Barry Took

Barry Took, comedian, writer and broadcaster: born London 19 June 1928; married 1950 Dorothy Bird (two sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1964 Lynden Leonard (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died London 31 March 2002.

Barry Took, comedian, writer and broadcaster: born London 19 June 1928; married 1950 Dorothy Bird (two sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1964 Lynden Leonard (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died London 31 March 2002.

"Barry Took – The Lanky Look" or "London's Longest Laugh" seems hardly the best bill-matter to describe the tall, skinny, bespectacled comedian who hosted the Carroll Levis and his Discoveries show that toured the last remaining variety theatres of the Fifties. But Took's early career as a stand-up comedian stood him in good stead when his later career as a comedy writer itself waned and, unlike many of his contemporaries, he was able to use his experience with an audience to promote himself as a television personality.

He was born in 1928 in Muswell Hill, north London; his father, manager of the Danish Bacon Company, disliked the Western Brothers, that couple of comedy cads, as one of them had once been engaged to Barry's mother, while she herself damaged little Barry's ego for life by informing him at the age of eight that he was not planned. "These accidents happen," she said.

Young Barry, avid reader of The Wizard and The Hotspur, was educated at Bounds Green Council School, graduating to the Stationers' Company School in Hornsey just as the Second World War broke out. His parents refused to let him be evacuated, and sent him to Minchenden School in Southgate instead. His true education for the future, however, was listening to the wireless.

He loved Commander Stephen King-Hall, whose Children's House catchphrase was "Be good, but not so good that people will say, 'What's he been up to?'" He also loved listening to Band Waggon, which starred "Big Hearted" Arthur Askey and Richard "Stinker" Murdoch in their imaginary top-floor flat at Broadcasting House. This BBC series, which created a believable atmosphere plus vivid comic characters such as Mrs Bagwash and her daughter Nausea, were clearly the inspiration for Barry Took's best-remembered radio series, Round the Horne, a show packed with comical characters (J. Peasmould Gruntfuttock, for instance) and their catchphrases ("Thirty-five years!").

Took left school at 15 to touch the fringes of show-business as office boy to the Peter Maurice music publishing company in Denmark Street, then universally known as "Tin Pan Alley". In 1944 he left to become assistant projectionist at the Gaumont Palace, Wood Green, where he made his mark by showing Walt Disney's Three Caballeros upside down.

Called up into the RAF in 1946, he cheered up his daytime job as a clerk by blowing an out-of-tune trumpet in the station dance band at RAF Gloucester. He realised that showbiz was more fun than clerking, and made himself producer of the station concert party, his first production called It's a Pleasure.

During his national service Took met a nice WRAF called Dorothy Bird who would become his first wife in 1950. After demobilisation he went back into pop music for a while with the publisher Paxton, by night trying himself out as a comedian in various working men's clubs. He would end his act playing the trumpet whilst wearing a glove puppet, a gag routine he had swiped from a recent Hollywood film. On other nights he attended acting classes at the Toynbee Hall, where he palled up with Bernard Bresslaw, a young hopeful even taller than Took was.

The Canadian talent scout Carroll Levis gave Took an audition in 1951. He not only passed, but sailed through to the finals on Levis's radio series and wound up with a contract worth £12 a week. From that August Took turned full-time professional, making his début at Hulme Hippodrome. His best gag was visual: he did a parody of Cinemascope films by running from side to side of the stage holding a conversation with himself. Levis made him compère of the touring revue Show Stoppers.

In 1953 Took took a radio audition at the Nuffield Centre, where the producer Dennis Main Wilson passed him to become a funny voice man on Pertwee's Progress, which starred Jon of that ilk and the equally promising new talent of Dick Emery. More radio followed including Midday Music Hall. Then in 1956 Took was signed on to star in the West End revue For Amusement Only. The cast included Ron Moody and Dilys Laye, and the show ran at the Criterion Theatre for 700 performances. It was followed by another long revue run, For Adults Only, with Took co-starring with Miriam Carlin and Hugh Paddick.

In 1957 Took joined Associated London Scripts, an agency for comedy writers that included Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, and the semi- veteran Eric Merriman, with whom Took found himself teamed. Merriman had created Beyond Our Ken, a BBC radio series built around the comfortably avuncular talents of Kenneth Horne, former partner of Richard Murdoch in the war-time show Much Binding in the March.

The hilarious characters surrounding Horne, the straight man, included Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, and Betty Marsden. The show ran for many years, during which Took was brought in to help out. The two writers did not gel too well, and the climax came when they were hired to write a further series of Take It From Here when its original writers, Frank Muir and Denis Norden, went their separate ways. Merriman and Took were now no longer true collaborators, but each wrote separate segments of the show. Ratings fell.

The end of the affair came when the BBC asked Took and his new partner Marty Feldman to write Beyond Our Ken. Merriman was furious, claiming creation of the series and the characters. Took changed the name of the show to Around the Horne (1965). The style, rooted ever deeper into the newly permissible world of the gay life of that "bona" pair Julian (Williams) and Sandy (Paddick), was laced with their private lingo. This infected the folk singer Rambling Sid Rumpo (Williams), with songs like "The Ballad of the Woggler's Moulie". Although the series ran considerably shorter than Merriman's master work, Took's constant pressure produced more books and sound cassettes of the show, which eventually broke the BBC's record by selling 100,000 cassettes sets by 1993.

