Tim Brooke-Taylor was the ultimate team player with gift for comedy

All those who knew Tim Brooke-Taylor agree on two things – he was a genuinely nice bloke and the ultimate team player.

Tim, who passed away aged 79 on April 12 after contracting coronavirus, was the most modest of comedians.

To fellow comics who worked with him or fans who met him, he was always likeable, kind and generous.

To those who worked closely with him, including some of the biggest names in British comedy over the past half-century, it was his lack of ego they remembered.

Never one to pursue a solo career, Tim loved being part of a team, bouncing ideas off others.

As part of a team he helped create some of the longest-running comedy shows on British TV and radio, and would find great success taking them overseas, too.

Not that his life began auspiciously. As he once revealed, Tim was expelled from school before he was even six years old.

He and a friend were the only two boys at a girls’ school, and struggled with having to be Brownies on a Thursday just like everyone else.

They also, he admitted, called Miss Mellon, their teacher, Miss Smellon, which they found hilarious.

The school didn’t laugh, however, unlike the millions he would make laugh in years to come, and they were kicked out.

He would go down a whole lot better in a later part of his education.

Tim became president of the Footlights club at Cambridge University, and toured the UK and beyond with its revue in 1964 in his early 20s.

But his career could have taken a more sporty turn, if an award for his brilliant cricket bowling was anything to go by.

The fact his grandfather, Francis Pawson, played at centre-forward for England in the 1880s and his mother was an international lacrosse player also suggest Tim could have done well in sport.

That year 1964, however, demonstrated where his real future lay. His comedy work at Cambridge led to I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again for BBC radio, and he never looked back.

Featuring future Goodies sidekicks Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, not to mention John Cleese, it became a huge hit with the youth of the day.

Live recordings were raucous and wild, and the kids loved it. The show led to spin-off I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, which has lasted to the present day.

Beeb newsreaders apologise for mistakes by uttering the immortal phrase “I’m sorry, I’ll read that again,” and they reckoned it ideally suited a show that would feature plenty mayhem and mistakes, with much of the laughter stemming from things going a bit wrong.

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue would get its title because it was a poke at most panel games, with the teams given silly things to do by a chairman. To run from 1972 to today demonstrates that it really was a very good idea.

Neither classic show, however, can compete with the iconic TV series that most of us think of the minute we hear the name Tim Brooke-Taylor.

With Garden and Oddie, The Goodies’ eccentric, often surreal shows would also see huge spin-off success, with several hit singles, most famously Funky Gibbon, and memorable sketches like Kitten Kong.

Trick photography, slapstick and special effects done on anything but a big Hollywood budget all gave the show its special magic, but the chemistry between its three stars was crucial.

If Garden seemed the bookish one, and Oddie the wacky one, Tim was always the nicest and most loveable one.

One famous episode was filmed completely in one room, after they realised they’d blown the budget for that series, and it was none the worse for it.

This was thanks in large part to the genius that was Tim Brooke-Taylor.