"Alps-A-Daisy"

Yodel-ay-hee-hoo!

 Season 4 Episode 3 (episode 61 overall)

Original broadcast date: 19th January 1993

Writer: Brian Trueman
Additional voices: Gaston/Rich girl/
                              Announcer/Miss   
                              Danglegoggle: Jimmy  
                                                      Hibbert
                              Pierre: David Jason
                              Rich girl: Ruby Wax

Travel location: Danglegoggle, Ruritania
                           (Switzerland)

Castle transport visual not used.


Duckula tries to impress some women by winning all the winter sports events. Meanwhile Gaston and Pierre try to kidnap one of them, but end up with Nanny instead.

This is a fun episode if you're a fan of bumbling French criminality as well as our usual trio's antics. There's a certain satisfaction in seeing Nanny get her own fan club too.

I touched upon the differences between Gaston and Victor in an earlier post. There are differences between Pierre and Hugo too, though they are more subtle. Hugo's outfit has less modification than Victor's got although it's even less subtle than Pierre's - if that's possible! David Jason's voice for him is pretty much the same (French Bluebottle), unlike Jimmy's two performances which are different in pitch. Hugo seems to be a little more fun-loving and happy than Pierre generally is. In contrast, Pierre seems to get hyper-active when either scared or excited about something. This is something that may have been adapted into Hugo's character. Hugo tends to have panic attacks whenever the le gendarmes (the police) are mentioned but otherwise he seems to be the cheerier of the two. That is what I think anyway.

Anyway, our two bungling idiots act mainly as observers for the first half of the show; spying on the action from up on a mountainside through binoculars. There's a fun little gag where Pierre is spying on the wrong people (Duckula and Igor) so Gaston swaps binoculars with him to correct this. Down below, Duckula skis over Igor, ploughing him into the snow and then Nanny skis over Duckula doing just the same. It's fun to observe the karmic nature of these gags, I never notice them until I study closer as it seems so natural. Nanny wins the race she's having with he Count by reaching the village first. And smashing part of it, by the sound of things.

Later while relaxing over a cocktal in the hotel, Duckula gets his first taste of irritating fan girls. (Un)fortunately for him, it is not him they are fan girling over, but Nanny! The girls almost always speak all at once in ridiculous sing-song voices, adding to the annoyance they're meant to cause. They run off a string of Nanny-isms ("Oooh Duckyboos!, "I'LL GET IT!") to add salt to the wound. Igor is incredulous, while Duckula drowns his sorrows in some more Duckybooze.

Duckula later figures that if he wins all the winter sports events, he'll get the first prize - a night out with Miss Danglegoggle 1989! Who presumably will be less annoying. Igor, as usual is full of dry rejoinders in this episode.

Duckula: All I have to do is win the winter sports and my life of solitude is at an end!
Igor: You mean it will kill you milord?

Despite Igor's understandable misgivings (since when have any of Duckula's activities demonstrated any skill?) Duckula somehow manages to win every event - by accident. And I do mean accident - by the end of the episode he ends up more plastered than if he'd just hung around in the hotel bar.

There's another great exchange between Duckula and Igor just after the Count wins the ski jump. Another joke I never really got until adulthood.

 Duckula: What does the odd scratch matter? I'm ahead on points!
Igor: Well actually milord, you're slightly behind, on crutches.

Duckula isn't swayed. He's all set to try and win the other events, but before we get to that, it's time for a lunchbreak in the 'famous Danglegoggle revolving restuarant' where Nanny unadventurously orders Transylvanian goulash. Anyone familiar with ex-pats will get that little joke. To anyone not so familiar with revolving restaurants, they really are a thing! Though at the time of this review there are no longer any functioning ones in the UK. I'm pretty sure you can't run round in a circle and catapult the platform off the tower and into the side of a mountain either. But then again, they never had Nanny and her fan club visiting. The funniest part of this is Nanny's punchline.

Nanny: Oh dear
Duckula: Oh dear?
Nanny I think I've spilt a bit of my goulash.

Next, the French felons finally make their move on 'the beautiful rich young womanz'. Pierre pulls his stocking over his head (before removing said head from up the leg of his trouser) and then pulls a sack over Nanny. By this stage, some of the Nanny Fan Club are wearing giant mascot style outfits of object of their worship, so perhaps Pierre can be forgiven for mistaking the real Nanny for one of the girls. In any case, they have a hard time trying to convince Nanny that thy are meant to be staging a kidnapping. Nanny, amusingly as ever, assumes it's all a game, first playing hide and seek in the chalet and then scolding Gaston for not eating his goulash. He thinks it's horrible. Nice little nod to the earlier joke.

While all this is going on, Duckula, battered and bandaged and wearing a sling just like Nanny's, has won the 1st prize - a night out with Miss Danglegoggle 1989! He makes to kiss her, slips off the podium and out of the hotel on his errant skis. He only comes to a stop when he meets the chalet at full force, collapsing it. The Nanny Fan Club would be proud of that! Duckula doesn't get a Miss Danglegoggle kiss but he does get something even better - a Nanny cuddle! He wails over this fact as we close the episode. We can only assume his night out is cancelled, because we're not allowed a happy ending in this show!

