Andy Cunningham
Self-taught magician and creator of TV’S Bodger & Badger
ANDY CUNNINGHAM, who has died aged 67, was a ventriloquist, magician, actor, writer, illustrator and all-round slapstick entertainer, both on- and offstage.
Best known for his 1990s children television series Bodger & Badger, in which he played an incompetent odd-job man, aided and abetted by a puppet badger addicted to chucking mashed potato about, Cunningham attracted huge audiences, starred in pantomimes and even became a fixture at the Glastonbury festival.
Andrew James Cunningham was born on May 13 1950 at Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, the third child of a teacher. A lively and mischievous child, Cunningham later claimed to have come from a Newcastle taxi-driver’s family and have uncles living called Billy, Bobby and Bertie.
After a spell at St John’s College, Southsea, he won a place at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where his originality was spotted by the English dons John Casey and Jeremy Prynne. Uninfluenced by preconceptions, Cunningham looked at literature with a fresh eye and made his first theatrical appearance playing the slave in Waiting for Godot. Alas, he had serious problems putting his thoughts on paper, and after a whole night in the Caius library trying to write an essay on the romantic movement, came up with only two words: “Shelley’s Poems”.
Unsurprisingly, he failed his exams and left Cambridge after two years though later he completed his degree at Reading University. By this stage he had established himself as a master of conversation, a devotee of the cheapest cigarette available, Players No 6, and an indiscriminate drinker capable of chasing a bottle of vintage claret with a pint of rough cider. Deciding that her son’s harlequin-style clothes smelt of drugs, his mother once took the rare step of burning the lot.
In his twenties, Cunningham taught himself stage magicianship and ventriloquism and launched himself in London’s pubs and clubs with a mindreading puppet rat, Magritte, who not only sang My Favourite Bins but also excited guests at a private party by admonishing a top London lawyer: “Empty your mind of all thoughts! Pretend you are at work!” He also worked as an actor, writer and director for the Covent Garden Community Theatre Group, in the process giving Julian Clary his first professional break.
Meanwhile, he had enjoyed his first full-time job as a handyman at a West London nursery school – a role for which he was entirely unsuited but which inspired him to create his famous Bodger character, write and illustrate Mr Bodger’s Jumping Hat (1986) and, two years later, accompanied by his goggleeyed badger friend, make his television debut on a Saturday morning children’s show. In 1989 he began a 10-year run of his own BBC series in which Bodger was seen working as a chef, school-caretaker, zookeeper, guesthouse proprietor and other down-to-earth roles.
From 1995, he was helped to make this series by his then partner Jane Bassett, soon to become a brilliant dancer-on-stilts under the name Dame Anna Peglova. Cunningham’s perfect foil, Jane wrote and acted with him, providing a voice for the cheese-crazy puppet Mousey.
A lifelong outsider, Cunningham was often funniest offstage, preferring conversation over monologues, endlessly improvising and discussing ordinary events in a comically upside-down manner. He lived in Brighton, enjoying a domestic life of what a friend called “contented chaos”. Unaffected by religious faith, he remained entirely sympathetic to those who felt otherwise and faced his death from cancer with a mixture of depression and merriment.
He is survived by Jane Bassett, his sister Tessa (a Daily Mail journalist), and by his daughter Phoebe.
Andy Cunningham, born May 13 1950, died June 5 2017