In 1981 I saw Bob Goody and Patrick Barlow in the National Theatre of Brent while at university. It was a revelation to discover you didn’t have to be in Monty Python to be as funny as Monty Python. Two months later, I had written and performed in my first comic play, never having dreamed of a life on the stage.
Hugh Laurie remembers seeing Bob taking his daughters to school in Archer Street, Soho, next to the strip club. I was working a lot in Soho in the late 1980s and would also often see Bob charging around with his girls in a buggy, but was too frightened to approach him and tell him how he had inspired me, for fear he’d think I was a tit.
Finally we met and I learned over many happy pints what a beautiful man he was. And hilarious to the last. I recently sent Alan Bennett Bob’s poem The Lucky Ones, an ode to the joys of colostomy bags. It made him howl with laughter.
I was filming when I heard Bob had died. The first people I told were Pete and June, our costume department. “Oh beautiful Bob!” They had worked with him on Julian Barratt’s film Curtains, in which Bob was the Punch and Judy man. “We’d sneak on to set to watch Bob,” they said. To watch his technique, his method. It was pure genius.”
