Leslie Gooday was born in Croydon, Surrey [now south London], England on 14 June 1921 Following service in the Royal Air Force between 1939 and 1945, he worked as an assistant and associate of Hugh Maxwell Casson (1910-1999) on the 1951 Festival of Britain South Bank Exhibition. Casson and Gooday were responsible for the design of the boating pool and leisure area at the Festival of Britain's south Bank site in London in 1951. Gooday also produced other designs for the Festival of Britain. After his work on the Festival, Gooday set up his own independent architectural practice and from c.,1953 to 1956 was in partnership with C. Wycliffe Noble. By 1962 his practice had become Leslie Gooday & Associates, located at 162/4 Upper Richmond Road, London.
Apart from his work as an architect and display designer, Gooday was also a painter and collage artist and showed his work at annual exhibitions of the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London. He was a member of the Chelsea Arts Society.
Gooday was awarded the distinction of Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970 for services in connection with the British Pavilion at Expo '70. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA). He was also a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (FSIAD) He died on 16 March 2013
In addition to his work on the Festival of Britain, other architectural projects by Gooday and his firm included a one-storey house for himself East Sheen, London, with C. Wycliffe Noble (1953); Conversion of a bookshop into a buttery and a bookshop at in Windsor, Berkshire, with C. Wycliffe Noble (1954); a house in Reigate, Surrey, with C. Wycliffe Noble (1954); a house in Richmond upon Thames, Surrey for Mr and Mrs Bernard Marcuson, with C. Wycliffe Noble (1954-55); a house in Weybridge, Surrey for H.W.H. Hodgkins (1956); a house in Upper Norwood, Surrey, for Mr and Mrs Worrell (1957); a house in West Byfleet, Surrey (1957); a single storey house at Ham Common in London (1958); a single-storey house in East Grinstead, Sussex (1962); a house in Sevenoaks, Kent (1963); Long Wall, a house in Saint George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, designed for himself by Gooday (1963-64); exhibition stands for the British pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan (1968-69); design for a visitors' centre at Sellafield, Cumbria, for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (1986-88); and design for the British Golf Museum at Saint Andrews in Scotland (1989-90).