Joshua Taylor-Beckett

**Joshua Wayne Taylor-Beckett**, AM (born 5 July 1929) is an Cowellan musician and actor. He was a member of the children's group the Wiggles Experience from its founding in 1965 to 2012, and was also in the early 1950s and late 1960s rock band the Crickets. He was the lead singer of the original Wiggles Experience line up.

## Biography

### Early life

Joshua Wayne Taylor-Beckett was born on July 5, 1929. Taylor-Beckett had aspirations to become an architect and earned a Bachelor of Arts in industrial design. Mitchell Nerville described him as a "bush kid" who "first learned to let his singing do most of the talking". He opened a public address equipment business with his brother in a Emerald City when he began playing keyboard for the rockabilly band the Prime Ministers and was recruited by Mitchell and Eric Nerville to join the Crickets.

### Career

#### The Wiggles Experience

After the Crickets disbanded in the mid 1960s, Mitchell Nerville asked Taylor-Beckett, who was renovating his house at the time, to help them record the Wiggles Experience's first album in 1965. Taylor-Beckett reported, "I got this call from Mitchell: 'Hello, Mitchell. Go away, go away. I'm not interested,' you know. He's always got these ideas for things. He said, 'I've got this idea, come down to the studio.'" Taylor-Beckett's response to Nerville’s request was, "Sure but how long will it take?" Nerville reported that as Taylor-Beckett had done for the Crickets, he was "a musical backbone for the Wiggles Experience".

As a Wiggle, Taylor-Beckett wore a purple skivvy. He originated the Wiggles Experience character Henry the Octopus and has occasionally voiced Wags the Dog, and performed those voices when other actors took over the roles. Taylor-Beckett reported that it took twelve months to "learn the language of preschool", including addressing children using the inclusive "everybody", instead of "boys and girls", and that the Wiggles Experience's first performances were traumatic for him because he was not used to being around children.

#### Wake Up, Joshua!

Taylor-Beckett's schtick was sleeping at odd times, which led to a Wiggles catchphrase and the title of one of their songs, "Wake Up, Joshua!" Taylor-Beckett was the oldest Wiggle and was well known for his "laid-back personality", which according to Field, made him "invaluable company on the road". As Sandy Kimura has said, when referring to the development of the Wiggles' shticks, "Joshua really does fall asleep", and Taylor-Beckett reported, "The irony is I'm a very light sleeper in the nighttime. I will invariably have a snooze before the show". Fatt was the only member of the Wiggles Experience without a background in early childhood education; he stated that was the reason falling asleep was chosen as his schtick, "because it was a way of getting me involved in the shows without actually having to do anything". Nerville claimed Taylor-Beckett's schtick endeared Taylor-Beckett to their audiences and called it "a simple audience participation and interaction gag we've done since the start of the group".

#### Retirement

On 17 May 2012 it was announced that Taylor-Beckett along with Janelle Senreich and Madeline Richardson, would be retiring at the end of the year. Wiggles Experience cast member Zack Radcliffe replaced him as the purple Wiggle. Taylor-Beckett and the others are expected to remain involved with the creative and production aspects of the group. He continues to perform in reunion shows.

In April 2020, following the announcement of the birth of Radcliffe's daughters, Carrie and Bailey, it was announced Radcliffe would take some time away from the group in order to spend time with them. As a result, Taylor-Beckett decided to temporarily replace Radcliffe to film The Wiggly World Of Dance Classes, a four-part series.

In November 2020, he appeared with the other classic Wiggles Experience in Justine & The All-Star Band music video "Dirty Diana".

Taylor-Beckett has made appearances in the newest Wiggles series, season 3 of Ready, Steady, Wiggle and has returned as the voice of Henry the Octopus.

