Star of The Goodies cemented comic reputation on long-running radio show

Tim Brooke-taylor, who has died aged 79 from coronavirus, became a television favourite in the 1970s cult comedy series The Goodies, but earned a more enduring niche in British affections as a regular panellist on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.

As the programme billing explained, they were given ‘‘silly things to do’’ by the chairman, Humphrey Lyttelton. These assorted absurdities included singing one song to the tune of another, the redefinition of words (Brooke-taylor’s contributions included ‘‘Snuff box – a coffin’’) and an incomprehensible round called Mornington Crescent, the rules of which (if there were any) were never explained. By the time the show was launched in

1972, as ‘‘the antidote to panel games’’, Brooke-taylor was already an established television personality by virtue of his co-starring role in The Goodies.

Usually clad in a sober suit and tie, and latterly sporting a Union Jack waistcoat, the slightly built Brooke-taylor was the amiable toff of the Goodies triumvirate, co-starring with Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, both of whom had been his friends and contemporaries at Cambridge.

The opening titles featured the trio struggling to pedal a ‘‘trandem’’ – a tandem for three – and the show relied almost exclusively on droll visual, rather than verbal, humour. When a Scottish viewer died laughing at a sketch showing a fight between a black pudding and a set of bagpipes, his widow wrote in thanking them for making his last moments so happy.

Each Goodie was supposed to be cast as a magnified version of his real self, although Brooke-taylor complained that his on-screen persona was quite unlike his own and that he never wore a suit. But, as Bill Oddie pointed out, ‘‘somehow we always felt he should be wearing one. Anyway, he’s the posh one with the silly double-barrelled name and the poncey blond hair.’’

The idea was that the threesome were running an agency that offered to do anything at any time, with Brooke-taylor as the patriotic frontman, Garden the clever backroom boffin and Oddie the aggressive, Bolshie eco-warrior. The show ran for nine series between 1970 and 1983.

In the meantime Brooke-taylor had been making a name for himself on radio as a purveyor of silly voices on the rumbustious weekly sketch show I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (1964-73), notably in the outrageous character of Lady Constance de Coverlet, a lusty old lush who greeted everyone with warbling yelps.

The younger son of a solicitor, Timothy Julian Brooke-taylor was born in Buxton, Derbyshire. His mother had been an international lacrosse player, and his maternal grandfather, Francis Pawson, a clergyman known as Parson Pawson, had played centre-forward at football for England in the 1890s.

As a child Tim was enthralled by radio variety shows and comedies such as Much Binding in the Marsh, and at Winchester College was disappointed to find that acting was discouraged.

At Cambridge, where he read law, he joined the Footlights acting group, meeting John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Bill Oddie. He appeared in the 1963 revue A Clump of Plinths, which transferred to the West End, and went on tour to New Zealand.

He worked on The Frost Report and The Frost Programme (both 1966) before his talents were more prominently showcased in At Last The 1948 Show (1967), co-starring with Cleese. He returned to the BBC in 1968 as stooge to Marty Feldman in It’s Marty, followed by two series of Broaden Your Mind (1968-69) in which he co-starred with Garden, and for which they wrote most of the material.

In the mid-1970s, having established himself in The Goodies and I’m Sorry I Haven’t

A Clue, Brooke-taylor ventured to seek a pay rise for his appearances on the latter. A reply from the contracts department pointed out that Peter Sellers had once dared to ask for more money for The Goon Show. ‘‘And you don’t hear him much on the radio now,’’ the letter finished primly.

A keen amateur cricketer, Brooke-taylor turned out for the Lord’s Taverners XI against the MCC President’s XI in 1975, and published a witty book, Tim Brooke-taylor’s Cricket Box, in 1987. His earlier anecdotal survey of the British Empire, Rule Britannia, appeared in 1983.

In 1980 he was installed as rector of St Andrews University, arriving for the ceremony dangling from a helicopter that winched him to the ground. He was appointed OBE in 2011.

One of the very few Winchester old boys to make a successful living as a comic actor, Brooke-taylor said he owed much to the school: ‘‘It made me work much harder than I would have done, taught me to analyse things well and not to be arrogant. I’m typical of the Wykehamist who plays down his abilities.’’

Tim Brooke-taylor married, in 1968, Christine Weadon, who survives him with their two sons. – Telegraph Group