From http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2636212.ece:

Bill Oddie: The twitcher

Most know the performer and writer for his greatest love - nature. It has been a lifelong affair
By Ed Caesar
Published: 09 June 2007

Two titans of television went head to head this week. In one corner, we had Big Brother, the reality television behemoth and a programme so all-pervading that Gordon Brown would not think of leaving the country without being full apprised of its latest developments. In the other corner was a short, scruffy, scriptless ex-Goodie talking about wildlife.

There was, of course, no contest. Bill Oddie's Springwatch trounced Big Brother in the ratings, pulling in more than four million viewers. Even Nightshift, the live streaming from Springwatch's webcams, had 300,000 viewers one midnight - almost four times the number watching the action unfold in the Elstree BB house. So much for the curiosity of the viewing public. The human species is fine, but you just can't beat the animal world.


Oddie, 65, should have no problem dealing with his latest triumph. In a strange, meandering career, he has experienced almost everything the entertainment business has to offer. He has written comedy scripts, songs and children's books. He has risen high in the pop charts. And he has been lampooned by the fictional Norwich DJ, Alan Partridge.

But most know Oddie for his greatest love - nature. It has been a lifelong affair. As a child, he used to collect birds' eggs. He turned into a fully fledged twitcher, and these days can often be found on a bright morning on Hampstead Heath, near where he lives, bird book in hand.

"The important thing to know about Bill is that he knows his stuff," said Peter Holden of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who co-presented one of Oddie's earliest nature programmes. "There are plenty of celebrities who endorse causes they know very little about. But Bill comes from the grass roots. He started by being interested in birds and has taken that interest with him all his life. That's why he's been so successful, I think. The enthusiasm is genuine."

Oddie was born in Rochdale and grew up near Birmingham, where he attended King Edward's School, in what was a periodically unhappy childhood. His mother endured constant mental health problems, leaving Oddie in the care of his grandmother and father in what he remembers as a stilted environment.

Oddie escaped, though, when he won a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read English literature in 1961. It was there that he met Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, with whom he performed in the Cambridge Footlights and was destined to form the Goodies comedy trio. Oddie and Garden used to draw cartoons together for the student newspaper.

"We all had a common interest in comedy," said Garden, "and that led us together. The Footlights revue, which Bill and Tim Brooke-Taylor and [soon-to-be-Python] Graham Chapman were in, led to radio. And our radio show, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, was how we all stuck together after university."

Oddie was always, said Garden, a talented writer, but it was as a performer that he stood out. "All of us, I think, needed to be in a group. Even John Cleese. But Bill, I think, would have been the one person who could have made it under his own steam. He was always interested in the showbiz side. He wasn't ambitious like David Frost - who had an agent when he was a student - but he definitely looked at entertainment as a career."

Oddie's plan worked. He forged an instantly successful career in broadcasting, where his trademark popular song parodies soon registered with the British public, and sold well when released on albums such as his 1967 collection Distinctly Oddie. Indeed, John Peel was said to have treasured Oddie's version of the Yorkshire folk song "On Ilkley Moor Baht 'At" set to Joe Cocker's cover of "With a Little Help From My Friends", which Peel released on his own Dandelion records in 1970.

It was through The Goodies television series - where Oddie played the long-haired rebel on 70 episodes that ran between 1970 and 1982 - that he allowed his musical interests to flourish. Zany in a Monty Python-lite kind of way, and somewhat derided since, the show was very much of its time, these days revisited - at least in the UK - only in the context of naff 1970s TV. Its novelty pop songs featured in the charts, most notably " Funky Gibbon", fulfilling Oddie's thinly concealed desire to be a musician.

"If you really want to annoy Bill," said Garden, "call him a would-be pop star. Because, in 1975, we were the fourth biggest British group in terms of sales. He would have loved to have been a bona fide pop star - he was always much more comfortable with that side of things than Tim or I. Although, I think, had he become a pop star he would have become pretty cynical pretty quickly, and would probably have fallen into comedy and nature."

After The Goodies, performing comedy on television lost its lustre for Oddie. He still continued to write, but his interests lay elsewhere. By the time he was in his 50s he was making serious nature programmes, and in the past 10 years, his output has been prodigious, with shows such as Bill Oddie Goes Wild, How to Watch Wildlife and the enormously successful Springwatch and Autumnwatch.

Oddie lives in a kind of twitcher idyll - a large gnome-infested house that he shares with his second wife and co-writer Laura Beaumont. They have a daughter, Rosie, who, having borrowed extensively from her father's record collection, is currently enjoying her own moment in the sun as "the next Lily Allen". Oddie also has two daughters from his first marriage to Jean Hart.

