Dearly Departed: Canadian comedic actor, Leslie Earnest Lye, 1924-2009.

Cause Of Death: Undisclosed.

Greatest Achievement: Playing any number of grotesque adult characters on the Canadian kids’ comedy You Can’t Do That On Television.

Don’t wave away the fog of childhood nostalgia for Hey Hey, It’s Saturday’s groan-worthy gags just yet, because Canadian actor, voiceover artist and comedian Les Lye passed away last week. Who? Remember Barth, the phlegm-filled, filthy short-order cook from You Can’t Do That On Television? Him.

It was quite a terrifying experience researching the show for poor Mr Lye, since it reminded me just how disgusting and dark that show really was. YCDTOT was crammed to the gills with awful jokes read out like cue-cards by goofy child actors (including a teenage Alanis Morissette in the later seasons). But it was also hugely pro-kid, often framing adults as cheap, sadistic, libidinous and stupid. That’s where Les Lye came in.

His criminally unhygienic Barth (who I’d always thought was called ‘Barf’, despite ‘Barth’ front and centre on his grubby chef’s hat) wasn’t the worst of them. Other characters of Lye’s that we’ve banished to our scarred collective childhood unconscious included: a patronising studio director called Ross Ewich (sound out the name); a homicidal bus driver called Snake Eyes; Senator Lance Pervert;  a cruel dungeon master called Nasti; a Central American despot called El Capitan who constantly lined the kids up in front of a firing squad;  a schoolteacher called Mr Schidtler who was as tyrannical as his namesake; and a vicious doctor and dentist, both described as “money-grubbing” i.e. Jewish. His oeuvre included general authoritarian assholes too, like the reviled school principal, camp counsellor and football coach.

How the hell did they do that on television? And how did Lye make these characters so much fun? For a start they were all ludicrous caricatures, and were always bested by the kids. It’s something Lye learnt when working on radio and then moving to the new medium of television in 1958. He dreamt up comic characters for Bill Luxton’s morning TV show, and later teamed up with him to create Uncle Willy & Floyd, a show that lasted for 22 years on Canadian television.

While we know him best from his work on YCDTOT, he later went on to voice work on two Care Bears specials, The Care Bears in the Land Without Feelings and The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine. He was the villain Quellor in The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and performed voices for the Dennis The Menace animated series. He also appeared in stage shows throughout his career.

Lye’s last public appearance seems to be SlimeCon in 2004 and it’s reported that he was working on his memoirs when he died. We may never read about the True Ottawa Stories from the halcyon days of teen scandal at You Can Do That On Television, but Les Lye’s gleefully hideous characters will probably be recounted to therapists for years to come.

He will be missed.