Comedy legend Tim Brooke-Taylor’s death  has shocked the countless viewers and listeners who grew up with his genius in award-winning shows like The Goodies and 40 years of radio staple I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Nick Joy had the pleasure of meeting Tim in February 2020 at the Sci-Fi Ball and we present this previously unpublished interview, believed to be the last he gave, as our tribute to him, talking about Evita parodies, a funky gibbon and a giant kitten.

 

 

 

 

Are you looking forward to the cabaret tonight, a version of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again?

I am, but I’m not quite sure what I’m doing! OK, I do to a certain extent, but we’re going to have a little read through later which will get me ready. I’ve worked with these guys before [The Offstage Theatre Group] – they do a version of the shows I was in during the 60s. Occasionally I’ve guested for them, and I’m not entirely sure what the script is going to be tonight, but they do a great job.

I guess the million dollar question is what makes the perfect comedy sketch. And as an example I have to cite your ‘Don’t Cry For Me Marge and Tina’ skit from The Goodies in 1980. It has never left me, basically spoiling Evita from then onwards. Did it feel special at the time?

You don’t think that at all. The wonderful thing about that sketch – and I often play it during my ‘evening with’ shows – is that you expect people to get the joke long before the end. And they don’t! That’s the wonderful thing. It’s very satisfying – I think they’re being distracted from seeing the girls’ names. You don’t expect anything to last that long, so that fact we’re talking about it here today – yes, the word is satisfying.

Equally, does it surprise you that while some sketches are indelibly lodged in our memories, others that you might have believed to be cleverer are soon forgotten?

Yes, and lot of that is down to the episode that the material appeared in. One of the best sequences we ever did was about the movies, and the visual jokes were terrific, but the rest of that episode wasn’t very good, so it’s not shown very often. It can be luck of the draw that a certain sketch is in a good one and that’s what helps grow its popularity.

Have you ever reached a point where you said ‘If someone mentions ‘Funky Gibbon’ one more time, I’ll scream’?

Well, it might come as a surprise, but not many people play that for me now. It wasn’t one of our best songs [though peaked at 4 in the UK Chart in 1975], but it was fun to do at the time. Bill [Oddie – fellow Goodie] wrote some wonderful songs, and some of the tracks on the LPs – as they were back then – were some of his best work. I used to live in Cricklewood, and Bill had this fantastic Beatles-style lyric ‘Cricklewood. No-one’s going anywhere in Cricklewood!’ That’s something that nobody else will have heard, but it was one of his best. There were lots like that.

How was it appearing on Top of the Pops with Funky Gibbon?

That was wonderful. Terrific. One of those unbelievable things. And then going and having a meal with [dance troupe] Pan’s People afterwards was pretty good too! Life was about as good as it could get. I remember Paul McCartney being on the same show as us, but we did quite a few, so they all roll into one. Funky Gibbon didn’t sell as many as The Inbetweenies because it wasn’t released near Christmas, but it did get a higher chart position. A lot of success for these songs is dependent on when they are released.

There’s a lot of renewed interest in The Goodies at present generated by last October’s 14-disc release of The Complete Collection by Network. It looks better now than it ever has.

It does look much better, especially the filming. It was shot on something like 16mm, so not the highest quality, but they’ve transformed it and made it look really good. It’s extraordinary what they can do now, like adding colour to footage from the First World War [Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old] and running it at the correct speed. It’s amazing – we could have done with a bit of that technique at the time!

Was The Goodies an expensive show relative to other comedies at the time?

It was expensive in in many respects, but we used the in-house visual effects department, and wardrobe and makeup. When we did filming, we had to do it in a certain time. Some of my favourite shows were created when we ran out of money and couldn’t afford any new sets or filming – you all have to be more inventive. That’s what shaped The End of the World Show and it ended up being one of my favourite episodes. If the money ran out, we had to cancel things. If it rained during outdoor filming, you had to rewrite the thing just to fit in the fact that you’re undercover. That was very frustrating. When you watch the show at the time, you’re thinking ‘Why couldn’t we have done this or that?’ You watch it now and you forget that and just watch what’s there.

Do you have fond memories of the big ticket scenes like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout and Kitten Kong swinging on the Post Office Tower?

With the kitten, we knew it was going to be remembered. There were some great shots in that. When we went to Montreux we did a slight rewrite of it, and the original kitten was no longer a kitten any more, so we had to get another one. We don’t like to tell people that… but it was treated very well!

And what of the giant Dougal chasing you, Graeme and Bill?

Ha ha. Yes, all we could hear was the effing and blinding of the people running inside it, bumping into each other. ‘Who wrote this? This is ridiculous. No further, please!’ I’ve cleaned that up for your ears!

Another favourite of mine was the Four Yorkshiremen, which started on At Last the 1948 Show before becoming a Monty Python favourite.

Oh yes. In the last year, the BFI have produced a collection of what’s available of At Last the 1948 Show and again they’ve made it better quality-wise, and it was nice to be able to show the Four Yorkshiremen as part of the celebration. It was good fun to see it. I hadn’t seen it since the day it was shown. So many episodes were wiped, but were then found on tele-cine around the world in Sweden and Australia. They put the pieces back together and it was like seeing your past coming back. It would be quite fun to colourise that!

It also feels contemporary. It’s not showing its age.

Thank you. Well, I like to think so. They were good days. Marty Feldman was a genius. I wrote quite a bit with him and he was also writing Round the Horne at the time.

And finally, could I mention a former comedy contemporary of yours, Terry Jones, who we lost recently. What are your memories of him?

He was a very loyal person. Funnily enough, I remember a party being given by David Frost, and Terry and Michael Palin coming over to me and saying ‘We’re really sorry, we hadn’t realised the Four Yorkshiremen had been done before.’ It was very thoughtful of them to come and say that, and when they did the O2 concerts [Monty Python Live (Mostly) – 2014] they arranged a little bit of payment to come to me. But he himself was incredibly knowledgeable. Very clever, sadly missed, but not been well for some time. It’s not a relief when anybody dies, but it wasn’t a sudden thing.

 

We send our thoughts to Tim’s family at this time. He will be greatly missed.

Photo from the Sci-Fi Ball panel © Kevin Meilak; ISIRTAA photo © Trevtography; used with permission