Born in Yorkshire, Taylor came to Australia in the early 1950s with his new Australian wife, Lesley. With a media background that only entailed a few minor roles with Canadian broadcaster CBC, Taylor enrolled in an announcer’s course and landed a job at radio station 2GN, Goulburn.
By the end of the decade the presenter with the cheeky streak was in Sydney, as host of ATN7’s breakfast program Today. It was the first early morning show on Australian TV.
Taylor was later sacked from the show. He told TV Times in 1964 that he was given no reason for the sacking but Sydney press reports at the time indicated tensions between him and the channel.
Today was cancelled three months after the sacking.
The Ray Taylor Show proved to be a frustrating experience – with Melbournians seemingly not warming to Taylor’s more mature style of humour and commentary. “So many viewers here still aren’t mature enough to have a laugh at themselves or hear sex discussed without getting flustered. It’s all too parochial,” he told TV Times early in 1965.
The show had also endured four different producers and a number of timeslot changes as the channel sought to gradually turn the show around into an In Melbourne Tonight-style clone. Its last timeslot change saw it move to Monday nights directly up against IMT.
The Ray Taylor Show eventually wound up in March 1966. The axing came just as Taylor was rehearsing for a role in an upcoming ABC play, Ashes To Ashes.
Taylor and his second wife, singer Annette Klooger, then went to the US where he was invited by a former ATN7 colleague, Digby Wolfe, to join the writing team for The New Bill Cosby Show. He went on to then write for other American shows including All in the Family, Barney Miller, Dinah! and Cher.
He returned to Melbourne in the mid 1980s, to take on the early evening shift on radio station 3AW. He then went to Sydney in 1987 to ABC station 2BL to present the breakfast program before retiring from broadcasting in 1990.
Ray Taylor is survived by wife Annette.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald. TV Times, 5 August 1964. TV Times, 24 March 1965. TV Times, 15 December 1965. TV Times, 30 March 1966.
But the launch of TEN was not without its drawbacks. The new channel had been forced to postpone its official launch three times – largely due to delays associated with the construction of the channel’s transmission mast in Artarmon. The location of the transmitter was to be in a residential area, causing restrictions in the movement of large-scale equipment and materials. Construction was also affected by a transport strike, hindering the delivery of steel for the project, and a bout of bad weather.
Some of the famous faces included in the cast of TV Spells Magic were Chips Rafferty, Evie Hayes, Tikki Taylor, Chuck Faulkner, Queenie Ashton, Gwen Plumb, Ruth Cracknell, Judi Farr, Wendy Blacklock, Alistair Duncan, Keith Petersen, Nigel Lovell, Margo Lee and Neva Carr Glyn. Though probably the most memorable of the show’s cast was model Diane Granquist (pictured) wearing a revealing toga as she unveils the TEN logo. 
