Bill Oddie was many things but he really was a birdwatcher, from the age of around five years (when he was taking birds’ eggs like many other small boys) and seven years when he asked for a pair of binoculars (see his interview with Keith Betton in Behind More Binoculars). He did some desultory birding when at Cambridge University (I know the feeling) and then used theatre tours and filming for The Goodies to to fit in birding in different places. He persuaded the BBC that Portland Bill was an obvious place to film outdoor scenes of The Goodies and saw Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Red-throated Pipit, Common Rosefinch and Alpine Swift there.
Even as a boy he visited Fair Isle, Lundy and Out Skerries and became a regular on Bryher, on Scilly. Foreign birding trips followed and his honeymoon with Laura was in Papua New Guinea filming Oddie in Paradise.
For many birders of my age, the publication of Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book (1980) brought our hobby to a wider audience with Bill’s tales of birds seen, missed and misidentified and the arcane jargon of dipping, twitching etc but like some, but by no means all birders, Bill moved gradually into campaigning and helping wildlife through using his celebrity as a comedian (and singer and actor) to gain publicity for environmental causes.
He served on RSPB Council and helped a lot behind the scenes after that period and on the council of the World Land Trust. I sat next to him at some of my earliest World Land Trust meetings, and Bill would maintain a sotto voce commentary on the meeting while doodling madly. His doodles were of real and imaginary creatures and I have some of them somewhere!
Bill was diagnosed as bipolar and had bouts of depression and elation later in life which were reduced once treated but some will have come across him during bad periods and not experienced the friendly, charming and amusing person I knew through occasional meetings. He was sometimes absent from public life for months on end and people would know that ‘Bill was unwell’.
Bill Oddie was probably the most famous UK birder of the past six decades and longer. He really was a birdwatcher and not simply, or even primarily, a twitcher but someone who really liked birds and enjoyed looking at them and thinking about them. Comedians sometimes aren’t taken seriously but Bill was a thinker and a supporter of many causes. Depending on your age you might remember Bill mostly from The Goodies, from Springwatch or as the slightly grumpy, short, bearded guy who was sometimes hilariously funny on panel shows. He was all of those things and more, quite a lot more.
