5/11     (#46)     SOUTH AFRICA

PLOT

An old lady walks past the South African Tourist Office in London and is suddenly ambushed by two officers, covered with a net and dragged inside.  Moments later, the Goodies arrive and head into the office ("through door and turn white"!) to find a tourist officer, who tinkles away solely on the white keys of his piano, while "dreaming of a white Christmas", and shoves the old lady into a wooden crate.  Tim and Bill are shoved into a crate as well, while Graeme is suspected of being a black because of his fuzzy hair, and has his skin colour checked by the officer, who licks a finger and rubs it on Graeme's face!  His brown 'I'm a Goody' tie is painted white upon orders from the officer, as Graeme tells the officer that he isn't the slightest smidgeon dusky, despite liking reggae music and his Daddy being a bus conductor!

The Goodies have been sent for by the tourist office to make a film that encourages more people to go to South Africa.  It has very few immigrants (hence the enforced 'package tours' in wooden crates!) and a squirrel grip on Bill is enough to convince the Goodies to take the job.  Their film shows the wonderful opportunities for immigrants in "Sarth Efrikker", who can be free, own a luxurious house and be their own boss, except that the 'immigrant' in the film is Tim dressed up as a black and white minstrel!  The furious tourist officer smashes the camera and film in disgust, but Tim has already sent copies of the film out to tv stations and cinemas, and this causes South Africa to be flooded with Britain's black immigrants.

Tim wants to get as far away from the tourist office as possible, and is talked into emigrating to South Africa (by having a poker wrapped around his neck by the enraged officer) along with Bill and Graeme to increase the number of whites there.  Upon arrival in South Africa, they find all of the blacks in South Africa leaving for Britain, and instead of receiving a welcome at customs, Tim is biffed with a truncheon by the tourist officer, who has been flown home in disgrace.  He tells them that the visiting blacks from Britain have told their South African counterparts how good life is there, and now there isn't a single black person left in South Africa.

The Goodies settle into a ranch on the edge of the jungle, but find that life in South Africa is tough without a "jigaboo houseboy" to do all of the cleaning work.  The tourist officer swings in on a vine like Tarzan and goes berserk at them when they serve their own tea, which also forces the hurried removal of their aprons.  He then explains that the government has introduced a new form of segregation now that the blacks have left the country - apart-height!  All of the rules which applied to black people now apply to those who are too short to reach a line drawn on a wall chart, so Bill is soon put to work and slaves away doing grotty jobs for his big'un masters.  A siren signals curfew time for the little'uns to go to their compound, but Bill runs away ("feet, do your stuff!") and leads the police on a merry dance.  He is finally captured after he falls in the pool and is barely able to stand afloat in the shallow end, then heaved over the gate of the compound, along with Cape Town's entire population of jockeys.

Meanwhile Graeme and Tim enjoy their new-found lifestyle of hunting during the day and being waited on at evenings by their jockey house boy Lester, who also doubles as a punching bag.  However all is not well, as the jockeys have become restless and Bill is spotted playing the jungle drums.  Graeme and Tim join in the rhythm, but suddenly all goes deathly quiet and Tim becomes hysterical, although Graeme calms him down by swatting a fly on his face! . They receive a message on the drums - thrown at Graeme - that the jockeys want independence.  The jockeys also want a full vote (instead of their present half a vote for being half the size!) so Graeme and Tim decide to head back to the safety of town at first light.

Their trek across the plains is watched closely by jockeys who sit high in the trees, and by Bill, who hides behind a leaf.  Soon the two big'uns are surrounded, and after various exchanges with blowpipes, Tim plays a winning game of croquet using jockeys as hoops.  He and Graeme are tied to a totem pole, and launched like a rocket before they scramble to town, only to be arrested by a swarm of tiny police on tricycles.  The police can't reach up high enough to handcuff their wrists, so they are chained by the ankles and carted off to the police station, where there is a jubilant gathering of the little'uns and their new Prime Mini-ster.

Bill turns down their kind offer to make him King of South Africa, and after he threatens to chop the legs off the "nasty big bullies", Tim and Graeme, he shows mercy and decides that they all should head for home.  However the mounted head of the tourist officer on the wall warns them that things have changed in Britain since they had left.  Upon their arrival home by boat, they find black customs officers and other black citizens who expect the Goodies to carry bags for them.  The approaching royal limousine has a black, bangle-clad hand that waves to the masses who line the streets, and the sight of a black Enoch Powell on a tv screen makes them reach for the shoeshine to blacken their own faces with.

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Tim (reading sign): "South African Tourist Board.  Through door and turn white."

* Tourist Officer (TO): "Good men.  Now here's your camera."

Graeme: "Black and white?"

TO (firmly): "Just white!"

* Bill (impersonating a black person): "Howdy do dere honey.  Zippety doo dah!"

Tim (turns away and adjusts his fly): "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't know it was undone!"

