Graeme Garden:
'He's gone loony'

"I'm not just chopping up poor, innocent little doggies. I'm chopping up all sorts of things."- Graeme Garden



Ah, Graeme... When I was a child, afternoon TV consisted of The Goodies, and Dr. Who. No wonder I grew up with a keen interest in Mad Science.

The Goodies, for those that don't know, was a 1970s BBC comedy, heavy on slapstick and surrealism. The show consisted of three writer/performers, whose characters were named after- and based on exaggerated versions of- themselves. Tim Brooke-Taylor was an aristocratic patriot; Bill Oddie was a fun loving would-be rock star1.,and Graeme Garden was the Mad Scientist.

And what a mad scientist! Supercomputers, monster cods, giant kittens, nuclear bombs, string refining plants, moon rockets and more. In one episode, baby Graeme turns baby Tim into a clockwork and mecchano cyborg replica of Winston Churchill! Less sucessful was his pirate radio station, Radio Goodies. Located on a boat of his own design, the Saucy Gibbon, which is moored outside the 5-mile limit of British territorial waters, Radio Goodies is also a pirate postal service. As Graeme goes further and further insane, he proposes a plan to tow all of Britain into international waters, allowing himself to become pirate overlord of England! The Goodies- Bill, Graeme and Tim
Graeme goes looney Other Graeme inspired Science Feats include melting the polar ice-cap (with a sun-ray lamp and a butterfly, if you please!), causing everything in Britain to sprout grass, turning the Goodies' house into a race car, marrying his computer, inventing amputational cosmetic surgery and turning eveyone in Britain into clowns with an experimental nerve gas (though this last one was an accident).
There have been some cool mad scientists over the years, but not many as cool (or mad) as Graeme. Professor Challenger may have found dinosaurs in South America, but Graeme found a living Tyrannosaur in his basement! And while the Goodies were trapped inside it, he made himself a computer out of the triassic fossils in it's stomache!The guy just rocks. Twinkle, aka Kitten Kong
More information on The Goodies
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1. Actually, the Goodies had a number of songs on the UK Top 10 in the mid-'70s all written by Bill.

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