Tim Brooke-Taylor has established himself as a familiar face on British television since making his first appearances in the early 1960s, when he was one of a celebrated generation of young new comedians and comedy writers to emerge from the famous Cambridge University Footlights Revue.

Brooke-Taylor began his television career working for On the Braden Beat, which was one of a flood of innovative new comedy shows to be created around 1962 to 1964. Subsequently he teamed up as a writer with star Eric Idle on The Frost Report and also contributed as writer and performer to the spin-off series At Last the 1948 Show, on which his collaborators were John Cleese, Marty Feldman, Graham Chapman, and Aimi Macdonald, under the leadership of David Frost as producer. This last show was a significant step in British television comedy, having a distinctly surreal air with its unconnected sketches and eccentric, often slapstick humor, which paved the way for the Monty Python series, among other successors.

After teaming up as straight man to Marty Feldman on Marty, Brooke-Taylor entered upon the most successful collaboration of his television career to date, completing a highly popular comedy trio with Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie in The Goodies. Oddie, Garden, and Brooke-Taylor had in fact already worked together once before with some success, first developing their sparky three-man act in the series Twice a Fortnight in 1967. Anarchic, weird, and often hilarious, The Goodies sought to save the world from such bizarre threats as a marauding giant kitten and a plague of Rolf Harrises. Pedaling into action on a beflagged three-seater bicycle, the trio were purveyors of a more slapstick, light-hearted brand of comedy than their counterparts in Monty Python and consequently appealed to a wider age range, with many fans in their teens or even younger.

Much of the humor in The Goodies evolved from the contrasting, and ludicrous, personalities of the three heroes. While Graeme Garden was the obsessive scientist who dreamt up all manner of wacky schemes to save the world and Bill Oddie was a short, scruffy hippy with a strong cynical streak, Tim Brooke-Taylor was the clean-cut patriot in Union Jack waistcoat, always ready with a rousing Churchillian speech when things looked bleak but first to bolt when danger reared its head. Targets of the humor included a range of contemporary fads and issues, from satirical swipes at the science fiction adventure serial Dr. Who to takeoffs of the Hollywood western.

The series was hugely successful, but ultimately it fell victim to the BBC’s indecision about whether it should be scheduled for adult or younger audiences (despite pleas from the performers themselves, it was broadcast relatively early in the evening, thus restricting the adult content of the material). The team switched to London Weekend Television in 1981 in the hope that they might fare better there, but there was no real improvement and no more programs were made after 1982.

After The Goodies, the three stars went their more or less separate ways, Tim Brooke-Taylor managing to maintain the highest profile in subsequent years. As well as establishing himself as a prominent panelist on such long-running radio programs as I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, he also developed a second television career in situation comedy, starring in several efficient but fairly unremarkable series in the 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps the most successful of these latter efforts was Me and My Girl, in which Brooke-Taylor gave support as best friend Derek Yates to Richard Sullivan, an advertising executive struggling to bring up a teenage daughter on his own. Typical of other series that were greeted with only lukewarm praise was You Must Be the Husband, in which Brooke-Taylor was the startled uptight husband of a woman newly revealed as the best-selling author of salacious romantic novels.