Not sure how far beyond Britain, Australia or the Commonwealth this will resonate, but Tim Brooke-Taylor, a member of the Goodies, a classic half-hour British comedy show has died, a victim of coronavirus.
The Goodies sat somewhere between the Goons and Monty Python in their comedy. The Guardian obituary above reflects the lack of British TV repeats of the Goodies, but there were constant re-runs in Australia where they were a staple of after-school TV.
TBT was awarded an OBE, but disappointingly was never made an Earl, which would have allowed him to be referred to as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Earlobe (his joke, not mine).
The Goodies was big in New Zealand too. I grew up with it, pitched right at my age group. Then rewatched it in the 80s and then 90s and it still was hilarious, and in some instances a lot more layered comedy than I realised.
Tim was my favourite Goodie back then. He was great at panicking (“I’m a teapot, I’m a teapot!”) and was the snobby Royalist dressed in a Union Jack waistcoat all the time. Post-Goodies he co-starred in a sitcom that ran for a few years called Me And My Girl, about a widowed Dad bringing up his daughter, who worked for an advertising agency, and Tim played his work colleague there. He was very good at that too.
Americans will only recognise him for his tiny role in the Willy Wonka movie, where he played a statistician who worked out the likelihood of finding a Golden Ticket on a ticker-tape “computer”.
He and the other Goodies also produced an animated series called Bananaman, and two of the three were regulars on a comedy radio panel show called I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. He was never far away in the UK audience’s consciousness, and was still hilarious right to the end.
I think that even more importantly, he was one of the stars of At Last the 1948 Show. Only thirteen episodes of that show were made, all of which were shown in 1967. Without it, Monty Python’s Flying Circus wouldn’t have been made. He was one of the four people in the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, for instance, which I consider to be the best comedy sketch of all time.
The Goodies was seen as more of a kids’ show, (they once had John Cleese on it yelling “kids programme!”) and, more importantly, it never broke into the US market.
His contributions to ISIRTA are often overlooked. (ICIHAC should have ended when Humph died)
I’ll never forget when he and his mates won Prince Charles’s hand in marriage, their reward for delivering Great Britain from a plague of Rolf Harrises.