Big Foot (Goodies episode)
Encyclopedia
"Big Foot" is an episode of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 television series The Goodies
The Goodies (TV series)
The Goodies is a British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s. The series, which combines surreal sketches and situation comedy, was broadcast by BBC 2 from 1970 until 1980 — and was then broadcast by the ITV company LWT for a year, between 1981 to 1982.The show was...


— a BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...

-nominated series for Best Light Entertainment Programme.

This episode is also known as "Bigfoot" and as In Search of Bigfoot and as Arthur C. Clarke and as In Search of Arthur C. Clarke'.

This episode was made by LWT
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...

 for ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

.

As always, the episode was written by members of The Goodies.

Plot

Tim and Bill sit down to watch "Part 97" of their favourite show The Mysterious World Of Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World is a thirteen part British television series looking at unexplained phenomena from around the world. It was produced by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network and first broadcast in September 1980....

, in which the famed British inventor and writer Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...

 debunks various sci-fi related mysteries. Arthur (really Graeme in disguise) journeys to Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...

 and inadvertently reveals that the giant stones are in fact petrol pumps
Filling station
A filling station, also known as a fueling station, garage, gasbar , gas station , petrol bunk , petrol pump , petrol garage, petrol kiosk , petrol station "'servo"' in Australia or service station, is a facility which sells fuel and lubricants...

 for spacecraft. Then it's off to Loch Ness
Loch Ness
Loch Ness is a large, deep, freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately southwest of Inverness. Its surface is above sea level. Loch Ness is best known for the alleged sightings of the cryptozoological Loch Ness Monster, also known affectionately as "Nessie"...

, where he laughs off the existence of Nessie and claims that it was in fact a rhino
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....

 lying upside down in the water, carrying a french loaf in its mouth and balancing a tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...

 on the end. Finally, "Arthur" treks to the Himalayan
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

 foothills to track down the Yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...

. Encouraging Bill and Tim to yell out if they spot such a creature, Arthur stubbornly refuses to believe them when they tell him to turn around to catch a glimpse of the monster. When they ask him to investigate the teeth marks left in the "bait" he left for the Yeti (his book), he claims it was the work of mice.

A voice-over at the end of the episode then informs Bill and Tim that they've just watched the last episode of the series, as it has just been discovered that Arthur C. Clarke does not exist. Bill and Tim are shocked, but Graeme, who is none-too-subtlety putting away his Arthur C. Clarke wig and glasses, explains to his oblivious fellow Goodies that the show was cancelled when they discovered his ruse
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...

. Bill and Tim then debate the existence of the great explorer, and Graeme presses Tim for some proof of Arthur's existence. This leads to Tim getting his own TV special on the air — "The Quest For Arthur C. Clarke: Man Or Myth".

Tim explains, in voice over, how he's on a quest to track down the legendary and elusive Arthur C. Clarke. Asking passers-by whether they recognise a picture of Arthur is of little help, as is a bizarre visit by a man who eats spiders and claims to have seen Arthur (merely on a TV set, it is quickly established). Tim's evidence is inconclusive, so he mounts an expedition to find Arthur once and for all.

Bill and Tim prepare for their trip. Tim is decked out in safari gear thinking they're off to Africa, when Bill informs him that they're off to the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

. Bill kits out Tim with all of his equipment for the expedition, while Graeme packs his Arthur C. Clarke gear and announces he's coming along too.

The trio arrive in the Rockies and quickly set about building a log cabin, with a range of surprisingly sophisticated technology. Bill and Tim visit the nearby Arthur C. Clarke Mystery Park, where they wander around in a tent-like observational bird hide
Bird hide
A bird hide is a shelter, often camouflaged, that is used to observe wildlife, especially birds, at close quarters. Although hides were once built chiefly as hunting aids, they are now commonly found in parks and wetlands for the use of bird watchers, ornithologists and other observers who do not...

 that they use to run around the park spotting flying saucers, yetis, plesiosaurs and bigfoots.

