Bob Block: Life with the Lyons on 4 Extra
Post categories: Bob Block,ÌýLife with the Lyons,ÌýRadio 4 Extra,Ìýarchive,Ìýcomedy,Ìýdrama
08:51, Saturday, 7 May 2011
was a comedy writer whose name might not be familiar to you, but you've more than likely heard or seen some of his work.
Here's a clue to one programme you might remember if you're of a certain vintage: "It's Friday! It's 5 o'clock! And it's...... !"
Apart from Bob's quirky scripts for this long-running Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV children's favourite - he was also the creator and writer of , , , and the hugely popular Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV series .
Bob also wrote scripts and gags for comedy greats of his day such as , , , , , , , , , (and the Diddymen) and many more.
In radio, he was best known for co-writing the domestic sit-com , featuring real life married couple and along with their children Barbara and Richard. The supporting cast included the inimitable as Aggie the housekeeper (you may remember Molly from her long-running 1970s TV commercials for a famous floor cleaner, and she also played Hazel McWitch in Rentaghost).
Ditching the typical musical interludes in Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio comedies of the time, Life with the Lyons ran for ten series between 1950 and 1961. Each series had a very long run. Series three was on-air for an incredible 33 weeks. And so successful was the show, that it later switched to TV.
Unfortunately, as with so many series, not all of the radio programmes were retained. Only three Life with the Lyons programmes are currently in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sound Archive. These were broadcast on Radio 7 in March this year, and following the broadcasts, we received an interesting note from Bob's daughter Tricia.
Here is part of her email:
You have just started broadcasting Life with the Lyons weekly on your excellent station and I was delighted to suddenly discover it was on last Wednesday. My Dad, Bob Block was the co-writer of the show right through its life and the particular one you broadcast last week from January 1955 was one in which he also acted (as Harold, Barbara's wet boyfriend). I was born in the October of 1955 and Dad had told me about the episodes he'd acted in, but I had never heard any before. I have listened to it several times on the iPlayer..... it also featured my Godmothers, Molly Weir and Doris Rogers, both of whose voices I hadn't heard for such a long time. It would be very special for my family and me to have a copy of this as my Dad is 89 now and hasn't been very well recently. I have to admit the programme brought tears to my eyes.
Sadly, we heard last week that, on 17th April, Tricia's father, Bob Block had died. He was in his 90th year. But in a further twist to the story, a listener/collector in Scotland had also heard the programmes that week, and contacted us to say that he had over 200 episodes of Life With the Lyons, all taken from Ben Lyon's original reels and all in very good condition. As a tribute to Bob we'll be scheduling a season of Life with the Lyons, which we'll be freshly digitising from the "Scottish collection" and you'll be able to hear them in the near future on Radio 4 Extra.
Mary Kalemkerian is Head of Programmes at Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4 Extra
- Read Mary's previous post Celebrating the lives of great entertainers: Radio 4 Extra's May anniversaries on the blog
- The picture's from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã archives. Caption info: "Life With The Lyons 16/02/1955 © Ö÷²¥´óÐã picture shows : The Lyon Family : Barbara, Richard, Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon"
Comment number 1.
At 7th May 2011, U14804610 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 2.
At 8th May 2011, wilson wrote:Why are you not mentioning Bahrain?
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Comment number 3.
At 8th May 2011, The Great Gildersleeve wrote:It's early days and whilst I am sorry that Ö÷²¥´óÐã7 has changed its name and did not get cross promoted anywhere near as much as Radio 4 Extra does and the same goes regarding promtion on tv as it appears the station will now...
I think as it beds in it will prove as popular and find its way.
And this news about Life With The Lyons is very welcome news and once again proves the worth of private colectors. It also makes you wonder just what is out there.
Sad news about Bob Block but you begin to realise just how much work such writers did and how much they played a part in the entertainment of our nation...I had no idea of his involvement with LWTL but remember as a teenager watching Pardon My Genie. That brought back quite a few memories.
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Comment number 4.
At 8th May 2011, wheels5894 wrote:"I think as it beds in it will prove as popular and find its way." The Great Gildersleeve? Given the negative comments by so many people and the number of us who have gone off to buy MP3 players to listen to audio books I can only say that this is optimism and to a great degree too. now, of course, shows like this might bring people back in just for the show, the amount of factual programmes together with the DID and Archers and panel games is going to have to mean that an audience is going to have to come form Radio 4 listeners. I mean radio 7 listeners have gone.
While I wait for delivery of my MP3 player I am listening to World Service by the way.
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Comment number 5.
At 9th May 2011, U14804610 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 6.
At 11th May 2011, Dave Howes wrote:A lot of us who have been driven away from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã by the demise our beloved radio 7 will have discovered that these are in the public domain, and available for free download from archive.org, along with thousands of hours of other wonderful old radio programs :-)
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Comment number 7.
At 11th May 2011, The Great Gildersleeve wrote:To some extent you are all correct but I still find items of interest...regarding getting the shows off the net its finding them in decent quality and having access to a decent internet connection...
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