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Tim Brooke-Taylor was a patriot down to his red, white, and blue underpants.
With his thumbs hooked on his Union Jack vest, he loved stopping manic procedures at The Goodies so he could pay attention to Land Of Hope And Glory.
“Timbo” worshiped the royal family, from the queen to the corgis, and royalty loved him.
Prince Charles himself once wrote to the three stars of The Goodies, the very popular and anarchic 1970s comedy series from the BBC, to say: “ I remember laughing like a fugue in your antics, to the point where that my sister, HRH Princess Anne, was quite short on me.
Tim Brooke-Taylor (pictured with his wife Christine Wheadon) was a patriot down to his red, white, and blue underpants
So it was a perpetual surprise for fans who met Brooke-Taylor, who died yesterday at age 79, after contracting coronavirus, who was not an arch nationalist at all. With great appreciation for the foolish and the absurd, he felt that waving the flag was pointless.
In fact, he rarely took something in his career too seriously … let alone his own talent.
His fellow Goodies played versions of themselves: Bill Oddie, the short-tempered explosive rebel with a head full of pop hits, and Graeme Garden, the caustic wit and former doctor with an IQ higher than the national debt.
But the character Brooke-Taylor played was just that … a made-up role. “With a name like mine,” he commented, “no one would believe that I was a revolutionary.”
Instead, he emphasized his high-class accent and played the Knight Establishment. “I don’t think I’m really a good comedian as people might think,” he said modestly, “but I’m probably a better actor.”
With his thumbs hooked on his Union Jack vest, he loved stopping manic procedures at The Goodies (pictured) so he could pay attention to Land Of Hope And Glory.
For such a derogatory man with his own comic gifts, Brooke-Taylor enjoyed an exceptionally long and successful career, which included nearly 50 years in Radio 4’s pun, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.
Born in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1940, his talent was obvious to everyone but him from childhood. In his final year at Winchester College, his form teacher wrote to his mother, suggesting that if Tim failed his A levels, he could probably find a job as an actor “or musical comedian.” If that was meant to be critical, it was also prophetic.
In the mid-1960s, he was on the lunatic committee that became Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and co-wrote one of his most popular sketches: the Four Yorkshiremen, vying to brag about who had suffered the most underprivileged childhood.
With John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Marty Feldman smoking cigars and sipping champagne, Brooke-Taylor heard their crowded boast: 26 children in an unfurnished room with a hole in the floor.
Brooke-Taylor teamed up with Garden and urban jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton for a quick wordplay radio 4, sorry I don’t have a lead (pictured. Left to right: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Humphrey Lyttelton, Graeme Garden and Barry Cryer)
“Room?” He scoffed. ‘You were lucky to have a room. There were over 150 of us living in a little shoebox in the middle of the road! “
The Pythons were still doing that routine when they played at O2 Stadium in 2014. Brooke-Taylor softly commented that it was a good thing they had been going on for so long, because they finally admitted they owed him royalties for the sketch.
When Monty Python moved on without him in 1969, he showed no rancor. “The timing was not right for me,” he said. The reality was that the company only had room for a genuinely kind and friendly interpreter, and Michael Palin was already on board.
As the ambitious comedians around him sweated and competed, he was content to enjoy the ride and focus on what mattered to him: Derby County FC and his family. He married his wife, Christine, in 1968, and they had two children.
In the mid-1960s, Brooke-Taylor (center, with Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie) was part of the mad committee that became the Monty Python Flying Circus
Mixing slapstick from silent movies with themed satire, The Goodies suited him much better than Python’s nervousness. He was the handsome of the trio, a kind of sloppy chorus that was easily turned on and hurt even more easily. Female fans passed out over her golden locks and innocent nature.
When the three jumped aboard their three-seater tram, it was Tim in front, pedaling like crazy. Graeme grunted the center chair, grumbling, and Bill leaned back with his feet up.