The next day, in the cabin, Bill boasts to Graeme that he had 73 sightings of various mythical beings the previous day, Graeme says that he had none. Tim, who now has a limp, enters the cabin and says that he has a film to show Bill. Graeme attempts to create a diversion to stop the film being shown, but it goes ahead. It shows an embarrassed Bigfoot (in a parody of the famous Patterson-Gimlin film
Patterson-Gimlin film
The Patterson-Gimlin film is a famous short motion picture of an unidentified subject the film makers purported to be a "Bigfoot", that was supposedly filmed on October 20, 1967, by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin on the Klamath River outside of Orleans,...

) being caught relieving himself (and zipping up his fly) on film, then shows that very same "monster" throwing saucers in the air to simulate alien invaders. Finally, Arthur C. Clarke himself is caught on camera, and looks suitably startled before running off into the woods. Bill and Tim immediately recognise Arthur as being Graeme in disguise and order him to accompany them back to London to expose him for the fraud he is.

While exiting the cabin, the trio notice that giant footprints are totally surrounding the cabin. Bill and Tim laugh it off as another of Graeme's hoaxes, but Graeme insists he had nothing to do with it. The petrified Goodies run into the cabin and deduce that Bigfoot must be lurking behind it. A brave Tim decides to follow the path and embarks on a sped-up, Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...

-style run along the trail of the footprints. Coming to the end of the path, Tim realises the footprints end at the cabin and the other two come scrambling out. The three of them then reason that the creature is probably more likely outside than in and make a bolt for safety.

Later that night, Bill is woken by strange noises in the night. He wakes up Graeme and tells him that there's something else in the room (besides Tim). He shines a torch over in Tim's direction to reveal a gigantic, ridiculous-looking giant foot on Tim's right leg. Bill and Graeme explode with laughter as a sleepwalking Tim wanders out of the cabin. They reason that he was responsible for the surrounding footprints and that his foot must swell up at night. Tim returns and wakes up from a bad dream he was having in which "five nude midgets" (ie. his toes) were sitting on the end of his bed. Seeing his foot, he grabs a hammer and tries to bludgeon the offending little people. Bashing his foot, Tim screams in pain and Bill and Graeme roar with laughter. An embarrassed Tim leaves, claiming he can never show his foot in public again.

Tim, aka Bigfoot, ventures into the hills and a voice-over explains that legend soon got around about his presence in the mountains. The narrator says that it was fatal for anyone who saw Tim's massive foot, because it was so funny that you died laughing if you caught a glimpse of it. Tim tries a variety of methods to keep his foot hidden but none of them work, and with the body count of death-by-laughter increasing, a couple of "real tough Mounties" (Bill and Graeme) are dispatched to catch Tim, who is now a wanted man with a "price on his foot".

Tim slowly adapts to life in the wild and starts to take care of his comically-large foot, including painting his toenails. He also grows a big hairy coat to cope with the cold weather up in the Rockies. After a quick musical interlude using some of his fellow forest critters as instruments, Bill and Graeme (now disguised as bears) finally catch up with their quarry. The pair callously step on Tim's foot, who proceeds to karate kick the pair and make his escape. After squashing (temporarily) the pair under a giant rolling boulder, Tim retreats to the top of the hill. Bill and Graeme pursue him up the hill but soon tire and fall down to the bottom of it. It's there that their own right feet swell up to the same size as Tim's, and, as Tim laughs riotously at the top of the hill, Bill and Graeme run away in shame to hide their very own "big feet".

Spoofs and cultural references

  • Arthur C. Clarke
    Arthur C. Clarke
    Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...

  • Stonehenge
    Stonehenge
    Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...

  • Loch Ness Monster
    Loch Ness Monster
    The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid that is reputed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next....

  • Bigfoot
    Bigfoot
    Bigfoot, also known as sasquatch, is an ape-like cryptid that purportedly inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid...

  • Yeti
    Yeti
    The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...

  • UFO
  • Patterson-Gimlin film
    Patterson-Gimlin film
    The Patterson-Gimlin film is a famous short motion picture of an unidentified subject the film makers purported to be a "Bigfoot", that was supposedly filmed on October 20, 1967, by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin on the Klamath River outside of Orleans,...

  • The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams

DVD and VHS releases

This episode has been released on both DVD and VHS.
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