Esmonde and Larbey were a British television screenwriting duo, consisting of John Gilbert Esmonde (21 March 1937 – 10 August 2008) and Robert Edward Larbey (24 June 1934 – 31 March 2014), who created popular sitcoms from the mid-1960s until the mid-1990s such as Please Sir!, The Good Life, Get Some In!, Ever Decreasing Circles, and Brush Strokes.

Biographies

Bob Larbey made his writing debut for BBC radio, before contributing a film adaptation, Mrs Silly, starring Maggie Smith. Larbey met his future writing partner when they were pupils at Henry Thornton School, South Side, Clapham Common. He was born in Clapham, South London and died in London aged 79 in March 2014.

John Esmonde served a couple of years in the Royal Air Force in Air Ambulance before realising that his budding writing partnership with Larbey might prove more fruitful. Three years of after-hours writing yielded a BBC joint fee of two guineas for the pair in 1965, as they began to have sketches accepted on shows such as I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and The Dick Emery Show. Born in Battersea, South West London, Esmonde was married to Georgina Barton from 1960 until his death in Spain in August 2008, aged 71.

Collaboration

Esmonde and Larbey's first sitcom as a writing team came in 1966 with Room at the Bottom for the BBC. This followed the exploits of a group of maintenance men working for Saracens Manufacturing Company. Starting out as a pilot in the BBC's Comedy Playhouse programme, it lasted for one series the next year, starring Kenneth Connor, Deryck Guyler and Francis Matthews.

The BBC radio comedy You're Only Old Once, also starring Deryck Guyler who appeared alongside Clive Dunn and Joan Sanderson, was broadcast between February 1968 and July 1969.

Also in 1968, Esmonde and Larbey created Please Sir!, a situation comedy which starred John Alderton as a naive teacher thrown in at the deep end in a tough south London school. Rejected by the BBC, the series was accepted by London Weekend Television, whose head of comedy was then Frank Muir.

  • On the Up (1990–1992)
  • As Time Goes By (1992–2005)
  • My Good Friend (1995–1996)
  • Ain't Misbehavin (1997)

References

Obituaries of Bob Larbey

  • The Guardian
  • The Daily Telegraph

Obituaries of John Esmonde

  • The Times
  • The Guardian
  • BBC Guide to Comedy — Esmonde and Larbey
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