A good episode with some funny French felony and some great animation drawings. Plus it's fun to see Duckula win at something, even if it's by accident. One could make the argument that this is a decent 15 minute episode extended to 20 minutes (something one could level at some of the V&H episodes) but, as with that spin-off series, I find it's 20 minutes of pretty good stuff, so I'm all for it. If they'd used less fun villains (as in one-offs), perhaps that would be the case, plus I believe a 15 minuter would probably rush things too much for this series. I guess I'm just a sod for bumbling French crinimality! I'll even forgive the 'Nanny gets kidnapped in error' again as the giant Nanny costume one of the girls is wearing makes Pierre's mistake logical in a different way to that which happened in 'A Fright at the Opera.' Worth your while. Hibbert and Jason are on top form as the guest villains and Nanny's real life fan club will get a good laugh too.

Music 
'Da Jodel Rudel' - Werner Brueggemann (title card)
'Polka Mit Pfiff' - Elmer Stigman (Duckula skiing)
'Hackbrett Polka' - John Leach (skier runs over Duckula)
'Like Strange' - Kenny Graham (Gaston and Pierre spy on the Nanny fan club)

'Dash It' - Kenny Graham (Nanny gets kidnapped)  

Pans and backgrounds
Liberal usage of panning backgrounds coupled with all the snow, may have helped keep this episode under-budget.

It's alright, Brian, we've got more money than "Danger Mouse". You don't have to make episodes set in the snow!

What is this, that it is, that is being a pottings groundback thunder-budgie, mah Gaston?

Trivia 

• Episode opens on Duckula's happy scream and ends his unhappy one.
• Episode does not open in Transylvania. In fact neither Transylvania nor the castle are seen at all in this episode. 
• Ruritania is a fictitious place used in hypothetical discussions and the like. Here, it is used as a stand-in for a snowy, skiing tourism type place. It is also the name of a bank in the Victor & Hugo episode "The Whole Truth". 
• A Swiss flag can be seen on the hotel.
  
• 4th appearance of Gaston and Pierre.

  

  Mr. E. Gull from the comics.

• Trueman also penned a script for Danger Mouse employing a similar pun; "Ants, Trees and Whoops-a-Daisy."
• Duckula's drink at the bar is an asparagus zinger.
• References to snow sports terminology: stem christie, slalom, luge.
• 5th Jimmy Hibbert character to use binoculars. 2nd David Jason character to do so. 
• Pierre says Igor has a black coat. It's actually dark blue.
• Pay close attention to the joke with the binoculars. At first it seems like a mistake, but really it's a silly joke. Gaston's binoculars show the young women, Pierre's show Duckula and Igor, no matter where they are pointed.
• It's Always Tuesday In Transylvania: Sort of. The Winter Sports competition is announced as taking place 'tomorrow' Thursday the 5th. Duckula and co. arrived 'yesterday' so they may very well have set off from Transylvania on Tuesday. There were 2 Thursday the 5ths in 1989, meaning that this episode takes place either in January or October.
• Duckula does a spoonerism when he hears the winter sports announcement. Victor would later turn this into an art form!
• Gaston and Pierre do the "(French word) - What? - (English word) - Ah" exchange in this episode alone. This would also migrate to Victor and Hugo.
• This episode was released on the Count Duckula Bumper Special Volume 2 VHS, in 1990 (over 2 years before its ITV broadcast!), along with 4 other episodes, including 'A Christmas Quacker', 'Unreal Estate', 'There Are Werewolves at the Bottom of Our Garden' and 'Arctic Circles'.
• There are numerous references throughout that this episode apparently takes place in 1989, which would have been very out of date when ITV decided to finally show the episode in January 1993. Indeed, watching it on the VHS tape I used to rent religiously, I used to assume that 'Miss Danglegoggle 1989' was a past winner! Which frankly makes sense given the 'nothing's ever quite that good or up-to-date' theme of a show like this.
• Duckula's record for the slalom is 28.05 seconds. The DVD subtitles say 48.05. It's hard to tell for sure.
• Duckula's time for the ascent/descent of the mountain 2hrs43m17s (2h43m time to the top).
• Unlike Victor and Hugo, with Gaston and Pierre, it would appear that Gaston does the driving. He did the same in 'Hunchbudgie of Notre Dame'. They use a green Citroën Beetle, which ties in with V&H's van which looks very like a Citroën too.
• The radio announcement that opens the V&H episode 'Pie In The Sky' makes reference to the crooks pulling their stocking masks over their head, before removing them from their feet, similar to a joke this episode.
• Pierre's stocking mask resembles that of the littlest Crow Brother.
• According to Gaston, Nanny is about 7 feet tall.
• Gaston also references centimes which is French for cents. 
• A poster in the crook's hideout says 'Ruby Rock'. This could be a nod to Ruby Wax, who is in this episode. Since the girls mostly all speak in unison it's not clear who she voices, but I always assume it's the one with massive hairdo.
• Nanny makes an ostrich/hostage pun like Pierre did with sausage in 'Hi-Duck' after which she makes a rare reference to her species.
  
• The Nanny Fan Club mimics Nanny's sling out of choice, Duckula ends up with one by accident.
• Jimmy Hibbert would also do the voices of the announcer/prize-giving bint in the Avenger Penguins episode 'Hog Jamboree' in a similar set-up during Marlon's dream sequence.
• I own an original piece of what looks like layout art from this episode. Kindly donated to me by Laura Howell.
  
  

  

  
  

Goofs and Nitpicks

• This may be very pedantic, but it seems to me as though the 'stocking over mah head' sequence was meant to be staged behind the dustbin rather than on a cliff and it looks like the hotel staff didn't bother changing the 'Ski Jump Winner' sign for when Duckula wins the other events. 
• Pierre's stocking changes colour from cream to purple when he puts it on.