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WORCESTER NEWS – 2001
(Lisa Manekofsky – 17th Mar 2007)
Tim Brooke-Taylor - one of life's Goodies
From the archive, first published Thursday 6th Sep 2001.
"YOU'LL always be a Goodie to me, though," misty-eyed with nostalgia, I couldn't help telling Tim Brooke-Taylor when I spoke to him about his upcoming performance in Cheltenham.
Lucky for me, he told me: "I'm very proud of The Goodies." And just as jolly and genial as you'd imagine, he was glad to be asked about the comedy series which made him a household name.
Even after 20 years, everyone who saw The Goodies knows Tim Brooke-Taylor who cycled that three-seater bike into all kinds of crazy adventures with his pals Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden.
And everyone I told about this interview couldn't surpress a smile as they told me about their favourite Goodie moment, whether they were adults at the time fully appreciating the humour or a youngster who found the visual jokes and special effects stuck in their minds.
That was one of the endearing qualities of the show, says Tim, who likens its wide appeal to shows like The Simpsons which whole families could watch on different levels. He says: "It was made for adults but people tell me they were allowed to stay up and watch it!"
Uptight Tim, long-haired Bill and sensible Graeme in real life were Monty Python contemporaries - they were in the Cambridge University Footlights Revue Club with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle.
It's one of those quirks of history which gave Tim a job elsewhere so he couldn't take up the invitation of joining the Python team - but things weren't quiet for him.
Reading his extra-long biographical blurb, there's not a lot in TV comedy he hasn't had a hand in. He started out performing in the West End with Cambridge Circus, the Footlights revue from his final year, and then toured New Zealand and Broadway, before another US tour with a stage version of That Was The Week That Was with David Frost, Bill Oddie and Willie Rushton. He came home in 1965 as a scriptwriter, then a regular TV performer in On The Braden Beat and also edited a Spike Milligan series and The Frost Programme.
This led to At Last The 1948 Show in which he co-starred with Marty Feldman, Cleese and Chapman and Aimi McDonald.
After creating I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, he and Graeme Garden made two series of Broaden Your Mind before, they got together with Bill Oddie and came up with something new and different format - The Goodies.
Tim explains: "It all came out of the same stable as Monty Python and the other shows." But it had a few differences. The difficulty in writing a sketch show, he says, is that each sketch has to be individual and have an ending. Monty Python got round that by having someone burst in to stop the proceedings but The Goodies went down a different path. It introduced regular characters and worked the sketches around them.
"It was really a series of sketches blended together to make a story," says Tim. That format, combined with the newest visual effects, gave the show a more modern feel and an appeal which made it so popular Steven Spielberg even expressed an interest in making The Goodies The Movie! And remember the chart hits? Did you strut your stuff to The Funky Gibbon?
The Goodies was so far ahead of its time, however, it seems the BBC is waiting for some even more futuristic date on which to repeat it.
Despite some shows being released on video, the tapes have been gathering dust on shelves while other series are constantly shown - something which puzzles the team. In Australia and New Zealand, it's still shown and Tim recently attended a Melbourne Goodies Convention. He says: "In the 1970s we didn't have video recorders so I hadn't seen the programmes myself for years. They all knew the lines better than me!"
"The fans were all intelligent young people in their 20s and that seems to be what the BBC wants to aim for," said Tim. "We simply can't get to the bottom of it."
Lobby the Beeb then, because Tim also says of a future Goodies reunion: "We always thought we would do some more but we couldn't do that at the moment.
"The old series would have to be shown again to gauge reaction to it and how a new one would be received."
If you think life's been quiet for Tim since those days, you'd be very wrong.
He's enjoyed stage success in Australia and the West End, performed straight TV roles, hosted panel games and chat shows and starred in the sitcom Me and My Girl with Richard O'Sullivan as well as in plenty more series, plays and tours, culminating in a short but intimate appearance in another classic - One Foot in the Grave.
He was Victor Meldrew's new neighbour in a Christmas special in which he ended up in bed with the great crosspatch.
"They interviewed lots of people and then I was chosen but ended up just being in it for one episode before it finished - but it was a particularly good episode to be in!" he says. And of course, he's squeezed in almost 30 years on the Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, written three books, served as rector of St Andrew's University and was a director of Derby County Football Club. He also married Christine and has two sons, Ben and Edward. Now he's just landed a cushy number touring golf courses for the Discovery Channel.
Not bad for a boy who started his education with an expulsion at the age of five from a school in his home county of Derbyshire. "I was one of only two boys in a school of girls and we caused havoc," he says. He had to be in the Brownies with them and was too rowdy in the meetings so was "asked to leave".
He chuckled thinking about it - "There aren't many men who can claim they were in the Brownies!"
Now it's back to his theatrical roots in Cheltenham - Bedside Manners by Derek Benfield which runs through next week and Tim describes as "a very clever play and very funny".
He plays an inexperienced manager of a seedy hotel who has to try to cope with all sorts of madcap secret assignations.
He doesn't know the area very well, although his father was at school in Cheltenham and his mother, a Lacrosse international, was a games mistress there too.
But he said: "One of the nice things about touring is you go to all those places you keep meaning to go to!"
Expect to see Tim Brooke-Taylor nosing round the Cotswolds while Bedside Manners runs at The Everyman Theatre from next Monday, to September 15.
From the archive
C Newsquest Media Group 2001
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