Tim Brooke-Taylor was one of those honored in the 2020 BAFTA's Memoriam video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cNeVcwJd5o

Thank-you for posting this Lisa, reading Graeme's heartfelt words for Tim was very touching.  Their friendship and careers produced some of the best comedy this world will ever know.  Tim is and always will be much loved and very much missed.

Graeme Garden's tribute to Tim Brooke-Taylor in The Daily Mail can be found online at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8231623/No-costume-ridiculous-nor-stunt-dangerous-Tim-Brooke-Taylor-says-GRAEME-GARDEN.html

No costume was too ridiculous nor stunt too dangerous for Tim Brooke-Taylor, says his friend and comedy partner GRAEME GARDEN in this joyous tribute to a genius from a more innocent age

By GRAEME GARDEN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 19:45 EDT, 17 April 2020 | UPDATED: 19:45 EDT, 17 April 2020

Among my silliest memories of Tim Brooke-Taylor — and, believe me, they are legion — is the sight of him astride a giant soup can, at the top of a lifeboat slipway above a rough sea.

We were filming a sequence for the TV series The Goodies, and Bill Oddie and I were about to launch Tim and the soup can into the water. Tim had no lifejacket but was wearing his trusty Union Jack waistcoat.

The trouble was, the sea was quite choppy that day and the visual effects crew were nervous. It wasn’t a health ’n’ safety issue — this was the Seventies, after all.

The problem was the splash: the shot wouldn’t look right if the waves were too big.

Tim was clinging to the can, listening to their discussion. When someone mentioned casually that this could actually be quite dangerous, he went a little white.

But I knew he wasn’t going to refuse to do it. However hair-raising the stunt, however uncomfortable the costume, Tim tackled them all — I wouldn’t say ‘fearlessly’ because sometimes he was justifiably terrified, but always with great courage.

If the script called for him to be flung out of a window or through a wall, which it often did, or to dress up in a ridiculous costume and throw himself in a river, Tim did it. He got the big laughs but by God he earned them.

In the end, without much warning, the stunt crew sent Tim and the soup can trundling down the ramp into the sea. He got very wet but he nailed it. There was no Take Two.

You might wonder why it was Tim who bore the brunt of the slapstick foolery. The reason was quite simply that Bill and I wrote the scripts and, naturally, we misused our positions of responsibility to ensure Tim took on the stunts we were reluctant to do ourselves. Comedy is a sadistic business, after all — that’s what makes it so funny.

But we also did it because we knew Tim was such a fantastic physical comedian. I knew it from the first time I saw him in student reviews at Cambridge, and I grew to admire his vocal comedy skills, too, during our long association on the radio.

When I heard the desperately sad news on Easter Sunday that Tim had died with complications from Covid-19, it gradually dawned on me just how long we’d known each other — almost all our adult lives.

We were not only close friends for almost 60 years but, in all that time, not one year passed when we didn’t work together — on TV and radio, on stage and in conversation at comedy festivals.

I saw him perform before I ever met him, in the Footlights revue at Cambridge University in 1962. He was studying law and was a year above me — a medical student — and he was already a confident, innovative performer. I was in awe of him and Bill, and their co-stars John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Miriam Margolyes.

They played an Oscar Wilde sketch with Tim as a Lady Bracknell figure. I thought they were brilliant and wanted to join them, though the thought of performing in front of them was scary.

When I at last plucked up courage to audition for the Footlights, Tim was on the committee that sized me up.

Shortly afterwards, I met Bill, not through Footlights but because I was putting together a magazine and asked him — he was reading English — to contribute some cartoons.

My first impressions were that Bill was grumpy, moody and mad about music; Tim was jolly, sociable and as president of Footlights ran it as a family club. He was the more likely of the two to share a joke — though when Bill did laugh, he really cracked up.

That never changed: Tim and I always congratulated ourselves on being thoroughly funny if we could make Bill laugh so much that he farted. He had a laugh that built up like a pressure cooker, till he went red in the face and then, from the other end, a toot!

The bunch of us were hired by the BBC to do a radio show called I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. It grew out of a Footlights tour called Cambridge Circus. I don’t think any of us thought comedy could be a serious career — it was just something we loved doing.

Tim had a talent for female impersonations. His Lady Bracknell had evolved into a monster called Lady Constance de Coverlet, who became an audience favourite. People would stand and cheer when she arrived in a sketch.

