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As witty offstage as on it
By Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard, Comedy Critic Last updated at 00:00am on 01.03.06
The death of comedian Linda Smith robs the comedy world of one of its most cherished gagsmiths.
Smith may not have been a big star but she was a significant figure in modern humour, having been part of the vanguard of female stand-ups, alongside Jo Brand and Jenny Eclair, who broke into a male-dominated bastion. In recent years Smith became a Radio 4 fixture, where her offbeat, inventive waffling on any subject under the sun worked brilliantly on Just A Minute.
There were also critical plaudits for the two series of her radio sitcom A Brief History Of Time Wasting, set in an East End tower block. Television inevitably beckoned too.
Her sharp satirical retorts on The News Quiz landed her spots on BBC1's Have I Got News For You where she easily held her own in the testosterone-fuelled environment.
More recently she was a quick-fire contributor to irreverent panel shows QI and Mock The Week. In 2002 Smith was voted the Wittiest Person On Radio but she was not interested in awards.
She was an old-school socialist who, unusually in showbusiness, did not have a cynical bone in her body.
When I first met her in the late Nineties at a party for Channel Four's 11 O'Clock Show on which she was a writer, she was relaxed and friendly and immediately behaved as if we had known each other for years. She was also as funny offstage as on it.
Smith was one of those rare performers who attracted fans from across the generations.
When I saw her do a set in Greenwich three years ago the sell-out crowd was from a cross-section of society, from twentysomethings radicalised by 9/11 to sixtysomething Radio 4 listeners.
Smith was not hip or trendy, but one of the advantages of never being fashionable was that she never went out of fashion either.
