One of the GOODIE guys

Actor, writer and comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor – patriotic coward in the Goodies; regular panellist on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue – has known them all: John Cleese, Peter Cook, Humphrey Lyttelton, Eric Morecambe... Sparky, the smooth-haired Border Terrier. Katie Jarvis asked her own comedy hero how it feels to be a comedy hero

- Katie Jarvis

Yes, yes, yes. I know. I know! You were expecting me to start this Tim Brooke-Taylor interview with something about the Goodies. About how he turned up to see me on a trandem (we spoke on the phone, actually), accompanied by a 200-foot kitten. About the Union Jack waistcoat he was wearing. And how distracting it was to conduct the entire interview to a booming soundtrack of Land of Hope and Glory.

(And I will tell you about all that. Have faith!)

But, actually, I want to start with Sparky. Not because the story I’m about to tell – that Tim Brooke-Taylor told me – is particularly insightful. (Look. It was a half-hour interview. Don’t expect Daniel Kahneman.) But because I absolutely loved it. So, here we go: As a child, Tim Brooke-Taylor’s best friend was Sparky, a smooth-haired Border Terrier who one day – much to Tim’s distress - completely vanished. Not a sausage; not a trace.

When the local paper ran a story about this very loved (but missing) pet, all sorts of people came forward with unexpected anecdotes; things the family had never even suspected. “Like a bus conductor said Sparky used to get on the bus at Buxton, get off at Bakewell; the bus went on to Derby, came back, and he’d get on the bus again.”

Now we cut to a year later, when Tim is 12 and out with some friends at Belle Vue funfair (at the time, Manchester’s version of Disney World) (though more Manchester-y).