My friend and erstwhile writing partner Bob Goody, who has died of cancer aged 71, was an immensely gifted, charismatic actor, writer and poet.
While training at Rada in London in the early 1970s, he met a young, unknown theatre director called Mel Smith. With Bob being long and thin and Mel maybe not so much, it was suggested they should “do” something together.
Along with the musician Peter Brewis, they wrote and performed a series of two-man black comedy theatre shows - Ave You ‘Eard the One About Joey Baker? Irony in Dorking (which won an Edinburgh Fringe first award) and The Gambler, an Olivier Award nominated show that ran in the West End at the Comedy theatre. In 1980 they went on to write and co-star in their own ITV series, Smith & Goody.
Outgoing, warm, ineffably generous, Bob was a natural performer. With his distinctive appearance and unique comic talent, he was an unforgettable presence on stage and screen. Among hundreds of theatre, TV and film appearances, he was an original member of the theatre company Shared Experience and performed a one-man show, The Insomniac in Morgue Drawer Nine, for them in 1982.
He subsequently toured with the RSC, was part of Patrick Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent and played Chief Weasel in Alan Bennett’s acclaimed adaptation of The Wind In the Willows for the National Theatre in 1994. Also a brilliant improviser, he was recently lauded for his roles in three improvised feature films by the director Jon Sanders.
Bob was born in Brighton, East Sussex, the son of Ken Goody, an airline training manager, and his wife, Hilda. He went to Brighton and Hove grammar and then Brighton Tech, and then on to Rada, where he and I met and began working together.
Bob never stopped writing, Bic pen and notepad always at hand, right to the end. In 1985 he and I co-wrote the BBC1 sitcom Wilderness Road. In 2008 he wrote the libretto for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein opera The Fashion. And then, after he was press-ganged into a solo appearance at a festival in Totnes and had to come up with something to fill the spot, the poetry appeared.
What began as a knockabout diversion ended up as a book of verse, War and Paracetemol (2021) – charting Bob’s life, and more particularly, the journey of his illness. Funny, profound and often in extremely bad taste, these verses are in many ways his true artistic legacy.
Bob is survived by his wife, Gina (nee Donovan), whom he married in 1978, their daughters Gemma, Seonaid and Sophie, grandchildren Zack, Ayah, Constance and Dolores, and his brother, Dave.
