Career
Born in Hampshire, he worked in the 1950s for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, before returning to Britain where he initially worked as a stage manager on outside broadcasts. He then became an announcer on the Home Service, moving to work on television in 1963. He became part of the team of regular British Broadcasting Corporation newsreaders, the others being Robert Dougall, Michael Aspel and Richard Baker.
After leaving British Broadcasting Corporation Television in 1967, he presented Look East, and, as a freelance broadcaster, contributed to the Today programme.
He also chaired editions of Any Questions? and Any Answers?. Corbet Woodall appeared in many television series, and also in some films, in which he invariably acted as either a television newsreader, or as an announcer.
Increasingly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis from the late 1960s, Woodall"s frequent appearances on The Goodies (1970-1981) would have been more frequent, but according to author Robert Ross in his book The Goodies Rule Oklahoma his contract was often marked "Artist ill". In an interview with Ross, Tim Brooke-Taylor praised Woodall"s professionalism in wake of his debilitating illness.
"He wasn"t a well man at all, but (on camera) he rose from the dead and delivered every time."
Towards the end of his life, Woodall became a committed supporter of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council (now Arthritis Research United Kingdom) and by appearing in a Christmas television appeal for the charity in 1981, raised the sum of £72,000.
At that time a record for an appeal of that kind. Woodall recounted his struggle with the illness in his autobiography Disjointed Life, which he hoped would help medical professionals to understand the mental and emotional aspects of the condition.