Took's relationship with the goggle-eyed comic Marty Feldman began in 1954 when he met the musical trio Morris, Marty and Mitch during a variety tour. Feldman persuaded Took he should abandon his smart-suited stage gear for the funnier-looking clothes he wore in real life, plus an umbrella to lean on. Took strolled on and opened with a new line which got such a laugh it became his catchphrase: "I expect you are wondering why I sent for you." The two chummed up and tried their hands at scriptwriting. They wrote acts for Frankie Howerd and were paid £20 between them.

They wrote We're in Business (1959), a radio sitcom for Peter Jones using the character he had created earlier, the Jewish spiv Dudley Grosvenor, in a weekly but doomed attempt to con Harry Worth. After Feldman was operated on for hyperthyroid, the bulges left in his eyeballs helped turn him into television's wildest clown.

Took and television first collided when, still with Merriman, he scripted Jack Hylton's Monday Show (1958), which starred Dick Bentley and Tommy Fields, Gracie's brother, duetting on their violins. The following year the team joined others in scripting Alfred Marks Time, an hour-long series introduced by ex-Regimental Sergeant Major "Tibby" Brittain at the top of his shout.

Meanwhile Took still hoped for a career as a performer. He played the part of the barman in Rediffusion's Late Extra (1958), an early chat show hosted by the film star Edmund Purdom. In one memorable programme Kenneth Macleod interviewed both Rodgers and Hammerstein, while Steve Race played their songs on his piano. This series ran for 42 weeks.

Took and Feldman joined the writing team on Granada's first great success, The Army Game, in 1958, and later scripted the spin-off series Bootsie and Snudge (1960). This demobilised Private Alfie Bass and Sergeant Bill Fraser into staffing a gentleman's club somewhere in Mayfair. The team's first BBC series was The Walrus and the Carpenter (1963), which beat the Bootsie and Snudge combo with the even odder, and older, Gascoine Quilt and Luther Flannery, played by Felix Almer and Hugh Griffiths.

In 1965 Took married his second wife, Lyn, who had been Tony Hancock's secretary. In 1967 he took on a radio job that would give him a new career. He was made chairman of Sounds Familiar, the panel game I had devised to test the N.Q. (Nostalgia Quotient) of veteran stars of show business. He hosted the programme for the first hundred or so shows, later performing the same role in The Impressionists (1973), The News Quiz (1979) and Guess What (1998).

Marty (1968), Feldman's first full-starring series, was a huge success and combined the writing talents of Feldman, Took, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Tim Brooke- Taylor, who also performed. These would eventually form the still superb team of Monty Python's Flying Circus, a project conceived by Took when he was taken on to the BBC staff as Comedy Adviser in 1969. Meanwhile Marty won a Bafta Award and was the BBC's entry for the Golden Rose of Montreux.

Took and Feldman wrote and Feldman starred in their first feature film, Every Home Should Have One (1969). Despite support by stars such as Shelley Burman and Julie Edge, and writers like Denis Norden, Milton Shulman and Herbert Kretzmer, this tale of an advertising man's attempt to sex up some commercials for porridge was a box-office flop.

Took took off to the United States in 1969 for a three-month stint on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. His main mark on the series was that he was the first writer in a team of 15 to insist on an hour off for lunch.

London Weekend Television, in its infancy, made Took their Head of Light Entertainment in 1970. Took said, "There's no longer a Mrs Woman in Oldham who can be given any old rubbish. She's seeing the world's best performers every night on the telly – free." Took gave Kenny Everett his chance in the spotlight, but was soon replaced by Michael Grade.

Back to freelancing, Took adapted Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop as a 1972 series for Harry Worth, put on a stage show called Handy for the Heath, signed on as film critic for Punch, and scripted Wally Fawkes's popular comic strip "Flook" for the Daily Mail. He turned newspaper cartoons into Grub Street (1972) for the BBC and wrote a semi-documentary film Is This a Record? (1973) about the Guinness Book of Records. Bob Godfrey did the animations.

Returning to television Took adapted Stephen Potter's Lifemanship series for Richard Briers (1974), then essayed an unusually semi-serious venture for the BBC Literary project. This educational series with a Took touch of humour was called On The Move (1975) winning a Bafta award and making a star of Bob Hoskins.

Took's longest run came with Points of View: 283 five-minute programmes in eight years during which he responded amusingly to carefully selected viewers' letters. Feeling himself a fixture, he was stunned when Grade suddenly sacked him from the series in 1987, replacing him with Anne Robinson.

Two series came from Yorkshire TV, N.U.T.S. (1976), a quick sketch revue which he hosted, and Took & Co (1977) which was scripted by 10 writers but not Took. Life looked up in the Eighties: Took was taken on by Central TV as their Comedy Adviser. Ted Childs, Controller of Drama, said, "Barry is one of the wisest heads in the business." Took's face was frequently seen on Central's New Faces of 1987, sharing the judging with Nina Myskow and Bonnie Langford.

In 1990 Took presented a long run of TV Weekly, a lunch-time series from TV South. Now of an advancing age and size he showed sequences from what were labelled "archive gems". Lately he popped up in interviews during Heroes of Comedy (1997) and made rude remarks in public about the "new" BBC and its director-general. But generally he spent his time writing and compiling books, notably his own autobiography, A Point Of View (1990). Michael Palin wrote: "I can think of no-one better qualified to write his autobiography than Barry."

Denis Gifford

* Denis Gifford died 20 May 2000