What listeners at home couldn’t know was how funny Tim was as a physical comedian. The way he could move his body was astonishing. He did a dance called the Flubber, which began with the hips and looked as if he was drying his back with an invisible towel. It was hilariously odd.

That silliness was put to full use on The Goodies, which ran from November 1970 to 1980 on BBC2. For one stunt, all three of us were hoisted up on our three-seater bicycle, the Trandem, on wires. Six feet in the air, the wires snapped. We crashed to the studio floor, which buckled the wheels and quite a lot besides.

Tim’s hand was sliced open, caught between the wire and the bike frame. He was rushed off to the BBC nurse, and reappeared a couple of hours later with a bandage and a bemused grin.

The nurse was French, he said, and spoke no English. All the time she was patching him up, he was trying to explain that he was a member of ‘les Bonbons’ and injured his hand while being chased by a giant kitten.

‘She couldn’t understand,’ he said, ‘and actually, I’m not sure I do either.’

We all hated that Trandem. It came to be our mode of transport because we were sending up superheroes with their Batmobiles and rocket ships. On BBC budgets, a three-seater bicycle was all we could afford. Everything about it was uncomfortable. Tim steered at the front and the other handlebars were fixed to the saddle ahead. At a corner, instinct told you to turn the handlebars but, when I did that, Tim’s saddle swivelled and we all fell off.

The pedals were connected. When one person got on and kicked the pedal into place, all the others spun round and cracked your shins and ankles.

It was convenient that our basic looks fitted three comic stereotypes. Bill was the scruffy rebel, I was the boffin and, because he had floppy blond hair and a hyphen, Tim was naturally the toff.

In fact, he was quintessentially middle-class, from Buxton in Derbyshire, the son of solicitor and an international lacrosse-playing mother. The character he played was nothing like his natural personality, and he was tormented to think fans might imagine he was really an arch-monarchist who worshipped the landed gentry.

Sport was his real enthusiasm and his grandfather had played centre forward for England in the 1880s. He was madly keen on football, sitting on the board of directors at Derby County for a while, and made several videos about golfing technique.

The fact that he could indulge his love of sport convinces me he got the balance of life right. He wasn’t obsessed with work — Tim was a great family man who adored spending time with his grandchildren, yet he was a committed professional who always turned up and gave his best performance.

For many years he prided himself on never missing a recording for the Radio 4 comedy game show I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, and although he was eventually forced to miss one or two, he still held the record for attendance.

His reliability was at odds with his personal tendency to lose things. At one studio, he lost his mobile phone between the reception desk and the rehearsal room.

On another occasion, when we were touring in Australia, where the Goodies were hugely popular, I lent him a book. A couple of days later, I asked him whether he was enjoying it. ‘I’ve lost it,’ he admitted. ‘I think I left it in a hotel room when I was in a bit of a state... because I couldn’t find my wallet.’

Once, at the start of a tour, I found him pacing around the dressing room, muttering: ‘I can’t believe I left it at home!’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘My suitcase.’

We did so much together ... even dancing on Top Of The Pops to the Goodies’ hit record, Funky Gibbon — then going out for a meal with Pan’s People, the resident dance troupe of very beautiful girls.

In the late Seventies we appeared in a West End farce called The Unvarnished Truth, with me as a policeman and Tim as a man whose wife has just dropped dead during a blazing row at their house. He hides her body in the downstairs loo, as anybody would, and from then on every woman who appears is almost immediately killed in a freak accident. Tim’s rising panic was a treat to watch — as so often, I was able to step back and watch him do his stuff, in total admiration. I had the best seat in the house, so to speak.

That was never more true than on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue — ‘the antidote to panel games’ — which started in 1972. Tim in full flight, doing his impersonation of the Queen or singing one song to the tune of another, was magnificent.

To tell the truth, I feel I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue ran for about five years too long. The trouble is, it was the first five years.

In the beginning, the show was quite a chore. After the pilot, we all gathered in the pub and said ‘never again’. But Radio 4 commissioned a series and we kept doing it, or some of us did.

Bill Oddie did the first few shows but didn’t enjoy it. Nor did John Cleese, who once upended a jug of water over his microphone so he wouldn’t have to join in a round. But Tim was an ever-present. He and Willie Rushton struck up a wonderful partnership — I think it was the right decision not to pair Tim and me, because it would have been too cosy. After Willie died in 1996, Tim was joined by a parade of star comedians: Linda Smith, Jeremy Hardy, Stephen Fry and a long list of others.

