Special     (#69)     SNOW WHITE 2

PLOT

After being variously disgusted, horrified and bored with other productions from the Goodies House Of Humour like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the audience is warned that "just when you thought it was safe to go back to the pantomime", a new bloodthirsty show is about to hit the theatre - Snow White 2!  A recap of the story so far reveals that once upon a time, a pretty young girl named Snow White lived all alone in the woods with seven little men, as one dwarf smiles, winks and gives a thumbs-up signal as he ecstatically trots into the cottage!  This is much to the shocked surprise of the neighbours - the three Goodies - who were even more shocked when she appeared to be having a really good time with them, as the dwarfs stagger out of the door looking rather exhausted!

But one day Snow White met a handsome prince (who was obviously another woman in drag) and they had a real thigh-slapping time, before they ran off to live happily ever after in a huge palace.  Initially she didn't forget her tiny male friends, as she even invited them over for a game of skittles - and knocked them all over with a bowling ball!  Despite her changed attitude to the dwarfs as a princess ("Stuff them!") she also gave them jobs as garden gnomes.  However after two dwarfs died of exposure and one was swallowed whole by a goldfish, the remaining four dwarfs decided to advertise for three new dwarfs and go back to working in the mine, and this is where the story begins.

The four original dwarfs march along singing merrily with three rather tall new dwarfs at the back of the line; the three Goodies, who have to assume high voices to avoid suspicion.  However after they continually bump into head-high obstacles and have great difficulty fitting into dwarf-sized clothing, they eventually raise the suspicion of the chief dwarf, and are sent off with the woodman to have their legs chopped off.  The tiny woodman just can't do it though (mainly because he falls over every time he raises the heavy axe!) so the Goodies are now out of work, and pack their red spotted hankies to head off into the wide, wide world.

They are soon hopelessly lost in Battersea Park and despite helpful rhyming advice from their Fairy Godmother (Tim in a fairy costume using his Lady Constance voice), they find that all of the job advertisements in the newspaper (which Graeme has conveniently purchased from a haunted tree) are rather unfairly being offered to women only.  Tim wistfully wishes to be directed to the palace, but the Goodies end up there sooner than expected after being kidnapped by a bunch of hunting ladies.  The Goodies are soon turfed out onto the scrap heap, despite having got dressed up in an array of silly costumes, waited on and entertained the princesses.

The Goodies are joined on the scrap heap by the dwarfs, ugly sisters and other characters, which the men are forced to play, and a plan is hatched to invade the palace to end the discrimination.  They come up with the idea of entering the palace inside a pantomime cow, which the ladies should find irresistible.  They manage to purchase one from Panto Alley, where vendors sing sales pitches for everything from pumpkins to dead rats!, but the ladies merely squeal and jump on the cow. The ladies ride it all over the place (after they clap two bricks on its tail to get it moving!) then slam the palace door in its face.  After this rejection, the Goodies scale the wall inside the cow suit and are ready to let the other men inside when Bill and Graeme notice that Tim has bailed out.

In a bizarre twist, Tim assumes his role as Timbellina the Fairy Godmother to prevent the men from entering and has a pitched battle against Bill and Graeme, with fluorescent tube-like swords used as the main weapons.  Graeme eventually swings across the room to the door on a chandelier as the ladies are distracted by Tim in drag and the men are finally let inside.  There is a huge brawl and the princesses offer to do anything to escape from the palace; an offer taken up by the Goodies.

While the dwarfs and the rest of the men are happily singing along to the inane words of 'I Lift Up My Finger And I Say Tweet Tweet', the Goodies usher the princesses outside the palace, wave goodbye to the men (who couldn't really care less) and get the women to wait on them hand and foot for ever more.  A final refrain from the Fairy Godmother declares that the girls should "give the boys what they like best", but the Goodies' eager glances quickly turn to annoyance when all of the ladies start to hammer away on their xylophones!

CLASSIC QUOTES

* Narrator (about Snow White): "Until one day she ran off with a handsome prince.  The prince was quite obviously a woman dressed up in men's clothing, but this didn't seem to bother Snow White ... (as the two women hug each other and skip away together, to puzzled looks from the dwarfs) ... a little weirdo, that one!"

* Tim (to chief dwarf): "Don't listen to him, he's just covering for us.  I'm ... not a dwarf."

Graeme: "Nor me."

Bill: "I nearly am!"

* Tim (forlornly): "Woe is me.  What's to become of us?  No home and no job.  And we haven't got a bag of beans, or an old lamp, or even a faithful cow."

