Bobby Limb

Infobox actor
name = Bobby Limb


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birthdate = 10 November, 1924
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deathdate = Dda|1999|9|11|1924|11|10
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occupation = Television actor
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spouse = Dawn Lake
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Bobby Limb AO OBE (10 November, 1924 - 11 September, 1999) was an Australian pioneering radio and television entertainer of the 1960s and 1970s.

Bobby Limb's show business career began in 1941, at the age 17, when he became a saxophone player with various dance bands around Adelaide. His bright personality soon made him a bandleader and comedian. By 1952, Bobby was already one of Australia's leading entertainers, with a fan-club on radio station 2UW which boasted 35,000 teenage members.

He appeared in the satirical radio programme The Idiot Weekly in 1958 and 1959, alongside such players as Spike Milligan, Ray Barrett and John Bluthal, but was better known for his own radio, and later TV shows.

His most successful television shows were "The Mobil Limb Show", Australia's first national television show, and "Bobby Limb's The Sound of Music", which ran for nine years 1963-1972, being the country's top-rated show for most of that time. Limb switched with his program from TCN Channel 9 to TEN10 in exactly the same timeslot on Friday nights. Channel 9 then picked up the younger Barry Crocker from TEN10 where he'd been hosting a similar program called "Say it with Music", and placed this into almost exactly the same timeslot with the same "Sound of Music" name on Friday nights. Crocker's initial success waned, but both versions were axed within a few years as the format had had its run.

He married fellow entertainer Dawn Lake in 1958, and often appeared with her. As a couple, they became iconic within the Australian entertainment industry.

He promoted and supported young musicians, such as the group Human Nature.

He supported Diabetes Australia, and founded the Bobby Limb Foundation to help sufferers of diabetes.

On 11 September 1999, Bobby Limb died of cancer, a condition he had previously suffered and apparently beaten. At Limb's funeral, the former Whitlam government minister Douglas McClelland said that Bobby Limb was to the Australian entertainment industry what Sir Don Bradman was to cricket, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was to aviation, Dame Joan Sutherland was to opera, and Dr Victor Chang was to surgery.

Honours and awards

He won a total of 11 Logie Awards, including the 1964 Gold Logie, awarded to the Most Popular Personality on Australian Television.

He won a Mr Show Business award in the USA.

In 1983, he won the Australian Father of the Year award.

In 1967 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his efforts in entertaining Australian troops in the Vietnam War. In 2000, nine months after his death, he was awarded the posthumous honour of Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).

Popular Appeal

Bobby Limb's popularity was based on a solid 'middle-of-the-road' musical format, knock-about (never 'way-out') comedy, and a 'something for the whole family' wholesomeness. In the late 1950s, Limb took up the torch of supplying middle-Australia's tastes in entertainment from the dead hand of Jack Davey, but Limb's star began to fade in the 1970s when the TV audience shifted its tastes away from family 'variety' shows towards wall-to-wall pop-music, home-grown soap-opera like 'A Country Practice' and harder-edged, satirical comedy like 'The Aunty Jack Show'.

Bobby Limb remained a hit with Australia's 'pensioner set', but his later appearances were almost entirely off-screen, held at various live venues around the nation, often in connection with charity fund-raising.

In 1983, following many professional and personal problems, Bobby Limb became a born-again Christian.

References

*"Life and Limb: the highlights and traumas of Bobby Limb's days in TV and Show Biz". Judy Judd: Horwitz Grahame, 1987.
*Article about Limb by Cynthia Banham, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 2000

External links

*imdb name|id=0510747|name=Bobby Limb