Since the news of his death broke, people have been sending me messages to say what a lovely man he was to work with, how welcoming and supportive, how he used all his comic experience to ensure they had plenty of airtime.

Coming on that show could be a nail-biting experience but Tim made everyone feel at home. In a way, he was the real host.

In the Goodies and all through his career, he had a signature joke. When his character started to panic, which he often did, he would stand with one hand on his hip and the other cocked in the air — then dip back and forth, shrieking ‘I’m a teapot! I’m a teapot!’

During one panto season, he told me, he stood at the front of the stage, put a hand on his hip and the other in the air, and called out: ‘What am I, children?’

A voice squeaked back from the stalls, ‘You’re a very silly man!’

That’s not a bad epitaph.

Graeme Garden is donating his fee for this article to the Lawrence Home Nursing Team, which provides end-of-life care.

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-tim-brooke-taylor-dies-20200412-33z4sn5izfge3gdogtrfxe55ea-story.html


‘The Goodies’ comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor dies from coronavirus at 79

By PETER SBLENDORIO

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
APR 12, 2020 | 1:27 PM

Longtime comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor has died at 79 following a battle with coronavirus.

Brooke-Taylor, who was well known for his humorous accomplishments as a member of the Goodies comedy troupe, died Sunday morning, with his agent attributing the death to COVID-19.

He is survived by his wife, Christine, as well as by two sons.

The British star co-founded the Goodies with Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden and started a TV comedy series with the same title in 1970. The trio had previously worked together on other British comedy programs, including “Broaden Your Mind.”

“The Goodies” aired for a decade on BBC2 and centered on the trio taking part in eccentric sketches and performing comical songs. Following its final season on BBC2 in 1980, “The Goodies” aired a seven-episode installment on the London Weekend Television channel in 1981 and 1982.

Although “The Goodies” show aired in the United States during the 1970s and ’80s, syndication has not continued much stateside in the years since. In addition to England, the show was particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand.

“Fifty years and he only got cross with me once ... well maybe twice ... no quite a lot actually!” Oddie wrote in a Twitter tribute. “No one could wear silly costumes or do dangerous stunts like Tim. I know it hurt cos he used to cry a lot. Sorry Timbo. A true visual comic and a great friend.”

Garden also paid homage to his longtime co-star.

“Thank you everyone who has sent kind messages about the loss of Tim,” Garden tweeted. “It’s devastating to lose a friend and colleague of 50+ years. Fun, sociable and adorably silly, Tim was a class act. Our thoughts are with his family.”

Brooke-Taylor’s prominent comedy career also involved him appearing as a panelist on the popular BBC quiz series “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” for nearly 50 years.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/culture/comedy/warm-and-loveable-aussie-comics-pay-tribute-to-tim-brooke-taylor-20200413-p54jeu.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

'Warm and loveable': Aussie comics pay tribute to Tim Brooke-Taylor

By Broede Carmody
April 13, 2020 — 11.59pm

British comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor has been remembered as a "warm and loveable" character who inspired some of Australia's best-known performers.

The television star, who was a household name in the 1970s and '80s thanks to his BBC program The Goodies, died on Sunday after contracting coronavirus. He was 79 years old.

The Goodies was broadcast in the coveted 6pm timeslot on ABC for several years, with reruns shown in the 1990s. The show relied on low-budget situational comedy and co-starred fellow Goodies members Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.

Australian comedian Andrew Hansen, from comedy group The Chaser, said he's "a big fan" of Brooke-Taylor and was lucky enough to work alongside him as part of a local tour in 2009.

"From the early '70s to the early '90s it felt like The Goodies was the only show on Australia TV, played on an endless loop at every time of the day," he said. "And rightly so. It was an amazing show, especially from season three onwards when they really hit their stride."

Hansen said it would be difficult to find an Australian comedian in their 30s or 40s today who wasn't influenced in some way by Brooke-Taylor's slapstick comedy.

"Tim's rare gift as a comic performer was that, unlike most comics who make us laugh by being dry or prickly or angry, Tim made us laugh by being warm and loveable," Hansen said.

"Any comedy that you've enjoyed growing up – the rhythms and sounds of it – sink into you somehow. The Goodies were able to combine real silliness and lowbrow stupidity with social comment and satire and switch between the two with such ease."

