Woman's Weekly 1 September 1976


A Goodie for lunch

TV by Nan Musgrove

LUNCHING with Tim Brooke Taylor is as unpredictable as watching an episode of "The Goodies," the comedy show in which, with two
accomplices, he writes and acts.

Tim was in Australia briefly to promote ABC-TV's new late afternoon "Goodies" TV programs. He is a small, neat man with very blond hair, blue eyes and at first sight a rather timid manner.

He looked shy and subdued when he arrived in a dark business suit and a surprising Union Jack waistcoat in rich satin.

He turned out to be the best kind of company - entertaining, honest and comletely without
affectation.

Imprisoned by the large heavy pews at the restaurant tables, when he had to leave temporarily he simply climbed over the back of the pew and disappeared. He returned to his place in the same way.

He is like a modest, bright-eyed white mouse in an animated cartoon, or a child-like character you read about in an English storybook.

Brooke-Taylor is 36. married, with two "magnificent" sons, Ben who is rising seven and Edward, just five.

He got into the comedy business at Cambridge in the 1960s when he fell in with good company for laughing and jokes.

The company included Peter Cook (of Dud and Pete fame); his present accomplices, the other two Goodies Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie; and his best friend, John Cleese of "Monty Python" and other hilarities.

I asked about Cleese, who is my favourite funny man.

"Cleese is the bee's knees. I think he is marvellous," he said. "He has just made the funniest series called 'Faulty Towers' (a terrible hotel) which is going very well in England."

"The Goodies" too is going well in both England and Australia. And so it should. It takes the Goodies trio four weeks' "solid, slogging work" to produce one half-hour show.

"I find comedy very hard work, but then I do enjoy it." Tim told me.

One of the things that have inhibited me against Brooke-Taylor is the way he is always leaping into drag in "The Goodies." I asked him about it.

"I hate wearing women's clothes," he said, "particularly pantyhose. I feel uncomfortable and it immediately gives people the wrong idea about you. Actually I am extremely butch.

"But I'm often stuck with being the female because I used to do women's voices on radio. On 'The Goodies' I'm stuck with doing all the things I don't like while Oddie is the trendy Bolshie and Garden is the technocrat. Sometimes I feel it's simply not fair."

I feel it's simply not fair to a lot of viewers that ABC-TV is showing "The Goodies" at 5.30 pm. The night-time viewers the show had built up won't even be home from work then, but it's apparently too bad about these VIPs when programmers are chasing early evening ratings.


1976 'A Goodie for lunch', The Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), 1 September, p. 27. , viewed 03 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55479564

Full page link:

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55479564