Bill: "Well we're screwed then, aren't we!"

* Bill (about male pantomime characters): "No, we have to wear tasteless costumes and horrible great wigs and nasty grotesque makeup - makes us look like Barbara Cartland!"

CLASSIC SCENES

* The opening sequence promoting the 'Goodies House Of Humour' and its upcoming attraction, with the audience having already being disgusted by Cinderella (especially Graeme as an Ugly Sister sporting an enormous pair of knockers!) horrified by having to sing along with 'I Lift Up My Finger And I Say Tweet Tweet' in Babes In The Wood, and being incredibly bored when a man is sent on stage to play the xylophone to cover set changes in Sleeping Beauty.  Also the Goodies then seating themselves in an empty theatre and being scared stiff as several black and white fins weave through the rows of seats towards them to the appropriate 'Jaws' theme music, only for the 'fins' to be the caps of the seven dwarves, who menacingly surround them to promote the horrors of Snow White 2

* The running joke throughout the show, with the aforementioned talentless, annoying xylophone player continually popping up at the most unexpected times and places, including in Battersea Park when the Goodies are lost, already being inside the castle when they are carted in by the female hunters, getting tossed off the tower onto the scrap heap still thumping away on his battered instrument and drumming away on the women's heads during the big brawl, with the ladies joining in the infernal xylophone playing right at the end.

* The inquisition by the chief dwarf regarding impostors in their midst, with him firstly asking "Wight lads, stand up!" inside the cottage, only for the Goodies to put their heads straight through the ceiling and collapse the house around them, and then saying that he hopes he doesn't need to "wesort to the wuler" to figure out who the culprits are.  Upon the Goodies confessing to being tall, but still wanting to be dwarfs, he declares "We have ways of making you short!"; sending them off with the woodsman to have their legs chopped off.  However despite the dwarf woodsman painting lines on their legs, he just can't do it because the axe is so heavy that he keeps falling over when he tries to swing it - "Can't do it!  Sorry lads!"

* The visual sequence to "M.A.N - That's How We Spell WORK", with the Goodies forced to dress up in an incredible variety of weird and tasteless costumes.  These include bellhops who are peppered with pies in the face, lion rugs which are jumped on by the girls, genies from a magic lamp, geese which are flogged to produce golden eggs, and cannibals with bones in their noses.  All the while, the girls are dancing alongside them, but then show their gratitude by throwing the Goodies off the turret and onto a scrap heap of rubbish with the dwarves and some rather camp-looking princes.  This is followed later by a loud scream and thud, then the xylophone man plays his crumpled instrument to a barrage of rotten fruit from the other men present.

* The strange twist, with Tim turning into Timbellina the Fairy Godmother - complete with violin case and 'Godfather' theme music! - and fighting Bill and Graeme as they try to open the palace door to let the other men in.  Also a poncily-dressed Graeme requiring padding to be fitted after he continually slaps himself on the thigh cowboy-style, a bank of candles being lit simultaneously with one swoosh of a lighting tube sword, and Bill swallowing his lighting sword whole, then bending over and blowing it out the other end, with it exploding and setting fire to some curtains!

GUEST STARS

David Rappaport, Richard Briers, Annette Lyons,

Syd Wright

(Seven Dwarfs & Princes: Kenny Baker, Peter Burroughs, George Claydon, Mike Cottrel, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Tony Friel, John Ghavan, Rusty Goffe, Jackie Purvies, Gerald Stadden)

(Princesses: Jacki Barron, Caroline Dillon, Jane Faith, Carol Forbes, Jackie Hall, Nola Haynes, Chrissie Kendall, Chrissie Monk, Wanda Rokicki, Jane Winchester)

GOODIES SONGS

M.A.N. - That's How We Spell WORK

I Lift Up My Finger And I Say Tweet Tweet

MY 2 CENTS WORTH

A very colourful and cheerful, though at times, somewhat juvenile, show in keeping with the children's pantomime theme, with enough amusing visuals and dialogue to make it quite enjoyable for older Goodies fans as well.

RATING

III               Goody goody yum yum

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

The seven dwarfs are very happy living with Snow White ...

... much to the shock and horror of their neighbours!

The dwarfs were still invited over to the palace for skittles

The chief dwarf eventually suspects there are impostors present

The woodsman preparing to chop off the Goodies' legs

"M.A.N., that's how we spell work"

The pantomime men out on the scrapheap

The pantomime cow is stopped by Fairy Godmother Tim

Girls give the boys what they like best - lots of xylophones!