Bill Oddie, who has died at the age of 85, was one of Britain's best known comedians and naturalists. A product of the Cambridge Footlights, the cradle of so much post-war British comedy, he shot to fame in the 1970s as a member of the anarchic Goodies.
Bird watching was a lifelong passion and he moved into presenting nature programmes, including the BBC's Springwatch. But his life was plagued by bouts of acute depression which caused repeated admissions to psychiatric hospitals - where Oddie suffered from severe lithium poisoning as a result of his treatment.
Where did Bill Oddie come from?
William Edgar Oddie was born near Rochdale, Lancashire on 7 July 1941. His ancestors on both sides were mill workers. However, his father Harry had made good, moved to Birmingham and worked as an accountant at the Midlands Electricity Board.
The comedian later said his father's work ethic greatly influenced his approach to his own career. But Bill saw little of his mother Lillian during his childhood. She had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent much of her time in hospital. Oddie later discovered that her depression had followed the premature deaths of his two older siblings.
As a child, he became interested in bird watching; a record of one of his first observations was even preserved in a West Midlands Bird Club publication in 1956.
After leaving King Edward's School, where he was an enthusiastic rugby player, he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge to read English. There he became involved with the Footlights Club, which numbered Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor among its members.
Oddie wrote for and appeared in the famous 1964 review, A Clump of Plinths, which, having taken the Edinburgh Festival by storm, travelled to London's West End as well as New Zealand and the United States.
While still at Cambridge, Oddie wrote material for David Frost's satirical BBC TV show, That Was the Week That Was.
He fondly recalled a poem he wrote for fellow comedian Lance Percival in the style of The Ballad of Eskimo Nell about Camberley Kate who seduced dustbin men in Kent.
A beardless Bill Oddie (R) with the cast of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again in 1965
Having left university, he went on to join the cast of the BBC radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, which featured many of the Footlights performers.
He was also developing as a composer, writing many of the show's songs, some of which appeared on an album, Distinctly Oddie, in 1967.
How did The Goodies make him famous?
While some of the old Footlights team went off to form Monty Python, Oddie - together with Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor - created The Goodies. It featured three characters on their 'trandem' who pedalled about offering themselves for hire with the tagline 'We Do Anything, Anywhere, Anytime'.
We Do Anything, Anywhere, Anytime
This spawned a series of comical situations, much slapstick and the use of fairly primitive special effects, mainly speeded-up film.
One of the memorable episodes was Kitten Kong, in which a giant feline toppled the Post Office Tower. A version of this episode won the Silver Rose at Montreux TV Festival in 1972.
Oddie composed a number of comic songs for the series, often parodies of contemporary pop music. The most successful, Funky Gibbon, reached number 4 in the UK charts and the trio performed it on Top of the Pops.
Forty years later, the track was re-released and the profits given to a campaign to preserve the primate's habitat.
The Goodies: (l to r) Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie in 1975
The Goodies ran on BBC Television for most of the 1970s, eventually transferring to ITV for a short - and less than successful - period.
The show became cult viewing in Australia - and the team reformed to tour the country in 2005 - but the BBC never repeated it in the UK, something which annoyed the three performers.
Garden eventually went on record to suggest that the lack of repeats was punishment for the trio's
