Linda Smith

[Lucoid]

I know I'm a couple of days late with this news, but it saddened me, and as I couldn't find anything relating to her death when I ran a search, I thought I'd post this from the BBC news website.

I think I heard that this evening's News Quiz (6.30pm, Radio 4) will be dedicated to her.

Obituary: Linda Smith

Comedian Linda Smith was one of the sharpest performers on the stand-up circuit, but in recent years had become a favourite of diverse audiences on BBC radio and television.
Her roots, in Erith, south-east London, were working-class, but she stubbornly refused to fit any stereotype, her deadpan diatribes about everyday irritations resonating with millions.

She studied English and Drama at Sheffield University and joined a professional touring theatre company in 1983, where she met her partner, Warren Lakin.

Turning to stand-up comedy, she won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 1987.

Throughout the 1990s, she made the annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performing her own show and collaborating with others.

And the mid-90s saw the start of her prolific career on BBC radio, as a regular panellist on the former Radio Five's weekly news satire programme, The Treatment.

From there she graduated to writing and performing in two critically-acclaimed series of her own Radio 4 sitcom, A Brief History of Time Wasting.

She was the first woman team captain and regular on the network's News Quiz and a frequent panel guest on two long-running Radio 4 favourites, Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

Linda Smith also presented Home Truths and Pick of the Week and in 2002 was voted Wittiest Person in a poll of Radio 4 listeners.

She also won a following on television through several appearances on Have I Got News For You, along with Room 101, Q.I., Mock the Week, They Think It's All Over and Call My Bluff, while she contributed her own take on current affairs as a panellist on Question Time.

Dedicated humanist

She still managed to find time for a 35-date national tour in 2004, performing her show, Wrap Up Warm, to sell-out audiences.

Linda Smith blended the topical with the personal, the political with the surreal and silly.

She had a wealth of subjects to grumble about: motorway service stations, the trains, inane daytime television commercials for sun awnings or loans, all delivered in a downbeat fashion that belied a penetrating insight to social trends.


Linda Smith moved effortlessly from stand-up to radio and TV
Besides this, Linda Smith was a great fan of the rock musician and actor, Ian Dury, and president of the British Humanist Association.

In this connection, she recently said: "With fundamentalism on the rise, the rational voice of humanism needs to be heard."

Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer said Linda Smith was a Radio 4 giant.

"She was incredibly funny, but also generated energy and warmth in every programme she ever did", he said.

[Wavid]

Tomorrow evening's News Quiz, Lucoid.

Yes, a reall shame. I know her more from her appearences on Have I Got News for You and other telly stuff more than the radio. She had a weird characteristic of actually being funnier than she appeared to be. I'd always moan whenever she appeared on anything, going "Oh, bloody Linda Smith, she never says anything funny" and then would usually laugh at everything she said.

Also, who'd have thought she was 48!?

[Lucoid]

Sorry, I'm wishing the week away.

[chillicheese]

Thanks Lucoid, I hadn't heard. Sad now though, I've enjoyed everything she's broadcast for years. In a way though, I hear her every day as I'm convinced she recorded the announcements on London Bridge station.

"The train approaching platform 5 is the 1925 service to Brighton, calling at Gatwick Airport, Haywards Heath and Brighton....which is nice."

[wshaw]

It is awful; really really sad.

The only things that cheered me on the Wednesday was Mark Steel's lovely obit in the Independent which included the anecdote:

She was brought up in Erith, a town by the Thames where Kent edges towards London, which she said "isn't twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham". This was a comment that attracted the wrath of her local paper, but she defended herself by pointing out that the same paper ran a competition the following week to come up with the best name for the new Erith leisure centre, which was won by the entry "The Erith Leisure Centre".

... and the fact that she was pictured in a big glam photo on the front page of the Telegraph. I think she would have been quite disturbed by that.

She had a miserable time over the last few years; it's astonishing how she managed to remain so funny through it and finally get the recognition she deserved while she was actually feeling so shitty.

[John Self]

I saw Linda Smith in Edinburgh in 1992/93 which must have been very early in her career (I had never heard of her then, nor of the act she was supporting, Mark Steel - both were brilliant and I have to say, rather funnier than they seem to have been in recent years).

There's always an issue when a famous person dies of a big disease, whether they have some kind of borderline obligation to be public about it, to help people become aware of it and possibly prevent further cases through increased knowledge of early symptoms etc. I'm not sure how I feel about this. All sympathy to Linda Smith's family and loved ones anyway.

[wshaw]

Linda Smith had been going for about ten years, before she moved back to London with Warren, her partner. They'd been in Sheffield; they'd been very involved in the miner's strike and had stayed on up there. Though she was really known on the scene as a bit of a genius, she didn't become famous in a wider way until she moved back to London in the early 90s.

I think it's up to the artist how they deal with the illness. She'd been ill for a while even before the cancer.

I know it's questionable to name-drop the dead, but we were friends. Mrs wshaw worked quite a lot with her and even more with Warren. I once tried writing a film script with her but it was a bit of a fiasco. Not surprisingly her bit was much much better than mine.

[idioteque]

Linda Smith had been going for about ten years, before she moved back to London with Warren, her partner. They'd been in Sheffield; they'd been very involved in the miner's strike and had stayed on up there. Though she was really known on the scene as a bit of a genius, she didn't become famous in a wider way until she moved back to London in the early 90s.

I think it's up to the artist how they deal with the illness. She'd been ill for a while even before the cancer.

I know it's questionable to name-drop the dead, but we were friends. Mrs wshaw worked quite a lot with her and even more with Warren. I once tried writing a film script with her but it was a bit of a fiasco. Not surprisingly her bit was much much better than mine.

I didn't know her as a person (all deaths being, of course, localised tragedies to those around her; and for that I can only extend natural sympathy; particularly given her age and circumstance) but the woman never made me ever even quiver into a smile never mind be a true comic. So I shan't miss anything of the act.

[kumquat]

well wshaw, sympathies to you too. you must feel it more than most. i listened to the R4 programme tonight and thought it was a great tribute. particularly like the scissors joke!

it's not fair is it.

[John Self]

Watched Linda Smith's appearance on Room 101 last night and thought it was absolutely superb - the best since Stephen Fry's. Adults who read Harry Potter? Men who wear bow ties? Check, check, check...

[wshaw]

Yep. Great fan of proper books. Offered proper deals herself. Never took them up. I think you have to respect that in this day and age.

[wshaw]

... and it was also nice to see her and the other Mr Self slicing up Neil Kinnock something rotten on HIGNFY.

[Hinton]

"John Major, the man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant."