Bill Oddie, wildlife presenter and star of British comedy series The Goodies, dies at 85

UK television personality Bill Oddie, best known for his role in the television comedy series The Goodies and presenter of nature programmes, has died aged 85, his agent said on Monday.“Bill was a multitalented celebrity – wildlife presenter, broadcaster, comedian, writer, songwriter, musician and conservationist,” Oddie’s agent David Foster said in a statement.“Yet it was never fame that he valued. Instead he encouraged us to respect and protect the environment.“He taught us the wonder of it. He protested, lobbied and campaigned for it,” Foster added, hailing Oddie as “the country’s best-loved birder”.Oddie, who grew up in Birmingham, came to fame as one of the trio in The Goodies, starring with Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor in the comedy sketch show which ran from 1970 to 1982.The three met as students at Cambridge University, and joined the Footlights Club, where their contemporaries included British comedians John Cleese and Eric Idle, who were later to create Monty Python’s Flying Circus.Several of the songs written for The Goodies were UK chart hits, including The Funky Gibbon in 1975.Oddie in Hong Kong in 1990 for the Big Bird Race organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Photo: SCMPOddie was a passionate birdwatcher and conservationist, and presented various shows across the BBC and Channel 4, including the nature programme Springwatch.He later led a vocal campaign against a government-backed cull of badgers, blamed for spreading tuberculosis to cattle.“It’s quite clearly a travesty,” Oddie told Agence France-Presse in 2013 as he joined a patrol to save the badgers.“This is one of the most controversial, unreasonable, damaging, unnecessary conflicts I’ve ever known.”Further ReadingHe spoke movingly of suffering from depression when he was dropped from Springwatch in 2008. He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.Oddie also urged people to go out and experience the natural world.“My plea to people would be to ‘go naked’ occasionally – take off those earpieces so you hear nature and, of course, birdsong. You may not realise how precious it is until it’s gone,” he told the Daily Telegraph.