Actually, it was Graeme and Bill who wrote the plots, with Tim polishing the lines and throwing some gags when the scripts were ready.
The Beeb was never sure what to do with them. While Monty Python was definitely an outrageous comedy for the college crowd, The Goodies seemed to appeal to the public at any point in the hours.
Her visual comedy appealed to the whole family. When chased around a maze by a giant Dougal the Magic Rotunda Dog, or bombarded by geese that threw eggs that bounced like cushioning bombs, the effect was hilariously surreal. The stoned students loved it, but so did the six-year-olds and adults who grew up on the Goons.
These jokes also traveled well. Australia especially brought the Goodies to their hearts, projecting their shows every night for decades.
In the photo is Tim Brooke-Taylor holding his OBE, the comedian and actor died after contracting coronavirus, his agent said
And international comedy judges were also impressed: in 1972, the episode Kitten Kong won the prestigious Silver Rose of Montreux television award, with a spectacular monster movie parody.
It featured a score of BBC stars in cameos, when an elephant-sized baby cat went wild in London. Three years later, the Goodies won again with an early Hollywood shipment. They were so popular with a young audience that they had a number of pop hits: Funky Gibbon (who peaked at number 4 on the charts and saw them dance on Top Of The Pops), The Inbetweenies, Wild Thing, and Black Pudding Bertha.
At around the same time, Brooke-Taylor teamed up with Garden and urban jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton for a fast-paced Radio 4 radio show, sorry, I have no idea. The pilot episode in 1972 was so disastrous that later, in the pub, “Humph” made them swear they would never try again. But they relented, and gradually the game show became a cult favorite, with the addition of regulars Willie Rushton and Barry Cryer. Much of her success stems from Brooke-Taylor’s refusal to strain to laugh: if a joke failed or a joke was abused, her shrug was almost audible. As a performer, he was always generous, letting his teammate Rushton (and later Jeremy Hardy) hand over the rewards and then laugh.
With Humph as master of ceremonies, the show turned into a series of widely used challenges. There were new words for the Uxbridge English Dictionary (‘Cardiology – the study of knitwear’, ‘Monogamy – celebrating the New Year in Scotland for yourself’), and a round of announcements for imaginary guests at silly parties (such as the Naturists Ball … ‘please welcome Mr. and Mrs. Gleebits and their son Dan: Dan Gleebits’).
One of the favorites was the devilishly complicated Mornington Crescent, a game that involved yelling names from subway stations that other players greeted with applause or mockery.
Tim’s specialty was a round called “one song to the tune of another.” He could sing the gloomy words of Girlfriend In A Coma by The Smiths to the beat of Tiptoe Through The Tulips. He had to be heard to believe it.
Garden said yesterday: ‘Tim was a class act. Working with him on radio, stage or television was always fun, and when we were on stage together it was great to see him walk into one of his shiny pieces, when I could just sit and enjoy his performance from the best seat in the house .
“I don’t think we had a fight, sometimes we didn’t agree on things, although I don’t remember what, which I guess shows how unimportant they were!”
The two had worked together since their meeting in Cambridge in 1961, where Brooke-Taylor studied law and performed at Footlights, the university’s magazine club. Here he also met Cleese and Oddie, and three years later they debuted on a radio sketch show called Sorry, I’ll reread that.
It ran until 1973, occasionally, with Brooke-Taylor best known for her creation, Lady Constance de Coverlet, an aristocratic man-eater with a shrill voice. That led to television and a sketch show called At Last The 1948 Show.
All his life he insisted that he was only as good as the people around him. “In college, I met like-minded and really good people, but at the time I didn’t see it as a serious path,” he explained two years ago.
‘Certainly, in my case, it was the people I was with who made me do my best work. I would never have done it on my own. “
There is another way of looking at that. Without Tim Brooke-Taylor’s laid-back temperament, kind charm, and universal popularity with other comics, much of the greatest comedy of the 1960s and 1970s simply would not have been possible.
But he was too modest to say it.
