humour may have dated, but he reckons that the show's political satire - such as a sketch on life in apartheid South Africa - will make interesting viewing with hindsight. "It had a piano which had all the black keys at one end and the white ones at the other, which was quite strong stuff for the time," he said. "The BBC were nervous about it but we got away with it because it was humour."

The show even made world headlines with the sketch Ecky Thump - about a North of England form of kung fu - when one viewer reportedly died after suffering a fit of laughter. "His widow told the vicar that he was laughing at it in his last moment," recalled Brooke-Taylor. "It was one of those stories which went all around the world."