Famous Scots. Graeme Garden.

David Graeme Garden (born 18 February 1943) is a Scottish comedian, actor, author, artist and television presenter. He is best known as a member of The Goodies and a regular panellist on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

Early life and education.

Garden was born on 18 February 1943 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and raised in Preston, Lancashire, England, only son (with a daughter) of Robert Symon Garden fr, an eminent orthopaedic surgeon who created the Garden classification of hip fractures, and his wife Janet Ann (née McHardy). R. S. Garden’s parents, John and Elizabeth, farmed at Macduff, Banff and Buchan, Aberdeenshire. Garden was educated at Repton School, and studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club and served as its president in 1964, while also performing in the 1964 Footlights revue, Stuff What Dreams Are Made Of at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Garden qualified in medicine but has never practised. Asked how he justified making jokes rather than saving lives, he answered:

I don’t think I would have done it as well. It’s an interesting question – whether you’ve contributed more to the vast store of human enjoyment by doing comedy or by being a doctor, but the answer for me is that I don’t think I would have been as successful or as happy being a doctor.

Garden appeared in the political sitcom Yes Minister, in the role of Commander Forrest of the Special Branch in the episode The Death List. He also appeared as a television presenter in the Doctor in the House episode “Doctor on the Box”.

He was a regular team captain on the political satire game show If I Ruled the World. Brooke-Taylor appeared as a guest in one episode and during the game “I Couldn’t Disagree More” he proposed that it was high time The Goodies episodes were repeated. Garden was obliged by the rules of the game to refute this statement, and replied, “I couldn’t disagree more… it was time to repeat them ten, fifteen years ago.”

In 2004, Garden and Brooke-Taylor were co-presenters of Channel 4’s daytime game show Beat the Nation, in which they indulged in usual game show “banter”, but took the quiz itself seriously. It was notable for its use of a “laugh track” instead of a studio audience. Garden has hosted the quiz game Tell the Truth and presented a series of history programmes, A Sense of the Past for Yorkshire Television.

Garden writes and directs for the corporate video company Video Arts, famous for its training films starring John Cleese.