Falcon Boy had been standing silently while Ellis was talking to Captain Lorimer. Now he spoke.

‘The Troublebots are disguised as backing dancers,’ he told the Captain, as if Ellis wasn’t there and the Captain hadn’t just been briefed, ‘but they cannot dance and so should be very easy for us to spot.’

Ellis sighed. Captain Lorimer wasn’t sure what to make of the whole thing. She looked slightly embarrassed. Falcon Boy was unabashed.

‘I suggest you instruct your men to apprehend them,’ he continued.

‘But how?’ asked Captain Lorimer. ‘I cannot just disrupt the show. There are a hundred thousand people in the crowd and several hundred million more watching on screens all around the world.’ Captain Lorimer pushed her hat back slightly and scratched her forehead.

Captain Lorimer felt conflicted here. She was delighted that Dr Don’t Know’s plot had begun to be discovered and was potentially only several pages away from being foiled. She was also relieved to hear that there was no further mention of the Moon Rope. ‘Perhaps I might get to keep my job after all,’ she thought.

However, she took her responsibilities very seriously. She couldn’t simply act on the advice of a useless-looking costumed crime-fighter and a young child without thinking things through. After all, this was the same costumed crime-fighter she had recently had to tell to stop directing bank holiday traffic.

‘We need to act very carefully here,’ she told Falcon Boy. ‘We all need to take our time and act thoughtfully.’

Falcon Boy snorted.

‘We need to act immediately,’ he declared. ‘This is not the time for taking our time.’

Ellis knew that she needed to do something straight away or the badly-dancing Troublebots were going to ruin the show. Not only that, they would also be helping Dr Don’t Know do something really wicked. She looked around.

Bewilder Bird was up into the lighting gantry high above the stage. Ellis could see that he looked pretty tangled – one of his claw-foot-boots was caught in a coil of electrical cable – and so it was unlikely that he would be able to spring into action anytime soon.

She signalled to him and pointed at the stage. He shook his head and cupped his ear. He couldn’t hear what she was saying even though she hadn’t said anything. Ellis feared that this was going to be a long night.

Rather like Windy, but nowhere near as speedy, Falcon Boy had gone to alert the authorities and it wasn’t long before Ellis found him returning with Captain Lori Lorimer and a selection of her finest men and women.

‘I’m glad you are here, Captain Lorimer,’ said Ellis. ‘Dr Don’t Know’s Troublebots have disguised themselves as backing dancers.’ Ellis pointed out onto the stage. ‘Look out for the ones who can’t dance.’

As everyone knows, with a few exceptions as we are about to see, the official actions to accompany Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! require you to stick your hands on your head like two rabbit ears and flap them backwards and forwards whilst knocking your knees together.

If you have ever danced along, and perhaps some of you reading this have already uploaded films of yourselves doing just that, or maybe are planning to do such a thing once you have finished reading, you will know that the intense pain that accompanies this song doesn’t just come from repeating the same few words non-stop for nearly fourteen minutes.

Ellis stood at the side of the stage and started to dance. As we all now know, the dance is an extremely simple one yet she couldn’t understand why half of Doodah’s backing dancers didn’t know what to do.

‘Perhaps they are new to showbusiness,’ she thought. ‘They might be really nervous. Or maybe the unicorn outfits are too tight.’

As the song continues, the words remain the same but the tune speeds up and so the actions get faster and faster:

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

As the song got faster, Ellis noticed that the same dancers were struggling to keep up. One of them wobbled slightly and nearly fell on her. ‘I know that smell,’ thought Ellis. ‘Rusty oil.’

The tempo increased again and at least half the unicorns got further and further out of time.

‘That’s it,’ realised Ellis. ‘The other Troublebots are disguised as Doodah’s backing dancers.’

It is possible to argue here that perhaps Ellis should have realised earlier, but she has had a lot to contend with recently and is still new to this world-saving business. In any case, there will be another forty-seven choruses of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! so Ellis has plenty of time to find the others and raise the alarm.

The official version of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! lasts for thirteen minutes and thirty-two seconds, and has remained at the top of any chart you could think of for the last five and a half years. In its time there, Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! has inspired at least three hundred thousand million remixes, mash-ups, thrown-togethers, and any other audiovisual combination you can think of.

The virulent spread of the Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! meme has resulted in the further creation of various genres and sub-genres. The most popular of these are the hundreds and thousands of fan-made films, where footage of people dancing in any kind of style has the Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! audio track laid over the top of it.

