Bobby Limb, Australia’s Television Pioneer

For someone that won 11 Logies, including a Gold one in 1964, you can say that for a long time Bobby Limb was the king of Australian entertainment.

Bobby started in entertainment early; he scored his first professional gig playing the saxophone for dance bands all over his hometown of Adelaide. It was his charisma and quick wit however that quickly made him band leader and comedian for these outfits. Bobby was one of Australia’s leading entertainers by 1952. He even had a 35,000 strong fan club with radio station 2UW.

It was his comedy talents that scored him the gig on satirical news program The Idiot Weekly. It was here that he got to stretch his comedy with the likes of Spike Milligan, Ray Barret, and John Blutal. Bobby was always the stand out performer no matter who he was working with.

In 1961 Bobby moved to television to host The Mobil-Limb Show which would feature variety acts, music, and comedy sketches. The show was so popular that was eventually just known as The Bobby Limb Show. Bobby also had another successful program with Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music.

Bobby’s Wikipedia entry puts it best to describe the man. “Bobby Limb’s enduring 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’ style wholesomeness. In the late 1950s, Limb took up the torch of supplying middle-Australia’s tastes in entertainment from that of radio personality 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 80’s style pop-music, home-grown soap-opera like A Country Practice and Neighbours and most especially harder-edged, satirical comedy like The Aunty Jack Show.”

When Bobby passed away from cancer in 1999 former Whitlam government minister Doug McClelland said that “Bobby Limb was to the Australian entertainment industry what Sir Donald Bradman was to cricket, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was to aviation, Dame Joan Sutherland was to opera, and Dr Victor Chang was to surgery.”

High praise for an amazing Aussie talent.