This is taken from The Times:

Bryan Izzard
1932 - April 27, 2006
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.

Bryan Izzard, television producer and director, was born in 1932. He died on April 27, 2006, aged 74.