Actors - Tim Brooke-Taylor

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	Actors - Tim Brooke-Taylor

Tim Brooke-Taylor (born July 17, 1940 in Buxton, Derbyshire) is a British comic actor most well known in Britain as a member of "The Goodies" comedy trio and as one of the panel members of the comedy radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

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Education and comedy

Tim Brooke-Taylor is the grandson of a parson who played centre-forward for England's football team in the 1890s. His mother was an international lacrosse player and his father a solicitor. Despite an expulsion from school at the early age of five and a half years, Tim studied at Winchester College and at Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. There he read Economics and Law and mixed with other budding comedians, including John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Bill Oddie, and Jonathan Lynn in the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club (of which Tim became President in 1963). The Footlights Club revue, A Clump of Plinths was so successful during its Edinburgh Fringe Festival run, that the show was renamed as Cambridge Circus and the revue transferred to the West End in London, and then later taken to both New Zealand and Broadway. He was also active in the Pembroke College drama society, the Pembroke Players.

Tim Brooke-Taylor moved swiftly into BBC Radio with the fast-paced comedy show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again in which he performed and co-wrote. As the screeching eccentric Lady Constance de Coverlet, he could be relied upon to generate the loudest audience response of many programmes in this long-running series merely with her unlikely catchphrase "did somebody call?" uttered after a comic and transparent feed-line, as their adventure story reached its climax or cliffhanger ending. Other members of I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again were John Cleese, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden, David Hatch and Jo Kendall.

Tim Brooke-Taylor was a writer/performer on the television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show, with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. The famous Four Yorkshiremen sketch was co-written by the four writers/performers of the series — Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. The 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch was one of the few sketches which survived the destruction of the series (by the tapes being wiped), by David Frost's Paradine Productions (which produced the series), and the sketch appears on the DVD of "At Last the 1948 Show". The "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" has also been performed during Amnesty concert performances (by members of Monty Python - one time including Rowan Atkinson in place of a Monty Python member), as well as being performed during Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
and other on Monty Python shows - as well as being featured on Monty Python record (and on Monty Python CDs), with the inevitable result that the "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" is now considered a Monty Python sketch, and its origin (including the co-authorship of the sketch by the non-Monty Python writers Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman) is unfortunately ignored, overlooked or forgotten, by many people.

Tim was also a cast member of the television comedy series Marty with Marty Feldman, John Junkin and Roland MacLeod- a compilation of the two series of "Marty" has been released on a DVD with the title of "It's Marty", as well as appearing in Hello, Cheeky!, a stand up comedy show also starring Barry Cryer and John Junkin. "Hello, Cheeky!" was performed for both radio and television.

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