* TO (to Tim, angrily): "Hey you!  It's all your fault.  You made it look as if South Africa were full of black people."

Bill: "Worse than that, it looked as though it were full of black and white minstrels!" (laughs)

TO (grabs Bill by the jacket menacingly): "In South Africa we have white and white minstrels!"

* TO (reading his poem out): "I wandered lonely as a cloud.  That floats on high over veldts and jungle.  When all at once I spied a crowd.  A host of lovely daffoldungles!  See ... we are human!"

* Bill (about Graeme and Tim): "How shall we cut them down to size?"

Prime Mini-ster: "Chop off their legs!"

Bill (intrigued): "Chop off their legs!"

Tim (horrified): "You wouldn't dare!"

Bill "Oh yes we would!"

Tim & Graeme: "Oh no you wouldn't!"

TO's head mounted on wall (blandly): "Oh yes he would!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* The multitude of blatant and subtle swipes at apartheid in the South African Tourist Office, including its 'Through the door and turn white' sign, completely white furnishings and crockery, the Tourist Officer playing only the white keys of his piano while singing 'White Christmas', Graeme's brown tie being painted white, dark sunglasses being smashed in disgust and replaced with white glasses and the coffee being made totally of milk.

* The Goodies film encouraging more immigrants to come to "Sarth Efrikker" by using Tim painted up as a black and white minstrel to show how wonderful life is for black people there, including owning a posh car, a huge company building (Sambo Enterprises!), a swimming pool (complete with sharks!) and going on safari (with a dog as a lion) and blasting the hell out of the wildlife with a camera.

* Tim doing the housework at their ranch in the jungle and getting cross with Bill for using derogatory terms about black people, like "nig-nogs", "jigaboo houseboy" and "sambo service".  He starts to deliver a proud speech about racial equality, but then admits that he is only doing the menial chores himself because "all the nig-nogs have gone", before sheepishly realising what he has just said.

* The introduction of apart-height, where Graeme and Tim pass the test, but Bill comes up short of the mark and has to fill the former role of the blacks according to the script ("it will be an honour, Bwana!"), and doing all the grotty jobs, including licking boots, scratching hair, mowing the jungle, having his bum kicked and getting beaten to death by his master's guest!

* Bill's epic attempt to flee the height detector-wielding cops to the top tune of 'Run', especially his pipsqueak 'pitstop' between two burly officers, racing around the streets inside a mannequin from Big Un Fashions before eventually crashing into a lamppost, climbing on the back of a guy peering through a knothole in the pool wall only for it to look like his legs have detached from his upper body when the other guy walks away and the understated visual gag at the start of the sequence which has posters of performances by Ronnie Corbett and Snow White & The Seven Dwarves stamped with 'banned' and 'cancelled' under the new legislation.

* The night-time scenes at the ranch where Graeme and Tim (clad in white jackets and black bow ties) chat about their fine day's hunting, including proudly displaying their mounted trophies of a rogue male (a tiny meerkat) and their hunting boy Scobie (who was mauled by the meerkat), almost knocking servant Lester's block off, Graeme finally killing a tarantula after heaps of whacks, stomps and even a couple of rifle blasts, then wanting it to be mounted ("all of it"), all the while swatting flies on their faces, and on each others faces as well.

* A number of cameos including Tim commenting that the stars look like hundreds of tiny pairs of eyes, followed by an uneasy silence and Graeme remarking "They ARE hundreds of tiny pairs of eyes!", Graeme receiving a "message on the drums", with a drum being thrown and almost knocking him off his feet, his blowpipe effort where he lobs a heap of fruit on a sleeping Bill to form a 'smiley face', and the scenes of how much things have changed when they return to England, especially the black, bangle-covered hand waving from the royal limo.

GUEST STARS

Philip Madoc, Oscar James, Albert Wilkinson

GOODIES SONGS

Run

I'm Small

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

A terrific piece of deeply satirical, very humourous and quite brave comedy, especially given that it was made when the apartheid issue was an extremely hot potato causing trade sanctions and strained diplomatic relations between South Africa and other nations worldwide.  Even braver was the classic guest role of Phillip Madoc as the 'white honourable' South African tourist officer, as he would have risked being punished if he ever returned to his home country!

RATING

IIIII           Superstar

THE BLACK PUDDING RATINGS SYSTEM

IIIII - Superstar.

IIII  - Officially amazing.

III   - Goody goody yum yum.

II    - Fair-y punkmother.

I     - Tripe on t' pikelets.

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GOODIES GALLERY

A sign of the times!

Everything is "all white" with the SA Tourist Officer

Tim as a black (and white) South African

"Have you ever thought of emi ... emigrating?!"

Tim and Graeme swatting flies at the ranch

Little'un Bill on the run from the apart-height police

Bill falls victim to Graeme's fruit-shooting blowpipe

All hail South Africa's new Prime Mini-ster