Bobby Limb goes from Adelaide dance bands leader to Australia's top-rating TV shows star during the 1960s

Bobby Limb started his climb to Australian TV stardom by learning to play the saxophone at the Adelaide College of Music.
 

Bobby Limb entered show business in 1941, aged 17, as a saxophone player with dance bands around his home city Adelaide. By 1948, he was the youngest band leader in Australia. He developed his comedy and made his first recording in 1950.

By 1952, Limb was already one of Australia's leading entertainers, with a fan club of 35,000 teenagers on Sydney’s radio station 2UW. He appeared in the satirical radio program The Idiot Weekly in 1958-59 with Spike Milligan, Ray Barrett, John Bluthal and John Ewart but was better known for his own radio, and later TV, shows.

His most successful television shows were The Mobil Limb Show, the first to go national, and Bobby Limb's Sound of Music 1963–1972. It was mostly the country's top-rated show. Limb switched with his program from TCN Channel 9 to TEN10 in the same timeslot on Friday nights.

He won 11 Logie awards, including the 1964 gold for the most popular personality on Australian television.

Limb married fellow entertainer Dawn Lake in 1953 and the couple became iconic within Australian entertainment.

In the late 1950s, Limb had taken over supplying middle-Australia's tastes in entertainment from radio personality Jack Davey but those tastes changed in the 1970s from family variety shows towards pop music, home-grown soap operas and harder-edged satirical comedy.

Limb remained a hit with older Australian audiences but his later appearances were almost at live venues, like clubs and theatres, often in connection with charity fundraising for causes such as Diabetes Australia.