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From the Footlights to The Frost Report and The Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor's spent his career turning out madcap comedy.
Now he's at it again...By Spencer Bright
Tim Brooke-Taylor has specialised in playing the serious upright citizen who turns out to be just a bit bonkers for the past 50 years.
Now, at the age of 72, in a new spoof news programme called Animal Antics, he's a straight-faced presenter... aided by a dog.
The fellow actor in the furry canine costume plays it straight too. Together they investigate animals behaving badly on home movie clips, which they present as if the creatures deserve Asbos.
My character's not modelled on any one newscaster, but on certain pomposities,' says the ever-discreet Tim.
His reserve and genial Englishness have been comforting fixtures of our comedy world since the days of The Frost Report and At Last The 1948 Show in the 60s, The Goodies in the 70s, and for more than 40 years on Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
Is he aware the public have a great affection for him? He squirms at the thought. So what does he put his popularity down to? 'Probably because I'm so good-looking,' he deadpans.
'Seriously, I think that I'm a better actor than people think I am, and I'm not as good at comedy as people give me credit for. But as long as you get credit of any sort that's good enough, thank you.'
He seems as happy to point out his failures as his successes and recalls how he once drove off the road because he was laughing so much listening to an early recording of himself on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. 'I sounded pathetic.'
Typically self-effacing, he puts his success down to others – 'sticking with talented people and making it work rather than going out on one's own'.
Certainly some luck was involved meeting a group of remarkably talented people at Cambridge, among them Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden, who were to join him in The Goodies, and John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle, of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
In a 1967 episode of At Last The 1948 Show with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman
'The college I was at had a very good reputation for sketch shows. Peter Cook had performed there, he left the term before I arrived. I met Bill Oddie about three weeks in.
'My closest friends were John Cleese and Graham Chapman. We did everything together. I auditioned Eric Idle for Footlights.
'You don't think "Oh these are the people who are going to be in Python", you think these are your mates who are being equally silly.'
He'd heard about the Footlights drama club from an older brother who'd been to Cambridge.
Young Tim's intention on going to university was 'to seek out attractive women and drink', but when quizzed by the education committee who awarded him his grant about what he'd get up to when not studying he said he'd join Footlights.
Feeling morally obliged to do so, he eventually became president of the club, which suggests a steely underlying ambition at play.
And success came early, though it never seems to have gone to his head. A Footlights revue called Cambridge Circus went from the Edinburgh Fringe to the West End and Broadway.
At first he thought this larking about would be a pleasant diversion before taking up a proper profession. 'I genuinely did feel at the time that this may last another few weeks, so enjoy it while you can and then you'll become a lawyer.'
He ended up turning down a job in the family firm of Brooke-Taylor solicitors in favour of comedy, but got the chance to play the respectable 'suit' many times over when his TV career took off after he graduated. Bowler-hatted accountants and City types were particular targets of sketches he co-wrote with John Cleese and Graham Chapman on The Frost Report, then on At Last The 1948 Show.
Tim had an idyllic early childhood in Buxton in the Peak District, but at 13 he was sent off to Winchester College after his father, the local coroner, died at 59.
It meant being separated from his beloved terrier Sparkie – who got up to a fair few animal antics of his own. 'Sparkie was well known in Buxton because he'd go all over town on his own. He once got on a bus and got off at Bakewell and when the bus came back he got on it again and came back to Buxton.
'Then he disappeared for over a year, but I was at a funfair in Manchester and suddenly Sparkie came up to me. He'd been taken in by people who thought he was lost, but we got him back.
The amazing thing is,' says Tim conspiratorially, 'my co-presenter on Animal Antics is also called Sparkie, and when the producer comes out and says, "Sparkie, Tim, will you do this?" suddenly I'm 14 again!'
Tim has also performed his share of animal antics. There was the dog Spot he played in Cambridge Circus and the 60s radio show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again. 'The dog always got a laugh, which annoyed John Cleese enormously if he was in the sketch because he'd work extremely hard to get the laugh, while all I had to do was "Woof!"'
And he was chased by a giant cod in The Goodies into a freezing reservoir. 'When we were filming it I was blue from the cold and a nurse had to be called for. It wasn't a great moment. My son, who was watching with my wife, said to her, "When I grow up I'm not going to be an actor." Shrewd lad.'
The Goodies tried to use real animals for their sketches but had to abandon the idea because the animals wouldn't do as they were told. 'We still got complaints we were mistreating animals when all we were using was bits of fur.'
It all begs the question, if Tim was an animal what would he be? He's tempted to say a gibbon, an animal often mocked in his comedy sketches; the song Funky Gibbon was a Top 5 hit for The Goodies in 1975. 'I think it would have to be a chimpanzee.
'It's the thought of being able to leap and swing around and have a good time, and then show your bottom and know that people love looking at you. I suppose that's a side of them that's like me.'
Spencer Bright
Animal Antics, tonight, 5.30pm, BBC1.
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Tim and Sparky in 'Animal Antics'
Tim and the other cast members of 'At Last ... The 1948 Show'
(from top): John Cleese, Graham Chapman & Marty Feldman
The Goodies in 1973
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