Geoffrey Perkins

The tragic and untimely death of Geoffrey Perkins has cast an air of gloom over the comedy world, and is still being talked about nearly two weeks after the event. It's as if none of us can accept that he isn't here any more because, for many of us, our lives in comedy have been related in one way or another to his.

Comedy is a small world, and can be quite a bitchy one but, as many of the tributes to Geoffrey have pointed out, he was a man universally liked and admired, and by many people, loved.

I knew him first by name from the credits of radio comedy, then from TV credits, and then in person when he became head of comedy at the BBC in 1995, four years after I went to work for Alomo. Although he was a very significant figure, and I was nervous about meeting him and discussing scripts, I learned immediately that Geoffrey was the most aproachable man, extremely funny in quite a wry way, and a formidable analyst of comedy.

Watching him making notes during a read-through, and discussing them with him afterwards, was as much of an education as working with Marks and Gran. I think they would agree that they were quite resistant to notes, but they listened to and generally took Geoffrey's.

As time went by, Geoffrey encouraged me to think about working for the BBC,which I joined in 2001 as head of the script development unit and, as it turned out, Geoffrey's second-opinion reader. We had a great many discussions about scripts both good and bad, but each discussion taught me to see more clearly how to remove flab and enhance comedy.

Of course there were things about Geoffrey which drove people mad. His meetings over-ran. He stockpiled scripts that he had promised to read but found it hard to get round to. He was too kind to cull projects which should have been put out of their misery long before, and sometimes too loyal to lost causes.

But that was just Geoffrey, and what would have been irritating in someone else was endearing or at least forgiveable because he was Geoffrey, an inspiring, warm, funny and human man who was always the same smiling, welcoming and cherishable figure.

At a comedy drinks party last night nobody could quite believe that he had gone, and some still cried. He was, in his quietish way, a part of many people's lives, not least mine.

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