A rare combination of humour and pathos: the sublimely talented Neil Innes

Fans of that beloved British cultural institution Doctor Who are wont to talk about ‘their’ doctor – that is, which iteration of the character was their entry point to the franchise. The same might be said of fans of Neil Innes, the much loved songwriter, musician and comedian who died in 2019, aged 75.

Creating happiness seems to have been one of Innes’s gifts, in public as well as private

In the 1960s, Innes was a key member of the exhilaratingly unpredictable Bonzo Dog Band, whose blend of verbal, musical and visual humour remains matchless in its absurdity, breadth and daring. He was the band’s de facto musical director, or, as he described it, the ‘misery guts who kept saying lets’s all play the same chords at least 80 per cent of the time’ – a policy some Bonzos found dictatorial. He and his fellow songwriter Vivian Stanshall were the Lennon and McCartney for a generation of awkward kids who looked askance at the grown-up world and took comfort in laughing at it instead.

In the 1980s, another generation of outsiders discovered Innes through The Raggy Dolls, an animated series for children, for which he performed all the voices and wrote every episode. It followed the adventures of a group of misshapen dolls who found themselves in the factory’s reject bin. Others will know Innes from his work as a member of the Monty Python team, primarily when they performed live in the 1970s. He went on to form a close working relationship with Eric Idle. The two collaborated on Idle’s Rutland Weekend Television, which itself spawned the glorious All You Need is Cash, a film about the Rutles, a parody of the Beatles, for which Innes wrote some 20 songs, all powerfully evocative of the Fab Four while fresh and joyously themselves.