One Flew Into the Cuckoo's Egg

My younger daughter, who is a big Goodies fan and also a fan of birds, requested this book and now I've read it too. Bill Oddie is best known and loved in Australia as a member of the Goodies, whose program was endlessly repeated in a child friendly slot on the ABC (just before Dr Who) for years and years, so we learned the episodes by heart. In fact as an adult I was somewhat startled to discover quite a few episodes that were not child-friendly at all. In the UK, the Goodies was considered a comedy for adults.

Oddie's autobiography falls into distinct sections. The most fascinating is the first, where he discusses his childhood. His mother 'left' the family when he was a small boy -- she was hospitalised with mental illness for much of Oddie's life, and he never really got to know her at all, finding out some crucial facts only when he took part in Who Do You Think You Are? much later in life. His father was supportive but rather passive, and his grandmother seems, frankly, to have been a horrible woman with plenty of issues of her own. Given Bill's own battles with mental illness, this part of the book is really touching and sad.

His years with the Goodies and later TV work are skimmed over in rather cursory fashion, and then suddenly we are plunged into a real-time crisis, as Oddie slides into a depressive episode in the middle of writing the book. Eventually he pulls out of it, but it's a raw and quite startling interlude. The book ends on what's probably intended as a bright note, as he looks forward to making more wildlife programs (his real passion) and perhaps mastering a computer. However, this made an unexpectedly poignant ending, as I'd already googled and discovered that the year after the completing the book, Oddie was sacked from presenting his beloved wildlife series and ended up hospitalised for depression for most of the following year.

One Flew Into the Cuckoo's Egg is an uneven book, but in its own way, an unexpectedly absorbing one.