Les Lye

Odds are most of you never knew Les Lye.  You might have heard of (or seen) that kid’s show on Nickelodeon called “You Can’t Do That On Television” and if you have, you’ve seen Les Lye, who passed away on Tuesday at 84.  Les played Ross and Dad.

A bit of the background here.  YCDTOTV was produced at CJOH-TV in Ottawa, when I worked there in the 80’s.  I was in commercial production and Les was a staff freelancer, so we worked together more than a few times.  Les was one of those people who was naturally funny:  Just being around him was a lift to your day.  He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of jokes, bits and humour, but could still sit down and talk over the trivialities of the day.

One Les Lye story will suffice.  On occasion we’d semi-collaborate on some of his movie reviews, which he did as part of the late news.  When the film version of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” came out, in 1982, he didn’t want to actually say ‘whorehouse’, the gag being the station management wouldn’t let him say ‘whorehouse’ on the air.  It wasn’t true, but that was going to be the gag.

He was able to find a few synonyms for ‘whorehouse’, but knew that I was a font of excruciatingly useless information and seemed to be able to find the obscure and archaic terms.  (Remember this was pre-Internet days)  After a few hours, I had 38 synonyms for ‘whorehouse’ and these were duly incorporated into the script.  I think Les managed to work about 30 of them into a five-minute review.

Les’s partner in real crime was Bill Luxton.  Between the two of them, they did 22 seasons of Willy and Floyd.  Ostensibly a children’s show, the genius of Willy and Floyd were the jokes that could be taken at one level by the kids and a whole other, much raunchier, level by the grownups. 

Actually, the rehearsals for Willy and Floyd were perhaps the funniest things ever created in the known Universe.  Les and Bill were both so talented that the ad libs in rehearsal would leave your bladder a crippled spasmodic wreck as you tried not to piss yourself laughing.  I was fortunate enough to write a couple of Willy and Floyd’s.  I actually found one of the scripts a couple of years ago. 

Les worked with a lot of folks and his career spanned decades in radio, film, television and stage.  He also gave back as a very active member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. 

We’ve lost a very warm and talented man.  Thank you Les.