"What's a woman?"
Geoffrey Barbara Butler (played by Joseph Marcell), born in London, England in August 1947, serves as the Banks family's cynical, sarcastic butler.
In addition to four years at the University of Oxford and a long career working for British aristocrats, Geoffrey was an Olympic runner several years before being hired by the Banks family, but fled his home country in shame after cheating in a race and being slapped by Queen Elizabeth II. His athletic failure seemed to have mixed adverse effects. Although disgraced in his native country of England, the British band Led Zeppelin hired him as their butler sometime in the 1970s. In the episode Nice Lady, besides telling Will he was a Greco-Roman wrestler, he had also worked for one British nobleman named Lord Fowler. Things came to a head when Lord Fowler paid Philip Banks a visit and Will was instructed to look after Lord Fowler's daughter Penelope. Sometime in the 1980s, Geoffrey got a job in the United States as a sparring partner for Chuck Norris, and also butlered for him. Presumably later he was hired to butler for the Banks family, where he worked for a long time. Geoffrey did seem to have a soft spot for Ashley Banks. In the episode "The Butler's Son Did It", his middle name is revealed as Barbara (a family name) and that he also has a tattoo of Queen Elizabeth in an area that is never revealed but presumed to be his buttocks.
Geoffrey's personality seems to differ, namely with who is interacting with. Sometimes he has been cynical, other times he has been dutiful and gentlemanly. Joseph Marcell, the actor who played Geoffrey, said part of the differing personalities was being hard to find an appropriate character as American audiences were generally unused to seeing Black Englishmen.