My friend Guy Meredith, who has died aged 70, was a writer of dramas and comedies for radio, most notably for the BBC.
His prolific output included many original plays and dramatisations, including The Surprise Symphony (1991), a hilarious Prix Italia-nominated account of a disastrous foreign orchestra tour in which, one by one, each of its musicians is murdered. He also created a stunning dramatisation of Albert Camus’s prophetic novel La Peste (1992) and wrote Mad, Bad (1989), the BBC’s entry for the Prix Futura, starring Bill Nighy, who featured in several of Guy’s plays.
When the actors Anna Massey and Imelda Staunton were looking for a writer for a project they had in mind about a post-second world war detective agency, it was Guy they came to, and he wrote many of the episodes for four series of the jaunty crime drama Daunt & Dervish, from 2003 to 2009. Equally at home with drama and comedy, he was always full of new ideas gleaned either from his own fertile imagination or from the vast number of books in many languages that he had read.
Guy was born in London to George, a salesman, and Pat (nee Lambert), a personal assistant. He went to Wembley grammar school and then Sheffield University, where he studied classics. He had always wanted to write, even as a child, and began his career as a journalist, working as a reporter and then a news editor on various computer magazines before turning to full-time drama writing in 1979.
When I was a radio drama producer/director at the BBC, he sent me his first radio play, and I subsequently had the pleasure of directing most of his BBC Radio Drama output. He was genuinely one of the funniest and most self-effacing writers. Authors can sometimes be time-consuming to have around in the studio when you are up against the clock, but his most frequent comment when asked about a particular line was “who wrote this stuff!”, always delivered with a laugh.
From 2000 onwards Guy also taught creative writing at the City Lit in London. In his free time he was an avid Fulham supporter and we would exchange many animated conversations about the rise and fall of our respective football teams.
In later life Guy dealt with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Lewy with fortitude and humour, and a couple of years ago moved for good to Spain, from where his wife, Joana (nee Serrabona), hailed. They met at a party in 1977, married in 1980, and had two sons, Adam and Daniel.
He is survived by Joana and their sons, and a grandson Alfie.