Another comedian who grew up watching The Goodies is Claire Hooper, the co-host of The Great Australian Bake Off.

"I reckon I've watched all of The Goodies," she said. "It was something both my mum and dad liked. We all laughed together. Tim Brooke-Taylor was the one I reckon the kids liked the best – you learned to appreciate the others when you were older, but he was the loveliest and the silliest. I adored him."

Former Spicks and Specks host Adam Hills echoed those sentiments.

"Most of the jokes I know about Britain come from The Goodies," he said. "We gave the UK Neighbours, we got The Goodies."

Fellow comedian Felicity Ward, who has appeared on Thank God You're Here and Good News Week, said she loved the show so much she painted the words 'I'm a Goodie' onto a T-shirt when she was a child.

"I'll be drinking tea, crying in a high-pitched voice and wearing Union Jack boxer shorts just for you tonight, Tim," she wrote on social media.

Felicity "on maternity leave" Ward
@felicityward
Oh god. Tim Brooke-Taylor has died. I loved the Goodies so much I made a hand painted T-shirt when I was a kid. I’ll be drinking tea, crying in a high pitched voice and wearing Union Jack boxer shorts just for you tonight, Tim. #RIPTimBrookeTaylor

https://www.newidea.com.au/the-goodies-star-tim-brooke-taylor-has-died-of-coronavirus

The Goodies star Tim Brooke-Taylor has died of coronavirus

A tragic loss. - by Delicia Smith

13 APR 2020

British comedy icon Tim Brooke-Taylor has died from coronavirus. He was 79.

WATCH: The Goodies sing 'Funky Gibbon' song on BBC One in 1975

Tim's agent confirmed that the star of classic comedy The Goodies passed away on Easter Sunday from COVID-19.

The actor and writer was best known for the hit 1970s TV show, which ran from 1970 to 1982, and also made Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden household names.

The Goodies was a hit in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and developed a cult following in many other countries. At its peak, 15 million Brits would watch the show.

Tim Brooke-Taylor, proudly holds his OBE after it was presented to him by Prince Charles, Prince Of Wales during an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on November 17, 2011.

“It is with great sadness that we announce Tim’s death early today from COVID-19,” his agent said.

“Joining Footlights in 1960 took him to providing a huge variety of splendid entertainment – television, radio, theatre, film, books, DVDs, CDs, quizzes, etc – all of which he undertook with energy and a great sense of fun.

“We will remember him for so much but must just mention The Goodies and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. He had, of course, many fans whom he always treated cheerfully even after long and exhausting rehearsals and recordings.

“He was an exceptional client and a pleasure to represent. We’re grateful that we have so much of his work to view, read and listen to.

“In all the time with us and in all his showbiz work, he has been supported by Christine, his wife.”

Tim was a members of The Goodies trio alongside Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden.

Figures from the world of comedy and TV have paid tribute to The Goodies star.

Fellow Goodie, Graeme Garden said he was "terribly saddened by the loss of a dear colleague and close friend of over 50 years."

In a statement, he said: "Tim and I met at Cambridge University in the early 1960s and have enjoyed worked together almost constantly from that time onwards, on radio, stage, and TV. He was a funny, sociable, generous man who was a delight to work with.

"Audiences found him not only hilarious but also adorable. His loss at this dreadful time is particularly hard to bear, and my thoughts are with Christine, Ben, Edward and their families."

Comedian and writer Stephen Fry said it was "devastating news" in a tweet that described Mr Brooke-Taylor as "kind, funny, wise, warm".

“Just heard the devastating news of the death of Tim Brooke-Taylor. A hero for as long as I can remember, and – on a few golden occasions – a colleague and collaborator on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Gentle, kind, funny, wise, warm, but piercingly witty when he chose to be. So sad.”

David Walliams said he was "in awe" of Tim.

"I was obsessed with ‘The Goodies’ as a child, the first comedy show I really loved. I queued up to get the Goodies’ autographs as a grown-up, and got to meet Tim Brooke-Taylor more recently at a party. I was in total awe, but he was so kind & generous. It is so sad he is gone.

Eric Idle said he was "very saddened to hear of the loss" of his old friend.

"I'm very saddened to hear of the loss of our old friend and fellow Pembroke alum Tim Brooke-Taylor. He and Bill Oddie auditioned me for the Pembroke Smoker in 1963, starting my career. I always thought him a wonderful man, funny, kind and generous. Merde. This fucking virus."

