A reader asked for more string. You can see my reply here. Not being one to deny the punters entirely, 
I’ll pass on some clips from a 70s British TV comedy show, about string. It was a popular show called “The Goodies”. Some of you might remember them. Well, they did an entire episode with the title “It might as well be string”, and although the clips (below) are out of context and even with not knowing the characters and so forth (I don’t) there are some amusing bits here and there, if you turn it around to poke harmless fun at those of us who work on string theory decades later – It’s all about a PR/Advertising campaign for string!
There’s the string song, the “documentary” about string (best to gloss over the oh-so-funny “smelly Arab” remarks and accompanying laughter*), the excellent samples from the 
advertising campaign for string, and the brilliant spoof Tomorrow’s World (a science and technology program) segment about string. I particularly love the latter (there are lots of somewhat touch-and-go applications for string…Ahem!). They even used one of the current (at the time) show presenters.
It’s all on YouTube, (Wikipedia article about it here) and to save you wading through the somewhat less relevant stuff that’s in between (most of which probably does not make any sense), here’s a list, with the time stops to jump to:
* Advertisements for string: This YouTube video, starting at 4:38.
* Tomorrow’s World on string: Same video, starting at 7:38 and lasting 2:07.
* String documentary: This YouTube video, starting at 0:00 for about 3:00, including a feature on the critical string shortage as a result of unprincipled mid-east string hoarders.
* Classic “string” song: Same video, starting at 3:50
Warning: There’s a lot of possibly incoherent babbling and mayhem in between the bits of relevance, so be ready on the scroll bar.
I learned about this all (and had the above helpful list sent to me) by Jim De La Hunt and Kate (Ducky) Sherwood, who I met in Vancouver while attending a string workshop. Check out their blogs and the interesting work they do, by the way. Thanks Jim and Ducky!
Enjoy!
-cvj
*I think it is supposed to be the not-so-pleasant characters making those remarks (see also their “dumb housewives” theme), but I’m not so sure the audience is keeping up with that…
Hi,
Thanks.
Yes, the Goodies were good, but nowhere near as clever or laugh out loud funny as the Python team, in my opinion. (When I said I did not know the characters in the above post, I did not mean the Goodies themselves (also familiar from their later work decades after all over UK TV and radio) but the characters in the sketch. – sorry if confusing…)
Precisely why I love that sketch in particular! It’s hilarious!
-cvj
lol. I was watching this on youtube a few months back as someone had posted every episode. The Goodies were for the same stable as Monty Python (they all went to Cambridge together) and while M. Python were well known and big in the US the Goodies became highly popular in Austrailia were they were endlessly repeated. If you were a kid in the UK in the 70s you grew up watching the Goodies, which ran from 1971 to 1981. In the 80s and 90s they became victims of political correctness and never got repeated in the UK.
The string one is a classic and is a parody of popular 70s UK tv commercials of the time. The string song and the “Wonderful World of String Part” with the music that goes with it is really funny now I think. Unfortunately, Raymond Baxter on the parody of Tomorrows World” (the real presenter of the real 70s science and technology show) examines the very many applications of string and comes to the
conclusion :”it does’nt work”;). The song could catch on though;)