Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms

"Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms" is an episode of the award-winning British comedy television series The Goodies.

This episode is also known as "Cream Cave" and as "Cream Rush Fever".

Written by The Goodies, with songs and music by Bill Oddie.

Plot

The Goodies head west (to Cornwall) to search for gold. Graeme, arriving from a dig, comments: "You'll never guess what I've just found in an old tin mine." Tim asks: "Gold?!" to which Graeme replies: "No, old tins ... and this!" Tim, curious, asks: "What?" and Graeme answers: "Gold-or!" Tim asks: "Or?", to which Graeme replies: "Or something else!"

Graeme takes things easy, while getting Tim and Bill to do all the work. When Bill complains, saying: "Now listen, we've been doing all the hard work, and you've just been sitting around all day!" Graeme says soothingly: "Lads, lads...Somebody has to sit around all day."

The Goodies strike cream in an old mine — and Graeme files the claim for the cream in his own name, forsaking the other two, who are about to leave Cornwall broke and dejected. Tim and Bill then strike strawberry jam and scones. When Graeme finds out, he offers them a poker game, winner-takes-all, using pieces of toast rather than cards, and stakes taking the form of biscuits and later layered cakes (it is revealed that Graeme is cheating — he is using a toaster to pop slices of toast up into his hand).

Things reach a climax in a western-style shoot-out, but with tomato sauce rather than guns — and "The Ballad of the OK Tea Rooms" can then be heard: "For if you double-cross a friend, you'll get squirted in the end".

Cultural references

• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Notes

• Bill Oddie's song Working the Line appears in a slightly modified form on The Goodies' New LP.
• Graeme Garden injured himself during his final pratfall. Despite being heavily padded, he managed to spin around in mid-air and fall face down. When Bill Oddie was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2002, he recalled that "He [Garden] had to be carried off, with blood and teeth all over the place", adding "That's the sort of thing that made us laugh!".
• A (possibly fictional) letter to Viz, published in 1996, states that the letter's author went to see the Goodies filming Bunfight At the O.K. Tea Rooms on location in Cornwall, and when he approached Bill Oddie for an autograph, he "told me to piss off and tried to kick me up the arse". In a BBC television interview with Mark Lawson, Oddie, who has suffered depression, admitted that he had occasionally been rude to well-meaning fans in the past.

DVD and VHS releases

This episode has been released on both DVD and VHS.

References

• The Complete Goodies — Robert Ross, B T Batsford, London, 2000
• The Goodies Rule OK — Robert Ross, Carlton Books Ltd, Sydney, 2006
• From Fringe to Flying Circus — 'Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960-1980' — Roger Wilmut, Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1980
• The Goodies Episode Summaries — Brett Allender
• The Goodies — Fact File — Matthew K. Sharp
• TV Heaven — Jim Sangster & Paul Condon, HarperCollins, London, 2005

External links

• Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms on IMDb