Bill Oddie, the former star of The Goodies turned wildlife broadcaster and author, has died at the age of 85. Oddie was the first-ever celebrity to appear on Who Do You Think You Are? in 2004.
Bill was open about suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, he said that he loved spending time with his children and grandchildren but didn't "have much of a family" as a child. His mother, Lillian, didn't bring him up, and he was raised by his father Harry and paternal grandmother Emily.
Family tragedies
“This isn’t curiosity, this journey, it’s self-help,” Bill said as he visited the family home in Quinton, a suburb of Birmingham, for the first time in four decades. He said his only memories of Lillian were "funny, isolated pictures" such as the embarrassment of stumbling in on her taking a bath.
Lillian suffered from mental illness. During the 1950s, she was one of the 150,000 residents in Britain’s mental institutions, a figure 10 times higher than today. Bill was told she was schizophrenic but when he met two of the nurses who looked after her, they said she had manic depression, another name for bipolar disorder. They also remembered Lillian receiving electroconvulsive therapy.
Bill went on to meet his aunt Margery. She told him that Lillian lost two children, one to a late miscarriage and the second aged just five days old. Worse, she said, Lillian’s daughter was upstairs crying but Emily told Lillian to ignore the child. When Lillian did go upstairs, the baby had choked.
In Rochdale, where the Oddies lived at this time, Bill saw the death certificate, which says the child died because of 'inanition', meaning she was poorly nourished. Likely Lillian could have done nothing to save the child, but she might never have known this.
In Rochdale, Bill also learned more about Emily from another aunt, Marjorie. The picture emerged of an undemonstrative, difficult woman who was struck by tragedy.
In 1927, Emily's husband, Wilkinson, died under anesthetic during an operation to remove a cancerous growth in his throat, possibly an industrial illness caused by working as an 'overlooker for cotton blanket weavers' in Rochdale's cotton industry.
New relatives
Bill was also able to reunite with his distant cousin, amateur genealogist Neil Oddie. Neil gave him a family tree and told him of 30 new living relatives.
Bill visited "Oddie country" on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where his ancestors had lived for generations. He also met Basil Oddie, another distant relative.
Bill said his journey to trace his family history was a "real lifesaver" and he wished he could have done more to help his mother but he understood her absence better now.
