The Good Life (TV Series)

Plough Your Own Furrow (1975)

Richard Briers: Tom Good

Photos 

Quotes 

• Tom : What do you think?

  Barbara : I need to think.

  Tom : Garden?

  Barbara : Yes.

  Tom : [fetches wellies]  Right. Left. Coat.

  Barbara : Coat.

  [leaves to pace in the garden] 

  Tom : Piece of cake?

  Barbara : No thank you.

  [continues pacing] 

  Barbara : Do you want to sell up and buy a small holding in the country to do this?

  Tom : No, this isn't meant to be the full going back to nature thing, besides we love this house too much to sell it.

  Barbara : Self-sufficiency in Surbiton.

  Tom : Yes, I know it'll make the avenue look a bit odd.

  Barbara : No no.

  [continues pacing] 

  Barbara : I couldn't kill chickens.

  Tom : Alright, I'll chop their heads off with my black and decker while you're not looking.

  Barbara : [continues pacing]  What happens when we need new clothes?

  Tom : I'll have made the loom by then. With the wool from the goat.

  Barbara : No no.

  [finishes pacing] 

  Tom : Well? Well?

  Barbara : You're on.

  Tom : What?

  Barbara : We'll do it.

  Tom : Now, have you thought about this?

  Barbara : What do you think I've been doing? Taking my wellies for a walk?

• Tom : When I get a birthday card from my wife, I expect a loving, sickly verse. Not "Another nail in your coffin you old wreck!"

• Margo : [sitting in bed while Jerry stares out the window]  What is it? What's going on?

  Jerry : The Goods. They're dancing in their goldfish pond.

  Margo : Ask them why?

  Jerry : I hadn't thought of that. Why?

  Barbara : Celebrating.

  Jerry : Your birthday was yesterday.

  Tom : No. We're celebrating we found out how to beat it!

  Margo : What's he saying?

  Jerry : Margo, if you're so damned interested, why don't you get out of bed yourself and have a look?

• [first lines] 

  Tom : [reading a birthday card]  "Mozart and Mendelssohn were dead by 40, why aren't you?" How thoughtful.

• [about Tom's ideal of self sufficiency] 

  Jerry : You're totally insane.

  Tom : Jerry, we've never been saner in all our lives.

• Tom : [to Barbara]  I'd run off with you if you weren't married.

• Barbara : Life begins at forty.

  Tom : That's a fallacy for a start.

• Tom : You look like an advert for gracious living.

  Jerry : I am.

• Tom : [to Jerry]  So if I unleash all this dynamite I'm carrying around i'd be up in seventh heaven on the old sixth floor too, would I?

• Tom : [to Barbara]  In four years time, Brian and all the whizz kids will be up on the fifth floor, and where will I be? Doing a Mr. Chips with a lot of infants.

• Barbara : I'll tell you what's at the bottom of all this, "It business" you were on about this morning. I had a think in the garden after you left.

  Tom : Hey look, why do you always go into the garden to think? You're not having an affair with that gnome we haven't got, have you?

• Tom : You know that "It Business"?

  Barbara : Oh, no, no more. I'm not strong enough.

  Tom : No, no, no, no, no. I've defined what it is. It's breaking the circle.

• [last lines] 

  Tom : Now if you'll excuse me, I've got three hundred weight of spuds to put in.