Golden Gordon
Huddersfield, 1935. Barnstoneworth United is a small football club, once playing in the top leagues, now losing every game. One of their fans, Gordon Ottershaw (Palin), who has named his son Barnstoneworth United (John Berlyne), comes home after every lost match and smashes the furniture in fury. His wife Eileen (Gwen Taylor) quietly accepts this. She keeps trying to tell him that she’s having a baby, but he seems not to notice. After an 8-1 defeat by an elderly team, it is decided that the club be sold to a scrap dealer. The upcoming match against Denley Moor (the scene of The Testing of Eric Olthwaite) will therefore be the last. Gordon visits the owner, Mr. Foggen (Bill Fraser), and tries to persuade him to keep the club alive. Foggen refuses. But Gordon has another idea. He starts visiting the players from the great 1922 team, reassembling them for the last match. The day of the match it looks bad for Barnstoneworth. They have only four players (and three pairs of shorts), whereas the captain of the Denley Moor team is the famous Eric Olthwaite. At the last minute, Gordon arrives with the old team, who defeat Denley Moor. Gordon arrives home and the family smashes the furniture together in happiness. (John Cleese makes a brief cameo as a passer-by in the street, who peers at Eileen after she shouts to her husband.) The inspiration is Huddersfield Town F.C.‘s decline in the late 1970s, while Ripping Yarns was being filmed.
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