# Bill Oddie

William Edgar Oddie OBE (born 7 July 1941) is an English comic actor, musician, songwriter, artist, birder, conservationist, writer, and television presenter of wildlife programmes.

## Quotes

* If you report what you think is a Bluetail, which actually turns out to be a funny robin, you can validly distract from your error by claiming that an aberrant robin is actually ornithologically more intriguing than a Red-flanked Bluetail.
** Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book. Eyre Methuen. 1980. p. 93.
* The truth is, every single British reptile is somewhere in Dorset. ... They call 'em the big six. Actually, it's the fairly small, slithery six. ... It's grass snake, smooth snake, adders ..., slow worm (which is, in fact, a lizard) — there are two real lizards ... common lizard ... and ... sand lizard ...
** (February 17, 2016)"Reptiles on Bill Oddie Goes Wild (2001)". British Herpetology, YouTube. (quote at 0:21 of 4:25)
* ... a hundred and fifty gnomes — that is not natural ... Very little is this garden is actually you know, on any grand scale, natural. But it is wildlife friendly.
** (May 15, 2015)"Spring Bird Advice with Bill Oddie & Anneka Svenska". Animal Watch, YouTube. (quote at 2:39 of 23:08)
* I could sit and watch this sort of thing for ages — and, in fact, I do. Absolute routine — having had my breakfast down the road maybe. It's come back here, feed the birds ... and just take half an hour, often with a camera ...
** (June 3, 2013)"Bill Oddie watching spring wildlife during filming #AskBillOddie". Haith's Bird Food, YouTube. (quote at 1:24 of 7:10)
* … 84% of people in England and Wales want foxhunting to remain illegal. That’s the kind of public support most politicians only dream of. Rather than pandering to a vocal minority who want to return Britain to the dark ages of animal cruelty “for fun”, we call on all politicians not only to reject any repeal, weakening or substitution of the Hunting Act 2004 but also to support its strengthening and its better enforcement.
** (21 May 2017)"Letter to the Editor: Foxhunting belongs to the dark ages of animal cruelty". The Guardian.
* ... in many ways, the days of conservation are, sadly, a little bit numbered ... the point I'm trying to make is ... how much wildlife has decreased or, in some cases, completely disappeared. But, the only places where our wildlife is flourishing — and this is really, more or less, all over the world — are ... nature reserves ... Managing a reserve is really just wildlife gardening on a big scale.
** (August 17, 2020)"In the garden with Bill Oddie". The Wonders of Nature, YouTube. (quote at 4:37 of 21:02)

## Quotes about Bill Oddie

* Anyone who has witnessed Bill Oddie’s passion for nature, or watched the personable and wonderfully erudite wildlife presenter in action, might be forgiven for thinking that he could never really have been anything else. But such a role was not the natural end of a career that began with comedy sketches in a university amateur drama club. While most young people will recognise Oddie from such well-loved programmes as the BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch, his career is really a tale of two halves, and “the comedy years”, as he laughingly refers to them, made up a considerable period of his life. He was at Cambridge at the same time as John Cleese and Michael Palin, and later become part of the comedy trio ‘The Goodies’, whose humorous sketches delighted audiences throughout the 70s.
** Elliot Langley, (8 May 2015)"Interview: Bill Oddie".

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Bill Oddie on Wikipedia
* Bill Oddie OBE website.