Appreciation Prolific Gag Writer Who Punned His Way Past The BBC Censors

The best work of Barry Cryer, who has died aged 86 , was in two different ways unseen.

- Mark Lawson

He wrote jokes for generations of comedians, from Tommy Cooper and Morecambe and Wise through the Two Ronnies to Rory Bremner, and much of his professional pleasure came, like that of a demolition expert , from appreciating carefully engineered explosions from a distance.

A lot of the big laughs he received personally came on radio, where he was a chair man during the first series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue in 1972 before becoming a pivotal and consummate panellist for the rest of his life.

While his television appearances were more infrequent, Cryer was immediately recognisable, partly owing to a distinctive look – prematurely white hair offset by big, thick, black-framed spectacles.

Although he often wrote or collaborated with Oxbridgeeducated comics – Monty Python’s John Cleese and Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden and Tim BrookeTaylor of the Goodies – Cryer was shaped, in attitude and language, by Yorkshire education.