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/tears-for-a-clown-why-the-loss-of-tim-brooke-taylor-feels-so-personal-20200413-p54je4.html

CULTURE TV & RADIO VALE

Tears for a clown: why the loss of Tim Brooke-Taylor feels so personal

By Michael Idato

April 13, 2020 — 4.04pm

Goodies, goodie, goodie, yum, yum. Five words that sum up a shared childhood in Australia in the 1980s. Five words that cut deep as a generation of kids who revered the comedy group The Goodies comes to terms with the news that one of its hilarious trinity, comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor, has died.

In the UK, Brooke-Taylor, aged 79, will be eulogised as a comedian of note, one of the stars of the Cambridge University Footlights, along with iconic stars such as John Cleese and the Monty Python team, and more recently, as a panellist on a raft of comedy game shows.

In Australia, however, Brooke-Taylor remains part of The Goodies, a television sketch and situation comedy in which he starred alongside Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, filmed on a combination of cheaply-built studio sets and pioneering green screen "chroma-key" backgrounds.

The Goodies aired in the UK between 1970 and 1982, and in Australia in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, and gave kids a bizarre but much-loved collection of cultural references, from Kitten Kong and the venomous Bagpipe spider which stalked Loch Ness, to the secret martial art of Ecky-Thump.

For adults, their comedy was cheap and often crass. For kids, however, their comedy became the lingua franca of the schoolyard. A messy pastiche of one-liners, ridiculous situations and brilliant physical gags. It was the first time we'd seen such irreverence and it struck a chord.

In the series Garden played the trio's scientifically-minded leader and Oddie was its eccentric, misbehaving rebel. Brooke-Taylor, impossibly clean cut and often appearing in a three-piece suit, was its aristocratically foppish conscience, fiercely British, and playing with both flags and anthems as comedy props.

What made The Goodies culturally unique was that while they enjoyed only modest success in the UK – thanks mainly to the fact that the series was rarely repeated after it aired – they became cult heroes in Australia, with the show kept in almost perpetual rerun on the ABC in the 1980s.

In that sense The Goodies and its stars, along with Doctor Who, Battle of the Planets, The Kenny Everett Video Show, Star Blazers, Monkey, Astro Boy and Inspector Gadget, formed a television mosaic that many Australian kids remember as the fabric of our shared childhoods.

It was my childhood. But more importantly, it was a childhood I shared with my friends. Television shows which delighted and astounded the innocent tastes of pre-teens in the analogue era. Shows that compelled us to stay, even as mum called us into dinner. They made me a master of Ecky-Thump, just as they made me a Time Lord, and they let me follow Tripitaka's journey to the west.

Even in later life, Brooke-Taylor, Garden and Oddie could pack houses in Australia touring their Goodies live reunion shows, thanks to the sustained affection from those who were unable to let go of their childhood heroes.

In the coronavirus crisis we are measuring and re-measuring our shock, as each new headline brings anxiety closer to us. A friend of a friend who is unwell, or an infection in a parent's retirement community, becomes a difficult-to-articulate feeling of grief, amplified by the fear of proximity.

The headlines are peppered with science and politics, but personal stories don't feel loudly told. So far some of the names, such as award-winning New York playwright Terrence McNally, have shocked us but perhaps not touched us universally. Maybe because Brooke-Taylor loomed large on television, it does become more personal. Television is the shared art form delivered to us within the safety of our homes. And perhaps that's why the news cuts so deep, because it taps the safest part of our memory: our collective cultural childhood.

It also challenges the promise that endless re-runs on television, DVD and streaming services makes to us: that those magical personalities and characters who inhabited our TV childhoods can somehow be frozen in time, rendered immortal by the mechanical and magical power of the pause, rewind and play buttons.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34640393

Entertainment & Arts

Obituary: Tim Brooke-Taylor, life of funnyman who co-wrote The Four Yorkshiremen

12 April 2020

Tim Brooke-Taylor was at the heart of British comedy for more than six decades - with his words, wit and quickfire japery making millions of people laugh.

His comedic roots lay in the Cambridge Footlights, where his contemporaries included John Cleese and the two men he later collaborated with on the TV show The Goodies - Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.

He began his broadcasting career on BBC radio, quickly developing a reputation as a performer and scriptwriter.

