If you were a kid in Australia during the 1970s or ’80s, there’s a good chance you grew up watching The Goodies. And if you were indeed among the millions who tuned into the comedy trio’s madcap adventures on the ABC on weeknights, where the 73 half-hour episodes they made between 1970 and 1982 played on heavy repeat for years on end, there’s a good chance Bill Oddie, who has died aged 85, was your favourite.

The Goodies were quintessentially English, the trio having arisen from the same revue culture at Cambridge University that birthed Monty Python (indeed, the members of the two troupes were friends and frequently collaborated).

Graeme (specs and sideburns) was the brainy, rational, science-minded one (in real life, Graeme Garden was a medical doctor); Tim was the rule- and order-obsessed Rule Britannia stiff (Tim Brooke-Taylor studied law); and Bill (Oddie, who studied literature) was the oddball eccentric, constantly upsetting the most rational and orderly plans of the ostensibly do-gooder trio with a sprinkling of chaos. Which was, of course, where the fun lay.

Bearded, short and prone to breaking into fits of giggles while making some sort of body-fixated joke or vaguely sexual innuendo (yes it was framed as a kids’ show, but there was plenty of thinly veiled smut and adult humour in there too), Oddie was the anti-authoritarian larrikin of this tribe. No wonder we loved him.

He wrote and played most of the songs that featured in the show, and their 1975 track The Funky Gibbon even became a mainstream hit, peaking at number 4 in the British charts and landing The Goodies on Top of the Pops, where they were introduced by the Bay City Rollers (Oddie made fun of their broad Scottish accents, of course).

Giant killer kittens, a bid to become the Che Guevara of Britain, a pirate radio station that played just one song – these were the stuff of our childhood weeknights thanks to the absurdist humour of Oddie and his mates. Stop-motion filming, early and widespread use of chroma-key (shooting scenes against a blue or green-screen, so that different background footage could be added in the edit), freewheeling riffs on the broader pop culture: this is what The Goodies gave us, and Oddie was its oddball centre.

One of the most fondly remembered episodes was that in which young Bill journeys up to t’north to learn t’fabled ways of t’ancient martial art of Ecky Thump, which mostly consists of wearing an oversized flat cap, baggy pants with braces and wielding a ruddy great black pudding as a weapon. An extended play on the TV series Kung-Fu – another staple of that 1970s TV-watching generation – it bore endless rewatches and still raises a grin (and the odd groan) today.

Outside of the show that made him a star (and outside of England, The Goodies were nowhere bigger than they were in Australia), Oddie was renowned as a twitcher, a dedicated birdwatcher. He’d been at it from childhood, and remained at it well into his later years. And thanks to a string of nature programs made primarily for the BBC over 25 years, he took the pursuit – and the broader notion of passion for the natural environment – from the fringe to the mainstream.

Not that he wasn’t willing to ruffle a few feathers even at the height of his twitch-induced respectability.

He caused some real outrage in 2014, for instance, when he took a strong and principled line against those who opposed immigration during a debate on the BBC.

Rather than talk about restricting immigrants, Oddie argued, “there should just as likely be a restriction on the number of children that British people have because over-population is … the big problem”.

Anti-immigration activists sought to stop “perfectly well-qualified people” from entering the UK, “but the woman down the road has just had her 10th baby,” he continued. “Well I’m sorry but they are the people that really should be contained.”

A proud advocate of multiculturalism, Oddie added during that exchange that he could not bear the isolationism to which his nation’s inhabitants were often prone. “I personally loathe that kind of chauvinism,” he said. “I’m very often ashamed to be British.”

That’s all right, Bill. We’d have had you any time.

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