Another popular sub-strand of this meme has the song being played over short looped clips of animals doing animal things like, for example:

cats licking cats,

bats falling asleep,

snakes smiling,

pandas chewing bamboo and then doing their business (Doodah’s record label tried unsuccessfully to have this particular strand of the sub-genre removed from the world wide web),

sneezing ponies,

mice sleeping next to frogs,

badgers dancing near mushrooms,

rabbits caught in doorways,

rained-upon reindeer,

turtles wrestling with bricks,

dogs barking at bees,

bees stinging dogs,

swans being startled,

elephants eating cheese,

confused-looking tigers,

and chickens riding hypnotised alligators.

A further notable sub-strand of this meme is the footage of people from all over the world doing the official dance moves to Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! in all kinds of crazy places including, just occasionally, on stage.

The world was still not safe from the danger of Dr Don’t Know, but at least Falcon Boy had risen from the grave and helped Ellis and Bewilder Bird stop three Troublebots from living up to their name.

‘I wonder how we are going to find the remaining Troublebots and thwart whatever Dr Don’t Know is up to,’ Ellis wondered to herself. She didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

The trouble really started as Doodah and the rest of their backing dancers walked out onto the stage to the opening bars of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

‘Good evening, Panic Town!’ they shouted. ‘You are really delighted to see us.’

And Panic Town was, as was the rest of the world. A big cheer rang out across the cosmos.

‘Come on,’ shouted Deirdre, Daphne, Davey and Donny in the kind of harmony that can only truly be achieved electronically. ‘Join in if you know the words.’ (You can as well if you really feel like it!)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

(Are you tired yet?)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

(Keep going, you’re nearly there!!!)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Straight away, ‘Donny’ stopped struggling. The superheroes let go of him. Oily, sparky froth started coming out of his mouth and ears.

‘We are one-thumb, two-thumb good,’ gurgled the Troublebot disguised as Donny. ‘Bringing joy…’ the singing stopped as the vocal circuits began to melt and fuse together. ‘Donny’ gave a foamy, sparky, belchy, gaseous, shuddery shudder before collapsing onto the ground.

‘Hooray,’ cheered Doodah in a hitherto unexpected, and never to be repeated, moment of group harmony, ‘you superheroes and your young friend have really truly saved us.’

Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird bowed and start posing in their usual triumphant ways, as Ellis started untying the band.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Falcon Boy, with his chin pointing to the sky. ‘That wasn’t really the real Donny we just superheroically destroyed, it was merely a Troublebot disguised as your drummer.’

‘You don’t say,’ thought Ellis, but she didn’t (say anything). Ellis noticed a knocking noise coming from a trunk in the corner of the dressing room. She opened the lock on the front and out jumped the real Donny.

‘Ready am I,’ he shouted. ‘Mmmmmmmth!!’

‘That’s our Donny,’ cheered Daphne, Deirdre and Davey, in a weird repeat of what had seemingly been an unrepeatable moment of group harmony.

In fact, so stunning was this piece of vocal synchronicity that the members of the group looked at each other in astonishment. However, before they could do any more than register the thought that something might require some further thought – a possibility as strange to Doodah as the synchronicity itself – there was a knock on the door and the stage manager stuck his head into the room.

‘You are due on stage in one minute,’ he said.

The shared thought, and the potentially life-changing possibilities inherent within its delicate DNA, were shattered by this new news and fell silently to the ground to lay like the promise of an alternative future all broken and smashed into tiny, silent, sullen shards.

Doodah are proud endorsers of Fuzzy Cola© and you see their photograph on every bottle. When I say proud, I actually mean oblivious – it is Doodah’s management who are ‘proud’ to endorse Fuzzy Cola©. Doodah are simply Doodah as they sing the theme tune:

If you’re not feelin’ buzzy

Why not reach for a bottle of

Fuzzy Cola?

It’ll bowl you over

Fuzzy Cola

We’ll win you over

with Fuzzy Fuzzy Cola

Fuzzy Cola

Because

Fuzzy is our Fizzness!!

Fuzzy Cola© is banned in many countries and is also on the World Health Organisation’s Dangerous Products Watch List. That’s fine, but pop concerts are different things altogether and there were crates of the stuff everywhere. As Councillor Footswerve reminded his wife, ‘It isn’t all rotten teeth and obesity, you know. They do a lot for charity that no one ever hears about.’

