Andy Cunningham obituary

The entertainer Andy Cunningham, who has died aged 67 of cancer, gained cult status as creator and star of the popular children’s TV series Bodger & Badger. He acted the aptly named odd-jobber Simon Bodger, accompanied by his badly behaved, red beret-wearing animal puppet with a liking for mashed potato, which he voiced and operated.

The pair made their small screen debut in the Saturday-morning children’s show On the Waterfront in 1988. This led to their own programme, with 124 slapstick adventures over nine BBC series (1989-99), starting with Bodger working as a chef in Troff’s Nosherama, then taking jobs as caretaker of Letsby Avenue junior school and zookeeper at Chessington World of Adventures, before running the Seagull’s Rest bed and breakfast in the fictional town of Puddleford.

At various times Cunningham, remembered by fellow performers for being a self-styled anarchist who wore a trilby hat, persuaded famous names to appear alongside him in Bodger & Badger, including Nicholas Parsons as the mayor on a school visit and Stephen Lewis – Blakey in the sitcom On the Buses – as Bodger’s rival chef, Marcel. Cunningham wrote more than half of the programmes, from 1995 scripting them with his then partner, Jane Bassett, who also voiced the cheese-loving Mousey.

Such was the show’s popularity that, in the middle of its run, Cunningham and his puppet were invited to perform at the Glastonbury festival. Their appearance in the children’s area was a tradition that continued well into the 21st century, ensuring longevity, as well as new audiences, for two treasured television creations.

Cunningham was born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire (now in the West Midlands), the son of James, a teacher, and Teresa (nee Connon). As a child he loved dressing up to play cowboys and Indians and other games with his two sisters and elder brother. When their father went to Germany to teach maths to British soldiers, Cunningham attended St John’s college, Southsea.

He studied English at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, but left after two years and eventually completed his degree at Reading University. After brief jobs as a social worker in a children’s adolescent unit in Portsmouth and an art teacher in Stratford, east London, Cunningham started performing as a magician and ventriloquist at venues such as the Earth Exchange vegetarian restaurant in Highgate, north London. One of his puppets was Magritte, the mind-reading rat, and he himself formed the central character in the Freeman Hardy & Willis creation, with a puppet on either side of him.

Cunningham was also inside an Elephant Man-like costume to play Ephant Mon, Jabba’s head of security, in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), the third in the original sci-fi film trilogy.

In 1980, while writing and directing for the Covent Garden community theatre group, Cunningham gave Julian Clary his first professional job. He also directed pantomimes such as The Last Temptation of Scrooge (1988) in Brighton, where he lived for the past 30 years.

When Bodger & Badger became a television hit, he took his puppet co-star on tour. The stage act continued after the programme’s 10-year run ended and the pair entertained children in events that usually involved mashed potato flying around everywhere. They returned to television for Big Brother’s Bit on the Side in 2012. Cunningham also wrote and illustrated the books Mr Bodger’s Jumping Hat (1986), Bodger and Badger’s Fun Book (1995) and Bodger & Badger’s Lucky Dip (1996).

He collaborated with the wildlife charity Care for the Wild in 2013 to make a video opposing badger culling after the government had licensed pilot culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire. “When we heard this cull was really going to go ahead, Badger and I thought we ought to do something because the case for culling just doesn’t add up,” said Cunningham.

In 2010, his journalist sister Tessa gave a home to their 95-year-old father when he broke a hip following a fall. Cunningham subsequently moved into her house to provide support and helped to write her 2012 memoir Take Me Home. Their father died in 2013.

Although Cunningham’s relationship with Bassett ended after 10 years, she remained a friend and survives him, along with his daughter, Phoebe, and Tessa.