THE TWENTY Tens are off to a good start with the discovery of a missing sketch from The Goodies, only months after footage from another episode emerged from Down Under.
The newly recovered 30-second clip is a parody of an advert for Shredded Wheat shown at the time. Entitled “Dreaded Wheat”, the skit features a young mother seeing off her husband and son as they leave for work and school. The commercial’s jingle refers to the “men in her life”, which suddenly grows from two to a long procession of males (beginning with the milkman) running in and out of the house in fast motion.
From Out Of The Wilderness: A still from "The Lost Tribe" showing The Goodies: (L-R) Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden.
It ends with the now slightly disheveled young mother in the front doorway, being embraced by an amorous Tim Brooke-Taylor, before the door slams shut.
The partnership of Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden as The Goodies, resulted in one of the BBC’s most fondly remembered sitcoms of the Seventies. Running from 1970 – 82, it saw the cash-strapped trio offering themselves for hire and getting into some hilariously ridiculous situations.
Back in October ABC researcher John Williams located a censor clip from season two’s “The Commonwealth Games“. Now he’s done it again, even finding the material at the same location – the National Archives Of Australia.
“Dreaded Wheat” comes from another season two episode, “The Lost Tribe” (tx 22/10/71), and is representative of the early years of The Goodies, which featured cutaways parodying popular adverts of the day.
John revealed more on the find to Australian-based website The Goodies Rule – OK!, writing:
“The item was compiled along with other Goodies material (including the “Commonwealth Games” cuts) and was listed by the National Archives Of Australia as being from the episode “Pollution”.
“I did not recall this piece of footage from various episodes that I had seen, including the episode “Pollution”. I sent a copy of the DVD to Andrew Pixley (BBC Archives) to review just in case there was anything on it that might not be accounted for.
“Thankfully, Andrew’s expertise has helped identify yet another missing piece of Goodies footage by checking BBC paperwork to identify the “Dreaded Wheat” clip. The episode of origin for the clip was positively identified as being “The Lost Tribe”.”
Wiped News 