A Walk in the Black Forest
Tim Brooke-Taylor, one third of the legendary comedy trio The Goodies, has died of Covid-19. A contemporary and sometime-colleague of the Monty Python team, he appeared in the original version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch on At Last the 1948 Show, and was also a member of the long-running BBC radio panel show I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. But to a generation of children in Britain, Australia and elsewhere, he was the Union-Jack-waistcoat-wearing Tim from The Goodies, the BBC television comedy show that dominated the 1970s.
I’ve been feeling particularly bereft since seeing this news today, as Tim and the rest of the Goodies were giants of my childhood TV-viewing in Australia. I’d been rewatching some episodes with my daughter in recent months, and he was just as brilliant in them as I’d remembered, even if some episodes haven’t aged as well as others. On radio, he sounded as sharp as ever, well into his seventies.
Goodbye, you wonderful, funny man.