Hobley (pronounced to rhyme with 'nobly') was the son of Charles McDonald Hobley, the naval chaplain at the cathedral in Stanley, Falkland Islands,[3] and his wife Gladys, née Blanchard. He was christened Dennys Jack Valentine McDonald-Hobley and attended Brighton College, England, a public school, from 1931 to 1936.[4] He began his acting career in repertory theatre, under the stage names Val Blanchard and Robert Blanchard, using his mother's maiden name, and toured before the Second World War in J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways.[citation needed]
He left the BBC in 1956 to join Granada Television for its opening. He returned to present It's a Knockout in 1966. During that year, he also returned to radio, fronting the Coffee Break Show on the pirate station Wonderful Radio London. On BBC radio, he was chairman of Does The Team Think?. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of BBC Television, he re-appeared in November 1986, as an in-vision announcer on BBC 2.[citation needed]
Hobley appeared in London's West End in the farce No Sex Please, We're British and appeared in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and The Goodies, among other programmes. Just before his death, he returned to the Falkland Islands for a Channel 4 broadcast about the then British South Atlantic Dependencies. In July 1987, he was rehearsing the world premiere of Anthony Marriott and Bob Grant's play "Home is Where Your Clothes Are" produced by David Tudor. He had extreme difficulty learning his lines, which was unusual, and David Tudor had to release him from his contract. He died during recovery from an operation to remove a cancerous tumour in his head, when he suffered a fatal heart attack.[8]