She was a working-class girl from Leeds who could inhabit the lives of sex workers, diet club pals and lottery winners with unflinching compassion, honesty and humour.
Kay Mellor was the voice of struggling underdogs and ordinary people whose trailblazing writing also helped launch the careers of James Corden, Samantha Morton and Sheridan Smith.
The TV industry was reeling yesterday to learn the creator of iconic series including Fat Friends, Band of Gold, Playing the Field and The Syndicate, had died suddenly at the age of 71.
A spokesman for her TV production company, Rollem Productions, confirmed “with profound sadness” that she had passed away on Sunday.
Tributes poured in, led by Gavin and Stacey star Ruth Jones, who was part of the cast for ITV ’s Fat Friends along with Smith, Corden and Alison Steadman.
She said British TV had “lost one of its greats” adding she felt “completely privileged” to have worked with her.
“Such a down-to-earth, funny, big-hearted person whose brilliance lay in seeing the extraordinary in the day-to-day,” she said.
She was known for writing dramas featuring strong female lead characters, and for setting them in the North.
Her own upbringing on a council estate informed her work. Her father George Daniel sold vacuum cleaners, and when she was nine, her mother remarried, to upholsterer Abe Harris.
Mellor and her husband Anthony were married in 1968 after she became pregnant at 16 with daughter Yvonne Francas, now a TV producer.
She gave birth to second daughter Faye – an actress who has appeared in many of her dramas including Playing the Field – four years later.
She reflected this experience in 2013 drama In the Club, saying it helped her “exorcise some demons”. Reflecting on becoming a mum while at school, she said: “I remember Anthony and I walking home to tell my mum and I felt so frightened.
She was wonderful though. She sat down and said, ‘You know, you don’t have to marry him, if you don’t want’.”
But she was happy to wed 17-year-old Anthony and move into his mum’s council house as they were “head-over-heels”.
But Mellor added: “I was always grateful to my mother for saying that, though.”
As their two daughters, Yvonne and Gaynor, grew older, Kay took O- and A-levels, then trained in drama as a mature student, before founding a touring theatre company and entering television.
She began by writing plays, before moving to Coronation Street and creating award-winning kids’ drama Children’s Ward with Paul Abbott, who later wrote Shameless.
Her big break as a writer came with ground-breaking Band of Gold about sex workers on the streets of Bradford trying to run their own business.
She wrote the ITV drama, which ran for three years from 1995, after taking a wrong turn and driving into a red-light area, where Mellor was shocked to see underage girls touting for work.
It gave Hollywood star Samantha Morton one of her first major roles, before she went on to star in Minority Report opposite Tom Cruise.
Mellor had long been determined to set her dramas in and around Yorkshire.
“It’s vital the north of England is represented in mainstream drama, not just soap opera,” she declared.
“Northern dramas have a different feeling because it feels like these are my people, this is the world I know, this is the world I grew up in.”
She once said the city of Leeds “feeds my creativity”. Mellor was also an actress, starring in her own adaptation of Jane Eyre in 1997 and Gifted in 2003.
Her play A Passionate Woman, based on the story of her own mother’s doomed affair with a Polish fairground worker, was turned into a BBC drama starring Billie Piper and Sue Johnston.
Her BBC1 series The Syndicate about lottery winners ran for four series from 2012 until last year.
Mellor said she was inspired to write the drama because of “the times we are living in, where people are desperate and holding on to the dream of winning the lottery as the only solution”.
West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin described her as “our voice of the North”, saying: “She put working-class characters at the centre of brilliant compassionate, moving and funny stories. Such a loss.”
Fat Friends, which aired on ITV from 2000 to 2005, also gave Corden his first major acting role alongside Ruth Jones.
He said: “She was the most generous, kind and loving person. She gave so many people their first chances. I’ve the fondest memories of being on set with her.”
Former Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley, who also starred in the drama about a weightloss group, described her as “the best boss to work for” while Coronation Street’s Antony Cotton noted she “was a real trailblazer for women”.
Sir Lenny Henry said: “I was lucky to work with her on The Syndicate and found her to be incredibly creative, funny and instinctive. She’ll be missed.”
Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies said he had learned valuable lessons from Mellor, who had an “unshakeable belief in story, story, story”.
He added: ”I adored her. She taught me so much. And she was hilarious.” His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne said: “I got lucky enough to hear Kay Mellor speak about Band of Gold, and the care and attention with which she told that story, in which she told all her stories, was remarkable.”
Kym Marsh, who appeared in The Syndicate, said it had been “an absolute honour” to work with Mellor who was “a huge talent, a huge personality, a wonderful lady”.
BBC content chief Charlotte Moore said: “Kay wrote with such heart, humanity, humour and passion with strong female characters often taking centre stage.”
ITV drama chief Polly Hill said: “I have been with her many times as she was stopped by people in the street telling her how much they love her characters, how they related to them and wanted more.”
