Debbie Barham

Prolific radio and television comedy writer

Deborah Ann Barham, writer: born Sheffield 20 November 1976; died London 20 April 2003.

When the radio chatter-jock Fi Glover fronted the pre-graveyard shift show (10pm until one) for two years on Radio 5 Live, rarely an evening passed without a comment or a gag on the show's main topics, e-mailed in, virtually within nanoseconds of their introduction, from a "D.A. Barham". And rarely was the comment less than pithy, apt or acidic, the gag less than sharp or witty, often laugh-out-loud hilarious (and on occasion too filthy to be broadcast).

This was not surprising since "D.A. Barham" hid the identity of the extraordinarily talented comedy writer Debbie Barham, who first utilised the ambiguously initialled disguise when sending in a flood of unsolicited gags and one-liners to BBC radio programmes such as The News Huddlines (on Radio 2) and Weekending (Radio 4), both shows useful and nurturing cradles of freelance comic talent during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Barham thought that "D.A." de-sexed her, and made her contributions more acceptable in the aggressive, heavily blokey atmosphere of radio comedy writing. As it turned out she was right, although editors and co-contributors would have been far more likely to have been staggered if they had actually met her, since at the time she was just 15.

Her prolificity even then was startling, casting friends and writing colleagues, such as the journalist Victor Lewis-Smith, into awe-struck silence: "Debbie only had to whistle and an entire herd of gags would thunder towards her: every one a winner." Bruce Hyman, head of Above The Title productions, thought her comic fluency and, especially, speed of delivery "positively Mozartian".

Just as startling was the sophistication of her humour and the sure touch with which she identified a likely long-term comic runner in a news report or a piece of gossip. She was said to have virtually created the industry in jokes about the slimness shading into gauntness of Victoria Beckham (when Beckham's hairdresser revealed that his nickname for her was "Beaujolais", Barham instantly emailed a colleague that it was "easy to see why: Beaujolais is hugely over-rated and never has much in the way of body".)

In fact Barham did a wicked line in slimming gags and could always be prevailed upon to attack her laptop on the subject. She once memorably described the "Supermodel Diet" as "Dinner: four bottles of bubbly and a lettuce leaf. Breakfast: five Alka Seltzer and a finger down the throat. Lunch: 30 fags", claiming this was "guaranteed to take inches off your waistline. Not to mention years off your life."

The irony was that Barham herself fought a seven-year battle with full-blown anorexia nervosa, in the end succumbing to it and dying of heart failure caused by her condition. At the time of her death she weighed four and a half stone.

Debbie Barham was born in Sheffield in 1976. Her father Peter was a printer, her mother Ann a professional indexer and editor. They split up when Barham was a toddler and she was brought up by her mother. She was educated, briefly, at Sheffield High School for Girls, her few years there later described as "hell on earth . . . the crappiest days of my life". To offset the awfulness she listened obsessively to the radio in her bedroom and began sending in jokes to comedy programmes. The difference between her and most youthful writers was that her material was immediately accepted. She had excellent general knowledge, a fine grasp of politics and contemporary mores, the priceless ability to scoff creatively, and a cruel streak crucial to the genuine wit. All at the age of 15.

Just before her 16th birthday she won a BBC comedy-writing contest which funded her for a year in London. She left school, persuading her parents she could pass her A levels via a correspondence course, but soon abandoned education altogether and, aged 17, settled in Chiswick, west London, as a BBC contract writer, relishing the ferocious banter at script meetings, the after-work drinks, an "honorary bloke" in flowing skirts and "kick-'em-in-the-crotch" Doc Martens.

She began writing prolifically for the print medium, with regular articles or columns in The Independent, the London Evening Standard, Daily Express, the late Punch, The Guardian and The Sun, as well as E-magazines. The TV markets she cracked included some of the best and most glamorous in the business, and she produced material for, among others, Clive Anderson, Russ Abbot, Rory Bremner, Bob Monkhouse (which must have been a hair-raising gig), Angus Deayton and Graham Norton. She had a stint writing for Spitting Image, as well as Radio 5 Live's The Treatment, and Radio 4's The News Quiz and Loose Ends (one of its presenter Ned Sherrin's favourite Barham gags in the "monologue" she regularly wrote for him, was "Neil Hamilton visited his old school yesterday and invited questions – pupils said they couldn't afford them.")

But all the time – though on the surface she was enjoying life and making money – Barham's illness was getting depressingly worse. She finally admitted she had a problem when her agent failed to recognise her one day at a BBC recording.

No amount of help or treatment seemed to have the slightest effect, and she became increasingly reclusive, spending her waking hours (usually those of darkness) on the internet, peddling jokes and articles to various customers, checking on the news and political gossip and writing poetry: "Sleep away the years, sleep away the pain, wake tomorrow – a girl again."

And of course obsessively emailing Radio 5 Live's baffled producer Rhian Roberts on the Fi Glover show: "We hadn't a clue who she was, and never paid her a penny. She didn't ask for any fees. She just sent us this incredibly funny stuff which Fi Glover read on air when we had space. It was absolutely brilliant. I suppose she just liked banging off jokes."

Jack Adrian