Normally, Ellis would not be allowed to be in the same room as a bottle of the stuff.

But in extraordinary times and extraordinary situations, it was extraordinarily important to be able to make extraordinary exceptions, and Ellis was sure that at this moment of extraordinary crisis, even her Mum and Dad would be extraordinarily understanding and momentarily relax their extraordinarily rigid rules on the subject long enough for her to grab a bottle and use it to disable an extraordinarily dangerous Troublebot.

‘If this stuff really does destroy your teeth, makes your eyes go in and out of focus, and causes small children in other countries to not only go hungry, but also have to leave school before they are ready in order to do a job they hate,’ Ellis said out loud, ‘then I wonder what it might do to a Troublebot?’

Just before ‘Donny’ managed to break free, Ellis stepped forward and poured the bottle of Fuzzy Cola© into the Troublebot’s grille.

Ellis opened the door to Doodah’s dressing room and stepped inside, followed by the two superheroes.

‘Guys,’ said Ellis, ‘Dr Don’t Know’s Troublebots have…’

Ellis stopped talking. For a split second, everything seemed normal but almost at once, she noticed that the dressing room smelled faintly of rusty oil and Donny was finishing tying up the other members of Doodah with electrical cable. ‘Donny’ looked up.

‘Don’t worry,’ ‘he’ said, ‘you’re all next.’

Quick as a flash, ‘Donny’ leapt towards Ellis but she was too quick and she ducked. ‘Donny’ sailed over her head and crashed straight into Bewilder Bird’s chest. Bewilder Bird fell backwards. The Troublebot landed on top of him.

‘Falcon Boy,’ shouted Ellis, ‘you know what to do!’

‘I do,’ said Falcon Boy excitedly. ‘I really, really do.’

And Falcon Boy did. So he did what he knew he needed to do.

Falcon Boy jumped onto the back of ‘Donny’ and tried to pull him off Bewilder Bird. Bewilder Bird was trying to stand up and between the two of them, they turned ‘Donny’ over. Bewilder Bird grabbed one arm and Falcon Boy grabbed the other.

‘Quick, Ellis,’ shouted Falcon Boy. ‘It’s your turn!’

He pulled open the front of the scarecrow outfit. Ellis could see the grille but she didn’t think she would be able to open it. On a nearby table was a crate of the world’s most famous soft drink, Fuzzy Cola©.

Deirdre was extremely puzzled by the whole Donny thing, but what with the show about to start and everything else she had to think about, she really couldn’t be bothered to pursue this whole thing any further.

‘You better get your outfit on,’ she simply told the drummer. ‘The show is about to start and I really cannot be bothered to pursue this whole thing any further.’

‘Well, I am willing to at least discuss the possibility of maybe changing my entire attire for the benefit of the collective good, but this will not be before I have had the chance to interrogate you all individually as to the reasons for you all believing that such a personal metamorphosis is truly necessary,’ replied Donny gnomically.

‘Hang on,’ said Davey, his hopes for a simple world as equally dashed as Daphne’s, ‘where have you just been, Super-Pointless-People-Saying-Stupid-Long-Things-School?’

As he spoke, Davey thought he could detect a slight smell of oil in the air. ‘Probably nothing,’ he thought, ‘just me being the super-sensitive and hyper-imaginative soul that I am.’

‘Come on, everyone,’ he shouted to everyone. ‘We’ve got a show to get on with, so let’s get on with it.’

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‘Donny, how’s your lunch?’ you might ask him if you had just served him his favourite soup and sandwich combination – which, according to http://www.welovedoodah.com is listed as ‘Vegetable soup with a vegetable sandwich but without the vegetables’.

‘Mhmhmhmh!’ he would probably reply. Or ‘Pssssthhh!’ Possibly even ‘Grrrrrrrrnth!’ You could be sure that he wouldn’t say, ‘Very nice, thank you, but the seasoning is a trifle lacking.’ Or even simply, ‘Thank you.’

There wasn’t really any need to engage Donny in conversation about anything. It just seemed simpler and more life affirming not to have to. This is why everyone was so surprised at how he now sounded after a seemingly simple trip to the bathroom.

Simply put, Donny had never spoken this way before. Even more simply put, Donny had never ever spoken this way before with a slightly robotic twang to his voice. Even more simply put than the last two simply puts, Donny had never ever ever spoken this way before whilst smelling very slightly of rusty oil.

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