Did you ever see on BBC television The Innes Book of Records? Have you heard of The Rutles, Grimms, the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band, or even Monty Python? Well, the truly amazing Neil Innes has been involved with them all to a greater or lesser extent, during a career spanning more than three decades.
As far as I am concerned, The Innes Book of Records remains in my judgement the very best use ever of television as a pure art medium in its own right.
Neil Innes has also been involved with many children's TV programmes, writing and performing the music for them and appearing in some, such as Puddle Lane, The Raggy Dolls, East of the Moon and Away With Words.
Neil's songs usually include some humour, they can be poignant and thought-provoking (such as Time to Kill and City of the Angels), some are pastiches of others' work (like Godfrey Daniel and the entire Rutles songbook) and all are highly original, individual works of considerable class and seemingly boundless talent. I have included here the words to just the two songs as illustrations of the quality and originality of writing in so much of Neil's work.
There is a wonderful resource on the Web covering Neil's words, pictures and even some music clips—plus lots of other useful stuff—at the Neil Innes Web-site. I sincerely recommend you go and have a look: you could well find that you get hooked and you might even join the Neil Innes Mailing List that is linked from the website.