Greetings from sunny New Jersey, USA. I'm trying to solve a mystery that's been bugging me for forty years. I'd like to know the name of a TV show I saw when I was about ten years old. This would have been around 1980.
To be honest, I'm not even sure the show was British, but I suspect it might have been for a couple reasons. One, the style of humour was more Monty Python than typical US TV. Also, I don't recall any commercial breaks, so I probably saw it on our Public Television station.
Here's how I remember it. There were two men, probably roommates, in an apartment.
In the first part of the show, one guy announces he is going to enter a bike race. (He had what looked like your average 3-speed Schwinn from the era, certainly not a racing bike.) Then he says he has a plan to help him win. He's going to drop thumbtacks on the road so the other riders will get flat tires. His roommate is skeptical. Later he returns all disappointed. He ran over the tacks himself and lost.
The next segment centers around a chair. The wannabe racer gets his buddy to sit in the chair, then starts tying him to the chair with rope. I have no memory of how the dialog went, but somehow the guy being tied up has no idea anything odd is happening until is completely tied up and gagged. Then he realizes there's a problem.
Then things got very surreal. The next thing I remember, they're not in the apartment any more. Some people, including the racer, are standing around dressed in British courtroom garb, with the white wigs and such, debating the merits of the chair. The participants all seemingly oblivious to the fact the very unhappy roommate is still sitting in the chair, tied up and gagged. One person declares loudly "I think you should take this chair and throw it in the dump!"
I think at this point one of my parents walked into the room and said something to the effect of "What is this crap you're watching?" and made me change the channel.
There are episodes of Gilligan's Island I saw 20 times in reruns and have no memory of, but this show I saw once and I remember it vividly. Any ideas what this was? Thanks a bunch.
Tom
