Brian Tesler

Tesler was born in Stepney, east London on 19 February 1929. His Jewish father, David, came to England from Ukraine in 1916, setting up his own hatmaking business. His mother, Esther Hyman, also Jewish, was born in Mile End in East London, her parents having emigrated from Russia in about 1893. Her father was a baker.

Tesler was educated at the Chiswick County School for Boys in West London. As well as its academic excellence and absence of antisemitism Tesler found the extra-curricular activities there, including its drama opportunities, to be to his liking. Tesler loved the music hall and variety shows and was a regular visitor to the major entertainment theatres in London. In later life he credited his youthful enjoyment of all aspects of show business as a valuable self-education which prepared him for his career in light entertainment.

One of the teachers at his school encouraged Tesler's interest in reading, turning it into a love of English literature, and persuaded him that a University of Oxford degree in English was something to which he could aspire. Another teacher, responsible for the school's drama projects, encouraged Tesler's growing interest in the theatre by casting him prominently and successfully in school plays. Tesler won a scholarship for a university place to be taken up after his two-year National Service in the Army.

Tesler was mustered in the Royal Artillery in the summer of 1947 but after auditioning was posted to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) radio station in Trieste in Northern Italy as a presenter. He stayed in the BFBS in Trieste until he was demobilised in September 1949.

Tesler's scholarship took him to Exeter College, Oxford in Autumn 1949 to read English Literature and Language. After three years during which there was some concern from his tutors that he was spending more time with show business activities than his studies, he graduated in 1952 with a First Class Honours Degree, with the highest marks in his year, in English. While at Oxford Tesler was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), joined the reporting team on The Isis Magazine, sang occasionally with the University Jazz Club and wrote and sold songs with fellow student, the composer Stanley Myers.

Tesler married Audrey Maclean on 28 October 1959. She had been his production assistant at Associated Television for the previous two years. She told the Daily Mirror: "I came to work for Brian while his regular assistant was away on holiday. Somehow I stayed."

They set up home in Chiswick in West London and had a son, Simon.

When Tesler retired in 1994 he and his wife set up a small charity, The Multithon Trust, which supports the treatment of and research into the causes of illness, disease and disability, and the care and welfare of those who suffer from them.

Audrey Tesler died of cancer in 2008, three weeks before their Golden Wedding.

Tesler wrote two books about his life and career. The first, Before I Forget, was published in 2006, and described his young life, growing up in a Jewish family in London before and during the Second World War. He recalled in some detail his childhood introduction to music hall and radio entertainment, and about his later experience with the British Forces Broadcasting Service during his Army service. The second book, The Best Of Times, published in 2016, is an in-depth account of his professional career as a producer of light entertainment in the 1950s and 1960s and then as a senior executive in independent television from the 1970s until 1994.

Tesler died after a short illness on 30 October 2024, at the age of 95. A small Jewish family funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium on 06 November 2024.