Romana Barrack (5 August 1928 – 31 May 2016), known professionally as Carla Lane, was an English television writer responsible for several successful British sitcoms, including The Liver Birds (co-creator, 1969–1979), Butterflies (1978–1983), and Bread (1986–1991). Lane was described as "the television writer who dared to make women funny"; much of her work focused on strong women characters, including "frustrated housewives and working class matriarchs". In later years, she became well known as an animal welfare advocate. Early life and education Lane was born in West Derby, Liverpool, in the United Kingdom on 5 August 1928. Her father was Gordon De Vince Barrack, a Welsh-Italian steward in the merchant navy, and her mother was Ivy Amelia (née Foran). She had a younger brother, Ramon, and a sister, Marna. Lane grew up in West Derby and Heswall. She attended a convent school and, aged seven, won a school poetry prize. She left school aged 14, and worked in nursing. After leaving school, she worked first in a baby linen shop, then at Bonmarché, and finally at a factory in Prescot. According to her autobiography, she married Eric Arthur Hollins at 17 and had two sons by the age of 19, though official records indicate that she was 19 when she married on 27 March 1948. Writing career In the 1960s, Lane wrote short stories and radio scripts. Her first successes came in collaboration with Myra Taylor, whom she had met at a writers' workshop in Liverpool. Lane and Taylor would often meet at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool City Centre to write. She said that she used a pseudonym, "Carla Lane", because of her modesty about revealing that she was a writer. With Taylor, she submitted some comedy sketch scripts to the BBC, where they were seen by Michael Mills, the head of comedy at the time. He encouraged them to write a half-hour script, which was broadcast as a pilot episode of The Liver Birds in April 1969. A short first series followed to little acclaim, leading Mills to decline to produce a second series, changing his mind only when Lane and Taylor wrote a series of new scripts. The series became one of the most popular of the time, characterised by Lane's "ability to conjure laughs out of pathos and life's little tragedies". Upon Mills' departure from the position of head of comedy at the BBC in 1972, Lane