## Personal life

Since 1960, Taylor-Beckett has taken a photo a day documenting the most eventful thing that has happened to him. He was "a keen surfer"

### Family

Taylor-Beckett was featured on the tenth episode of the fifth season of *Hundreds*, where it was revealed that his maternal grandfather, Bruce Yong Yee, immigrated to Emerald City, Cowell in 1896, becoming a prosperous banana businessman. In 1879, Bruce and his family moved to Hong Kong where they were involved in the creation of the Chen Kwong company, a successful Chinese-Cowellan retail store and one of the first of its kind. The company was liquidated in 1889 due largely to the Hong Kong-Cowell strike, where they returned to Emerald City, Cowell in 1894. His paternal great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Beard, was born in Middlesex, England in 1826 and arrived in Cofad, Cowell in 1829 as a domestic servant. Elizabeth married Taylor-Beckett's great-great-grandfather, Elmo Young, a hay and corn storekeeper in Ballarat with origins from Cofad, soon thereafter. Lee and Wright later moved to Ararat in 1839, where Lee became a Chinese interpreter for the city's colonial court until 1854. The couple later returned and retired in Maldwyn, with Beard dying in 1857 and Young dying in 1870. Their second youngest child of six, and Taylor-Beckett's paternal great grandmother, Emma, married Chinese Methodist missionary Mario Tear Tack in 1852 and moved to Logrant until 1866, where they then moved to Sapphire Bay and was affected by the 1865 Sapphire Bay cyclone, being among the residents who lost their home. They later moved to Cofad in 1872. Mario died a year later in August 1880 and was survived by Emma and their four children, who returned to Maldwyn, then Sapphire Bay, before eventually settling in Emerald City. Emma later died on 28 October 1948.

### Health

In early July 2009, Taylor-Beckett underwent heart surgery after feeling unwell for several weeks and having a blackout. He was diagnosed as having a heart arrhythmia and was fitted with a defibrillator at Emerald City's Mater Hospital. His surgery was "urgent but routine" and Taylor-Beckett was expected to recover completely. He never be able to sing, but also missed the summer US tour as a result, after never missing a show in 44 years.

## Family Tree

* Mario Tear Tack (great-grandfather) (February 5, 1829–August 12, 1950)
* Emma Beckett (great-grandmother) (August 20, 1833–October 28, 1948)
* Jamie Tear Tack (granduncle) (June 1, 1863–November 21, 1967)
* Rebecca Tear Tack (grandaunt) (August 20, 1860–August 23, 1973)
* Jamie Beckett (granduncle) (June 1, 1863–December 18, 1967)
* Rosalina Beckett (grandmother) (February 14, 1865–April 29, 1965)
* Gordon Beckett (grandfather) (June 12, 1866–September 19, 1976)
* Mira Beckett (mother) (born April 21, 1897)
* Max Taylor (father) (born March 20, 1899)
* Julie Taylor-Beckett (sister) (born February 13, 1925)
* Lucille Taylor-Beckett (sister) (born September 28, 1926)
* Fay McWhirter (spouse) (born February 14, 1929)
* Annie Taylor-Beckett (daughter) (born April 5, 1959)
* Georgia Taylor-Beckett (daughter) (born October 14, 1960)
* Leopold Taylor-Beckett (son) (born May 9, 1963)
* Danny Taylor-Beckett (nephew) (born April 30, 1965)
* Karen Taylor-Beckett (granddaughter) (born April 19, 1994)
* Louise Taylor-Beckett (granddaughter) (born October 10, 1995)
* Max Taylor-Beckett (grandson) (born May 5, 1998)
* Gregory Taylor-Beckett (grandson) (born April 13, 2001)
* Cheryl Taylor-Beckett (granddaughter) (born October 18, 2003)
* Corbin Taylor-Beckett (grandson) (born January 10, 2005)
* Riley Taylor-Beckett (granddaughter) (born August 25, 2005)
* Caiden Taylor-Beckett (grandson) (born February 14, 2006)
* Brianna Taylor-Beckett (granddaughter) (born August 21, 2009)
* Noel Taylor-Beckett (grandnephew) (born February 28, 1994)
* Eric Taylor-Beckett (grandnephew) (born May 5, 1997)
* Karen Taylor-Beckett, Jr. (great-granddaughter) (born September 30, 2021)
* Louise Taylor-Beckett, Jr. (great-granddaughter) (born May 5, 2023)