Actors - Bill Oddie

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	Actors - Bill Oddie

William Edgar (Bill) Oddie, OBE, BA, MA (Cantab.), born July 7 1941 in Rochdale (at the time, part of Lancashire), is a comedy writer and performer, author, and talented composer and musician. A birdwatcher since his childhood in Birmingham, Oddie has now established a reputation for himself as an ornithologist, conservationist and television presenter on wildlife issues. Some of his books are illustrated with his own paintings and drawings. His programmes for the BBC include Springwatch, How to Watch Wildlife, Wild in Your Garden, Birding with Bill Oddie and Britain Goes Wild with Bill Oddie.

Early life

On a 2004 episode of the BBC television series Who Do You Think You Are?, Oddie was invited to investigate his family history. The programme revealed that Oddie was raised primarily by his father after his mother was placed into long term psychiatric care suffering with bipolar disorder; and that his mother had had one miscarriage and then lost another child, a girl, after five days. It was suggested that Oddie's grandmother had prevented his mother from attending to the girl, who was crying. His mother subsequently found the child dead. Oddie speculated that his mother would have felt that his grandmother (whom she lived with) was to blame for the death of her daughter and that this psychological trauma may well have contributed to her mental ill health. For Oddie, who had previously believed that his mother had abandoned him in childhood, "it undemonised her". (Interviewed in The Idler magazine, Oddie revealed that he suffers from bouts of depression.)

Comedy and music

After attending King Edward's School, Birmingham, Oddie studied English Literature at Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, where he appeared in several Cambridge University Footlights Club productions. One of these, a revue called A Clump of Plinths, was so successful during its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that it was renamed Cambridge Circus and transferred to the West End in London, then New Zealand and Broadway. Meanwhile, still at Cambridge, Oddie wrote scripts for TV's That Was The Week That Was.

His first television appearance was in Bernard Braden's Braden Beat in 1964. Subsequently, he was a key member of the performers in the cult BBC radio series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (ISIRTA; 1965), where many of his compositions were featured. Some were released on the album Distinctly Oddie (Polydor, 1967). He was possibly one of the first performers to parody a rock song, arranging the traditional Yorkshire folk song "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" in the style of Joe Cocker's hit rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" (released on John Peel's Dandelion Records in 1970 and featured in Peel's special box of most-treasured singles), and singing "Andy Pandy" in the style of a brassy soul number such as Wilson Pickett or Geno Washington might perform. In many shows he would do short impressions of Hughie Green.

In one song on I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, Oddie performed What a Wonderful World with a voice fully reminiscent of Louis Armstrong. During the course of the song, the rest of the cast attributed the gravelly quality of his voice to a bad cold. In the background, during the rest of the song, it is possible to hear the cast call for a doctor, the arrival of the doctor and his decision that Oddie should go into hospital, the trip to hospital in an ambulance, and the operation extracting his tonsils. After this, the sound of his voice changed to a sound closer to that of Harry Secombe. He thanked the cast for curing him.

On television Oddie was co-writer and performer in the comedy series Twice a Fortnight with Graeme Garden, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Jonathan Lynn. Later, he was co-writer and performer in the comedy series Broaden Your Mind with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, for which Oddie became a cast member for the second series). Bill, Tim and Graeme then co-wrote and appeared in their television comedy series The Goodies.

Oddie was a member of 1970s BBC TV trio The Goodies, in which he starred with ISIRTA colleagues Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor (also veterans of Cambridge Footlights). He portrayed the rebel, to Brooke-Taylor's conservative and Garden's boffin, with long hair and a poster of Che Guevara in his corner. The Goodies also released records, including "Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me"/"The In-Betweenies", "Do The Funky Gibbon", and "Black Pudding Bertha", which were hit singles in 1974-5. They reformed, briefly, in 2005, for a successful 13-date tour of Australia. Tim, Bill and Graeme also voiced characters on the 1983 animated children's programme Bananaman 1983, in which Oddie voiced the characters of "Crow", "Chief O'Reilly", "Doctor Gloom", "Eric" and "the Weatherman".

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