Funny turn of events for Goodies

The pair would regularly joke about the Government’s readiness to hand out OBEs in the 1960s as they starred in BBC radio series I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. The gags continued on TV in The Goodies.

Garden, 68, said: “It’s quite ironic considering how rude we were about the honours all those years ago.”

The awards – for their contribution to “light entertainment” – means that the entire Goodies trio has been given the honour. Colleague Bill Oddie, an eminent ornithologist, was given his OBE in 2003 for services to wildlife conservation.

Garden, Brooke-Taylor and Oddie created the groundbreaking comedy The Goodies, making them among the biggest TV stars of the 1970s.

They wrote and starred in the hugely-popular show which combined surreal sketches, slapstick and sitcom, attracting a following around the world.

Brooke-Taylor, 70, said of the award: “I’m very very pleased and not to say a little surprised – but very pleasantly so. At first I thought it was my son trying to con me.

“We used to send up the honours, the OBE in particular. It was back in the 60s and Harold Wilson was giving them away like sweets to anyone he ever met.

“Graeme used to say it would be better to be an Earl and an OBE - then you could be an ‘earlobe’.

“But I think the minute Bill got one, I changed my mind about them!”

Garden said: “I never really thought I would get one. Of course Bill got one, but that was for all his wonderful wildlife work and as I don’t quite have the binocular lust he has, I wasn’t expecting it. But I’m very flattered and it’s lovely.”

He added: “We used to send the honours up in The Goodies for a long time – if we’d given the OBE back then, I think we’d have stopped the jokes.”

The show had an extensive life with more than 70 episodes, running for a decade on BBC2, then switching sides to ITV from 1981-82, although the move proved to be the programme’s downfall.

For a spell The Goodies became unlikely pop stars, with songs such as Funky Gibbon, Black Pudding Bertha and The Inbetweenies becoming hits.

In the show, each assumed an exaggerated character, Brooke-Taylor in his Union Flag waistcoat playing an ardent royalist, Garden – a medicine graduate – took the role of a mad boffin and Oddie was something of an anarchist.

The show also tackled serious topics such as South African apartheid.

Garden, Brooke-Taylor and Oddie were all Cambridge graduates and had been members of Footlights.

They went on to collaborate on BBC radio comedy I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again.

Aberdeen-born Garden, 68, is also known for devising the classic “antidote to panel games”, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.

He has continued to write for TV and appear on stage and in acting and presenting roles.

Garden said they have already celebrated the news.

“The family have been sworn to secrecy but we had a bit of a knees-up when we had a get-together in San Francisco – we had gone out to see a show with music written by my son.”

Derbyshire-born Brooke-Taylor has appeared on stage, in films such as 1971’s Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory and on other TV shows such as long-running ITV series Me And My Girl and most recently Heartbeat.

He has also been a regular panellist on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.