Liza Goddard has credited her career to an incontinent kangaroo after finding international fame in the iconic children's TV series Skippy. At its peak, the 1960s Australian show attracted a global audience of 300 million every week across 128 countries. Fans could buy Skippy cornflakes, pyjamas, shampoo and toothpaste, and in Norway a series of shopping centres were named in honour of the programme.
But being a star in the smash hit series was far from glamorous. Liza, now 76, who was one of the UK's biggest TV stars in the 1970s and 80s, says: “We actually had about 20 kangaroos playing Skippy. None of them were trained and they were all incontinent, so if you were doing indoor scenes, it was very smelly. Because they weren't trained, they would always run away. You'd have a props man lying on the floor holding on to its tail so it wouldn't run off.”
Camera tricks and a stuffed kangaroo
The production team also relied on a series of tricks to make it look as if Skippy was doing everything that appeared on screen. A souvenir shop kangaroo paw bottle opener was used for close-up scenes of Skippy opening doors or picking up objects, and a stuffed kangaroo from a taxidermist was used when Skippy was required to jump into the helicopter.
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo ran from 1968-1970 and featured the adventures of a young boy, Sonny (Garry Pankhurst), and his highly intelligent pet kangaroo at the fictional Waratah National Park. Liza played teenager Clancy Merrick, who moved in with the family when her ranger father was transferred to another part of the country.
Stumpy, the emu and a wombat
Liza, who is now best known for starring in Bergerac opposite John Nettles and as the female team captain on the long-running panel show Give Us a Clue, says: “We had one kangaroo called Stumpy, because she was missing a couple of fingers. She was quite good. She would stay with you if you had enough digestive biscuits.
“I don't know where they got the kangaroos from. I think they were orphans, but they didn't seem to mind being around us. We also had an emu that used to bite people and a wombat that was fiercely aggressive. It's extraordinary when you think about it, but when you're young, you just accept things as they are.”
Liza, who grew up in Surrey until she was 15, when the family moved to Australia for her dad's work, appeared in several TV shows there, including playing Juliet in the first ever Australian TV production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. She says: “Then along came Skippy. Like a lot of things, it was merely a job. It was six episodes, but it turned into two years and 92 episodes. We knew it was good, but nobody in Australia took much notice. We didn't become great stars. It was only when I came back to this country that I realised it was an international success. It was quite a surprise.”
From Skippy to Hollywood rejection
Aged 19 when she returned to Britain, Liza immediately landed a role in the BBC1 sitcom Take Three Girls. She recalls: “It was the first drama series in colour – the same year they landed on the Moon. It was also the first series to star young women and the first to have a pop song as a theme song [Light Flight by Pentangle]. But we had no idea it would be such a success.”
Liza became an overnight hit and landed roles in other sitcoms including Yes, Honestly and Pig in the Middle, which ran from 1980-83 and was so successful it transferred to America. Invited to Hollywood to try out for the same part she had played in Britain, she was lured by the promise of a big bucks deal.
She recalls: “I went over and had intensive voice coaching. Then I did an audition in front of all the big bods and they just said 'no, we're not having her.' I'd already signed a contract for an eye-boggling amount of money. You sign it before you do the audition, then they just go, 'sorry' and rip it up. It would have been life-changing, but I'm very happy with the life I've had.”
Returning to Britain, Liza was cast in the 1983 TV mini-series Wagner, which starred Richard Burton, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and Dame Vanessa Redgrave. Liza, who only had a small part, found herself having lunch with Richard Burton on a daily basis. “I could hardly speak,” she recalls. “We were filming in the middle of Hungary. Joan Plowright was playing my mother and they were great friends, so he invited us to come into his caravan and have lunch every day. They would talk about the glory days, when he was great friends with Olivier and they would play practical jokes on each other. He was so lovely to everybody and just gorgeous.”
Fame, family and Miss Marple
The same year, Liza was cast in the popular crime series Bergerac, which boasted audiences of 15 million. By then married to pop star Alvin Stardust, following the breakdown of her first marriage to Doctor Who actor Colin Baker, the flamboyant singer, whose hits included My Coo Ca Choo, revelled in the spotlight and they quickly became Britain's biggest celebrity couple.
But Liza didn't enjoy their fame, saying: “Part of that intrusive fame is what breaks up a relationship in the end, because you can't go anywhere without people stopping you and it upsets the children. I didn't like it at all and in the end I stepped back.”
In the 1990s, Liza moved into children's television. However, finding TV work in her 70s is tough. She says: “There are parts for people my age, but they are few and far between and they're always played by the same three people. It would be nice to do more TV, but I'm very happy doing theatre. I've done it all my life and I love it.”
And she will soon be starring on stage as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd at The Mill at Sonning in Berkshire. Initially daunted to be playing a role made famous on screen by legendary actress Margaret Rutherford, she says: “The only thing I can do is try and make it real and forget other people's interpretations.”
In the play, Miss Marple investigates a murder after suffering a fall. Liza says: “She's laid up and stuck in the house. There's a murder up at the big house. She's not there, so she hears everything secondhand from people who come to tell her what's happened.”
Liza, who lives in Norfolk, where she moved after meeting her third husband, producer and director David Cobham, who sadly died in 2018, 23 years into their marriage, says: “It's a great loss to me. But I'm still in Norfolk and my daughter lives nearby and my granddaughter is in and out all the time.”
Liza, who also has a son and two grandsons living in Essex, loves village life, enjoying twice weekly seniors' exercise classes and a local monthly lunch club. She says: “I have a very nice life. I live in a small village and the things that go on are quite extraordinary – just like an Agatha Christie village, except without the murders!”
Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd runs at The Mill at Sonning from September 4th to October 31st.
