Only two others have refused to appear on the show

He is most famous for his part in madcap comedy group The Goodies but has revealed how he has recently suffered from clinical depression.

"He turned it down, he said no, but has subsequently been persuaded by the family," a spokesman for Thames TV, who make the show, told BBC News Online.

"So we'll see whether the show does indeed get recorded but for the moment we're pretty hopeful."

He did not reveal why Oddie had turned the show down. "It's always a risk," he said.

Family and friends

Subjects of the show do not know they are going to take part until host Michael Aspel sneaks up on them at an unexpected moment while they are working.

Oddie is now a wildlife presenter

They are then taken straight to a TV studio where their lives are picked through by assembled family and friends.

The Thames TV spokesman could not confirm what Oddie was doing when he was approached by Aspel and the show's crew.

Since The Goodies ended in 1982, Oddie has reinvented himself as a wildlife presenter, fronting shows like Bill Oddie Goes Wild and Oddie In Paradise.

'Suicidal'

But he suffered clinical depression at the end of last year and spent eight days in hospital in January.

"My mind wandered in a suicidal direction but, fortunately, I was so paralysed by the depression that I didn't have the energy to do anything about it," he told the Daily Mail newspaper in August.

He also told the newspaper that he had recovered and got control of his negative streak.

The only other personalities to turn down This Is Your Life were footballer Danny Blanchflower in the 1950s and author Richard Gordon in the 1970s - although Gordon was later persuaded to change his mind.