Bryan Izzard; TV director & producer
Hyfler/Rosner
May 27, 2006, Saturday
Bryan Izzard, television producer and director, was born in
1932. He died on April 27, 2006, aged 74.
Television director and producer whose hit comedy programmes
included On the Buses and Not on Your Nellie.
BRYAN IZZARD was one of the most prolific television
directors and producers during the 1970s.
He directed such top-rating series as the women's prison
drama Within These Walls (1974-78), starring Googie Withers,
as well as a host of comedy programmes, including The Fenn
Street Gang (1973), Not on Your Nellie (1974-75), starring
Hylda Baker, and The Rag Trade (1977-78), the clothing
factory comedy with Miriam Karlin and Peter Jones.
He was one of the original producers of ITV's longestrunning
comedy series, On the Buses.
Bryan Izzard, affectionately known to colleagues as "Izzy",
was born in Dorking in 1932, the son of Marjorie and Frank
Izzard. He read English at Oxford and became a leading light
with the OUDS. He took a teaching diploma but decided on a
career in television and joined the BBC as a trainee
producer, first in radio, then moving to TV.
He produced several current-affairs programmes before
becoming a light-entertainment director, one of his earliest
credits being The Simon Dee Show. In 1969 he became the
producer of On the Buses. This cheerfully vulgar sitcom,
with politically incorrect humour we would now regard as
racist and anti-feminist, regularly topped the ratings for
four years. Izzard produced 30 episodes of the series and
directed a feature film version of the show, Holiday on the
Buses (1973).
Although Izzard had a great affinity with comedians and was
known for his love of music hall and variety, he admitted
that his patience had been tested when he directed the
temperamental Lancashire comedienne Hylda Baker in the ITV
comedy series Not On Your Nellie. "She was a great
comedienne and had been a big star," he said, "but she was
an absolute nightmare to work with."
Izzard's many other TV comedy credits included directing
Doctor in Charge (1972), The Reg Varney Revue (1972), Take a
Letter, Mr Jones (1981), starring Rula Lenska and John
Inman, and The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog (1983),
which celebrated music-hall monologues and starred Barry
Cryer and Leonard Rossiter.
During the 1970s he was offered more dramatic scripts to
direct and he worked on several episodes of the afternoon
ITV drama series Crown Court.
In 1979 he notably produced for Scottish Television Charles
Endell Esq, a spin-off from Adam Faith's popular 1972 Budgie
for the BBC. The cast featured many of the leading Scottish
actors of the day, including Iain Cuthbertson, Annie Ross
and Rikki Fulton.
Izzard lamented the changes in television comedy during the
1980s and the rise of political correctness but in 1991 he
produced the BBC sitcom An Actor's Life for Me, starring
John Gordon Sinclair and Victor Spinetti.
His most recent TV work was directing Julia and the
Cadillacs (1999), a drama that traced the progress of a
small band in Liverpool led by Toyah Wilcox. The cast
included Thora Hird in one of her final performances.