Personally, life has not been so easy. Six years ago, Oddie suffered a nervous breakdown - an attack that he believes was connected to his mother's schizophrenia. In 2001, he told The Independent: "I basically didn't have any mother love... I remember being taken to see her in the hospital when I was about 16 or 17 as a sort of experiment to see if she remembered me. She had no idea who I was. All I remember her saying was 'television is dead bodies and cardboard'."

Since then, though, Oddie has discovered more about his family, partly through his appearance on the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?. "It completely rewrote my assumption of what my mother was," he said. " It undemonised her. I've started to build up a picture of her. She was very jolly and musical. If there is any continuity in the genes, I must have inherited quite a lot from her."

The new, mellower Oddie still has a reputation for grouchiness. "He is a consummate professional," explains Holden, "and a lot of his public appearances are performances. As with a lot of performers he can be temperamental, and that's the case with Bill. He is a passionate person about nature in particular. But it's the passion that makes him so watchable. "

The broadcaster Phill Jupitus remembers Oddie's recent, eccentric performance on the BBC's music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks rather differently. "There was a weird atmosphere in the studio," said Jupitus. "It was as if Oddie genuinely didn't want to be there. He's certainly got a unique outlook on the whole business. He arrives jaded. For someone who is so good on television, he really doesn't seem to enjoy it.

"When you see Bill on those wildlife shows, he is quite extraordinary. But I wish he'd just do the wildlife shows. The other stuff seems to annoy him. He's a fragile individual at best, so I don't know why he keeps putting himself in these vulnerable positions. I was a huge fan of the Goodies - as was anyone who was 12 in 1972 - so I've got a huge amount of admiration for Bill, but he should do what makes him happy."

There is no doubt that birds make Oddie happy, and always have done. Garden remembers Oddie arranging some curious sites for Goodies' shoots. "He'd have a word with the location manager, so we'd be able to see some rare this-or-that," said Garden. "So we'd sit in the van and he'd always be pointing out all the birds and what was going on in the foliage around him. Watching him on television now is just like having a chat with him on location all those years ago. He used to disappear between takes with his binoculars and go and hide in a bush."

In his Goodies days, though, Oddie was not keen to have a wildlife programme of his own. "When he started doing nature on television, he did it slightly reluctantly," said Garden. "His twitching was always a private passion, and I think he was reluctant to publicise it, or to capitalise on it. Of course, he was enthusiastic and wanted others to be enthusiastic about it, but I don't think he was ever keen to get his own nature programme. It seems quite clear now that he absolutely loves it."

Despite having found his vocation, Oddie would not be Oddie without having some other irons in fires. He continues to write children's books and scripts with his wife. He continues to appear, occasionally, on other television programmes. Having made an impression on thousands of young lives by voicing several characters in Bananaman in the 1980s, Oddie has now turned his vocal talents to the B&Q adverts. And two years ago, the Goodies reunited for a tour of Australia, where old shows were recently aired. They were met by screaming fans.

"It was completely surreal," said Oddie, on his return. "Like being plunged back into the Seventies and that rock concert ethos. Who would not enjoy two weeks' complete adulation? But it wasn't half weird."

Oddie might have been talking about his entire career. Just when you think he will fade out of view, up he pops again - with his hair a mess, his beard unkempt, and his sharp eyes darting around from behind his spectacles - more popular than ever. How this has come to pass, no one really knows. But don't count on Springwatch being his last greatest hit.

A Life in Brief

BORN: 7 July 1941, Rochdale. Brought up by his grandmother Emily when his mother fell mentally ill.

EDUCATION: King Edward's School, Birmingham. Read English literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

CAREER: At Cambridge he appeared in several Footlights productions while also writing scripts for TV's That Was the Week That Was. TV and radio career took in On the Braden Beat, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, Twice a Fortnight, Broaden Your Mind and The Goodies with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden. Released novelty records including "Funky Gibbon" in 1975. Post-Goodies, he has focused mainly on nature programmes, including Oddie in Paradise (1985), Bill Oddie Goes Wild (three series starting 2001) and Britain Goes Wild (2004). Now presents BBC's Springwatch.

HE SAYS: "The first thing is to stop thinking of wildlife or a wildlife interest as something only for children. That really annoys me."

THEY SAY: "Working with Bill is challenging, unpredictable, sometimes downright infuriating but never ever boring." - Springwatch co-presenter Kate Humble