Goodie goodie yum yum

Monty Python is reborn on Broadway. Dr Who has been reincarnated on television. Whatever next from the vaults of 70s British television classics? The Goodies on DVD?

Well, yes actually. A two-disc set of eight classic episodes entitled a A Tasty Second Helping has emerged from the bowels of the BBC.

The Beeb broadcast The Goodies throughout the 70s and flogged it off to the colonies where it affected the sense of humour of many a young fan half a world away.

The trio of Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie have been reunited and are touring Australia, which seems to be the home of the show's cult following. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has played the show in re-runs long after its demise.

"So it became part of the culture I guess," says Garden - the boffin one of the three - on the line from Sydney. "So they have now got to a ticket-buying age and they've got kids of their own and the DVDs are coming out."

The discs with episodes like Radio Goodies (the Goodies attempt to start their own pirate radio station), South Africa (the Goodies get recruited by the South African Tourist Office), and Punky Business (the Goodies encounter punk grannies) make it quite the time capsule.

"It went out almost literally in the 70s - 1970 to 80. You could chart the progress of the decade from the series. The BBC were doing a series about the 70s and somebody had the idea of illustrating each year with an episode of The Goodies to catch the zeitgeist, as it were. But that was stamped on from somebody up top," says Garden.

While the Goodies might not have the lasting legacy of Monty Python, these days their influence can be seen in the latest generation of British telly comedy like Little Britain and A League of Gentlemen. Mike Myers has name-checked it too.

"We worked with the Pythons in various combinations of personnel in various shows. And we were all contemporaries. I think we did influence to some extent The Young Ones which came straight afterwards and maybe even the Last of the Summer Wine - three old Goodies."

But while the show had a gentle prod at issues of the day, Garden remains bemused that they were considered satire.

"To a certain extent it was anti-establishment because that was just coming in through the universities. People hadn't been allowed to satirise much before. So there was that element of being let off the leash a little bit, being allowed to be outspoken about things. But I think it was also carrying on the tradition of just good, old-fashioned, stupid jokes and silliness.

"Our generation was following David Frost and Peter Cook and whatever we did would then be labelled satire because of our age and background and it wasn't at all. Our movement, if it was anything, was back to the music hall and the kind of jokes you would get in the Beano."

Since the show ended Brooke-Taylor and Garden have continued to work in comedy - Garden becoming a "script uncle" to a younger generation of comics.

Oddie turned his ornithological bent into a career as a wildlife-programme presenter, becoming Britain's most famous bird-watcher.

Garden says it's been heartening to connect with the Goodies' following Downunder and get back on stage where it all started for the three.

"Obviously people don't want to come and watch telly for an hour and a half in the theatre so we've to tried to make it as amusing and entertaining as we can in terms of what we can talk about. It's a jolly historical evening one way or another but it's not a Goodies programme done live."

So what is the definitive Goodies episode - the one with the plague of Rolf Harrises? The one with the giant kitten marauding London?

"We ask that question in the show and we choose not really to answer it. We've all had favourites over the years. I think the one - it's not the best in all departments necessarily but it's the one which has good stuff in all departments - is Bunfight at the OK Tearooms. A good, silly idea. But that maybe won't be my favourite tomorrow."

* The Goodies: A Tasty Second Helping DVD is out now.