Probably best known as one of the members of the anarchic Goodies, he was also a long-standing panellist on Radio 4's, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, on 17 Jul 1940. His 59-year-old father was a solicitor and local coroner, who had been wounded in the World War One and was serving in the Home Guard when Tim, his third child was born.

"I was a mistake, as far as I can gather," Brooke-Taylor later recalled.

His father died when he was just 13 and his mother, who was in her 40s at the time, got a job as a school matron.

After attending prep school, the young Brooke-Taylor was packed off to Winchester before going up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read law.

The intention had been that he would enter the family firm but fate intervened when he found himself sharing digs with a fellow student, John Cleese.

Membership of the Cambridge Footlights Club brought him into contact with Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie as well as future Python Graham Chapman.

None of them had any thought of taking up careers in showbusiness, seeing Footlights as a way of having some fun before facing the world of work.

A Dali encounter

Brooke-Taylor was Footlights president when, in 1963, their revue - originally entitled A Clump of Plinths - went down a storm at the Edinburgh Festival.

It opened in the West End later that year before embarking on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, finally ending up on Broadway in 1964.

Brooke-Taylor later recalled being taken to a New York nightclub where he encountered the artist, Salvador Dali.

"I started talking to him about art," he told the Daily Telegraph's Neil Tweedie in 2012, admitting that he soon found himself completely out of his depth.

Any thoughts of a career in law swiftly vanished when he began working on a BBC radio show, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, which first aired in 1964.

Based on the Footlights review and with its roots in early radio comedy shows, such as ITMA and Round the Horne, it paved the way for a host of shows including Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies.

Brooke-Taylor both wrote and performed in the sketches, his tour de force being the horrendous Lady Constance de Coverlet, whose piercing screech of "Did somebody call?" became one of the highlights of the show.

Rubbish tip

He also made an appearance on TV as a regular in the programme, On the Braden Beat, where he played a right-wing businessman giving the audience the benefit of what he thinks is his reasonable point of view. He would later incorporate it into his character in The Goodies.

Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV's At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.

The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.

The four sat round sipping expensive wine remembering when they lived in "a paper bag on a rubbish tip" or worked "23 hours a day down at mill for a penny every four years."

Brooke-Taylor went on to write and perform with Marty Feldman on his comedy show Marty. There was also a brief spell working with Orson Welles on a film entitled One Man Band, but it was never released.

"He'd seen something on the telly and wanted to work with me for some reason. I spent about 12 days directing him because he didn't trust the actual director."

The first episode of The Goodies was aired in 1970 with Brooke-Taylor appearing alongside Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, in a series that ran for 12 years, the first 10 of them on BBC Two before being bought up by London Weekend Television for ITV.

Patriotic words

A mixture of sketches, situation comedy and slapstick made use of primitive special effects such as speeded-up filming.

The often surreal show saw the three protagonists cycling around on a "trandem", trying to do good deeds. Memorable episodes include Kitten Kong, featuring a giant feline toppling the Post Office Tower.

A special episode of this show won the Silver Rose at Montreux in 1972.

Brooke-Taylor specialised in a character wearing a Union Flag waistcoat, who would often pause the action to deliver patriotic words to a background of Land of Hope and Glory.

"You've got to have a right wing neo-con loony." Brooke-Taylor said in a 2005 radio interview. "And with a name like mine I don't think I can be the revolutionary."

The series spawned an unlikely hit record, Funky Gibbon, which the three performed on Top of the Pops.

In 1971 he had a short role in the film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where, in the closing sequence, he played a computer scientist.

Cameo roles

A year later he joined the panel of Radio 4's antidote to panel games, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where he would become a regular fixture over the ensuing four decades.

He also starred with John Junkin and Barry Cryer in Hello Cheeky, a sketch show which started out on BBC Radio 2 before eventually moving to Yorkshire Television.

Together with Graeme Garden he provided voices for the BBC cartoon series Bananaman.

Brooke-Taylor popped up in a number of cameo roles over the years in shows including One Foot in the Grave, Heartbeat and Agatha Christie's Marple.

In 2013 he appeared in Animal Antics, a spoof news programme in which he was usually upstaged by a man dressed as a dog and his final TV appearance as an actor was in BBC One medical drama Doctors in 2015.

In 2011, he and his fellow Goodies star Garden were both appointed as OBEs for services to entertainment. Oddie, the third member of the trio, had been honoured eight years previously for his services to wildlife conservation.

