OBITUARY FROM THE daily Telegraph
Bryan Frank Armstrong Izzard,
television producer and director: born Dorking, Surrey 4 July 1936; died 27 April 2006.
Bryan
Izzard's was a distinctive and familiar name on screen at the end of 1970s television sitcoms. These were often of the rumbustious
kind and, during his time as a producer and director at the ITV company LWT, included later episodes (1972-73) of the long-running
On the Buses, starring the former variety performer Reg Varney as the chirpy bus driver Stan Butler. The critics panned the
programme as vulgar, but audiences grew to 16 million and three film spin-offs were shown in cinemas, the last, Holiday on
the Buses (1973), directed by Izzard.
He
produced and directed all three series of Not on Your Nellie (1974-75), which featured another former variety artist, Hylda
Baker, complete with her famous malapropisms. She played the brusque Nellie Pickersgill, who did not approve of drinking or
her father's betting and womanising but left her native Bolton for London to help him to run the Brown Cow pub in Fulham.
Izzard
was also responsible for the revival of The Rag Trade (1977-78), with Miriam Karlin and Peter Jones reprising their roles
as the battling shop steward and hapless boss at the Fenner's Fashions dressmaking workshop. Although it ran to two series
and was scripted by its original writers, Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, the sitcom never had the spark or originality of
the 1960s programmes.
Then,
during his time as head of entertainment at Scottish Television (1978-81), Izzard stepped slightly outside his remit to revive
another character, in the drama Charles Endell Esquire (1979-80). A spin-off from the popular Budgie, which starred Adam Faith
as a Cockney spiv, it featured Iain Cuthbertson as the Soho "Mr Big" returning to his native Glasgow after seven years in
prison.
On
moving to LWT, he started by producing and directing two larger-than-life radio disc jockeys who, at the time, had limited
success on television. There was chat in The Simon Dee Show (1970) and music and mayhem in Kenny Everett's sketch shows Making
Whoopee (1970) and Ev (1970-71).
But
sitcom became Izzard's staple at the ITV company. Alongside series such as On the Buses, he directed episodes of The Fenn
Street Gang (1971-73), The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs (1974), a spy-spoof sitcom starring David Jason, and Doctor on
the Go (1975, 1977), the fourth sequel in the series based on Richard Gordon's popular "Doctor" books.
After
his stint at Scottish Television, Izzard moved to Southern Television, where he produced the sitcoms That Beryl Marston .
. . ! (1981), starring Julia McKenzie and Gareth Hunt as a couple successful in business but unable to make their marriage
work, and Take a Letter Mr Jones (1981), with Rula Lenska and John Inman as the boss and secretary in roles contrary to the
stereotype of the time.
Turning
freelance after Southern lost its ITV franchise, Izzard produced the Granada sitcom Rep (1982), featuring Iain Cuthbertson
as the bullying manager of a shabby 1940s seaside repertory company, and directed the same company's drama The Starlight Ballroom
(1983), with the rock star Alvin Stardust as a 1940s danceband singer.
After
the launch of Channel Four, he became an independent producer with his own Bright Thoughts Company. The result was two sides
of the comedy coin: The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog (1983), starring Arthur Askey, Cilla Black, Maureen Lipman and
others reciting monologues made famous by music-hall legends such as Chesney Allen, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Grenfell, followed
byBook 'Em An' Risk It (1983) and Interference (1983), both featuring alternative comedians.
Izzard
found his own style of comedy out of favour in the 1980s but returned as producer-director of the sitcom An Actor's Life for
Me (1991), with John Gordon-Sinclair playing a struggling thespian convinced that success is just around the corner.
Although
that signalled the end of Izzard's television career as a comedy producer, he directed episodes of The South Bank Show, including
an Alan Ayckbourn masterclass on writing plays (1996) and a biography of the dancer Michael Flatley (1997).
He
also directed the feature film Julie and the Cadillacs (1999), starring Tina Russell and Toyah Willcox in the story of a struggling
1960s pop group, most notable for the 30-second appearance of Thora Hird in her final film role, playing the grandmother of
the title character.
Anthony
Hayward