After visiting Buckingham Palace to receive the honour from the Prince of Wales, Brooke-Taylor admitted "one had to bite one's tongue", having often poked fun at the ease with which honours were handed out in the 1970s.

Tim Brooke-Taylor was one of a group of writers and performers who changed the face of British TV and radio comedy, making programmes that have become classics of their time.

Essentially a gentle and sensitive man he once admitted leaving his own living room when the weekly results were announced on Strictly Come Dancing, as he couldn't bear seeing anyone thrown off the show.

bbc.com/news/uk-52262490

Goodies star Brooke-Taylor dies with coronavirus
12 April 2020

Comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor has died at the age of 79 with coronavirus, his agent has confirmed to the BBC.

The entertainer, best known as one third of the popular 1970s show The Goodies, and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, died on Sunday.

Goodies co-star Bill Oddie called him a "true visual comic and a great friend".

The third member of the trio, Graeme Garden, said he was "terribly saddened by the loss of a dear colleague and close friend of over 50 years".

"He was a funny, sociable, generous man who was a delight to work with. Audiences found him not only hilarious but also adorable."

Oddie recalled some of the Goodies' sketches in his tribute tweet, adding: "No-one could wear silly costumes or do dangerous stunts like Tim. I know it hurt cos he used to cry a lot. Sorry Timbo."

Bill Oddie Official
@BillOddie
·
13h
Fifty years and he only got cross with me once... well maybe twice... no quite a lot actually! No one could wear silly costumes or do dangerous stunts like Tim. I know it hurt cos he used to cry a lot. Sorry Timbo. A true visual comic and a great friend x.

Brooke-Taylor's career spanned more than six decades and his comedic roots lay in the Cambridge Footlights Club, which he joined in 1960.

Membership of the Footlights brought him into contact with both Garden and Oddie as well as future Monty Python stars John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

Cleese paid tribute by saying: "Tim was one of my very oldest friends, and one that I used to love performing with. He did 'frightened' better than anyone...".

And another member of Monty Python, Eric Idle, revealed that his career was started in 1963 when he was auditioned by Brooke-Taylor for an annual comedy revue.

Brooke-Taylor started his own broadcasting career on BBC radio, before forming The Goodies with Garden and Oddie and later becoming a long-standing panellist on Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

A host of comedians have paid tribute to Brooke-Taylor on social media.

David Walliams
@davidwalliams
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15h
I was obsessed with ‘The Goodies’ as a child, the first comedy show I really loved. I queued up to get the Goodies’ autographs as a grown-up, and got to meet Tim Brooke-Taylor more recently at a party. I was in total awe, but he was so kind & generous. It is so sad he is gone.

Sandi Toksvig
@sanditoksvig
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14h
Tim Brooke-Taylor was a man I was privileged to call my friend. Generous and kind. Sitting beside him while he made us all laugh was an honour. He will be much missed.


Rory Bremner
@rorybremner
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15h
I queued as a schoolboy in Edinburgh to get my Goodies Album signed, and can’t believe 40 odd years later we were doing Clue together in January. Big theatres, huge laughs, such joy & affection for Tim. He was an absolute delight. ❤️

Susan Calman
@SusanCalman
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14h
Devastated by this news today. Tim was funny, kind and an incredible man in every way. Sitting beside him on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue was a privilege. Our duets will be moments I treasure forever.  My dear friend. Sending all my love to his family

Comedian Jack Dee, the current host of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, said: "It has come as devastating news to hear that Tim has succumbed to this dreadful virus - especially when we all thought he was recovering.

"Tim was a delightful man and never anything but great company. It has always been one of the great joys of my career to work with someone who was part of the comedy landscape of my childhood."

One of his biggest contributions to British comedy was co-writing and performing the famous Four Yorkshiremen sketch with John Cleese, Chapman and Marty Feldman, originally for the ITV comedy programme At Last The 1948 Show! The sketch later became a popular fixture of Monty Python's live shows, and was generally performed by Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

As part of The Goodies, he also enjoyed an unlikely pop career. At a time when novelty comedy songs regularly made the charts, the trio achieved five Top 40 hits, the biggest of them 1975's The Funky Gibbon - which they memorably performed on Top of the Pops.

The trio found international fame with The Goodies, becoming household names in Australia and New Zealand, with shows attracting millions of TV viewers.

In 2011, Brooke-Taylor was appointed an OBE for his services to entertainment, joining Oddie and Garden in having the same honour.