Comedy was in Ian Davidson’s veins. He wrote, directed and acted in programmes featuring some of British television’s biggest stars, including the Monty Python team, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker, Les Dawson, Dave Allen and Little and Large.
Davidson, who has died of cancer aged 84, enjoyed his longest association – 53 years – with Barry Humphries, the British-based Australian most famous for his performance as the outrageous Dame Edna Everage, Melbourne “housewife superstar”, alongside characters such as the offensive Les Patterson and Sandy Stone, “Australia’s most boring man”.
They met when Davidson was directing The Late Show (1966-67), a satirical BBC Two series, and collaborated on scripts for both TV and theatre productions, in the UK, US and Australia.
“He knows I’ll start work on anything, with no money, no agreement, just for the joy of writing with him,” Davidson told the Independent in 1997. The friendship extended to Davidson being the butt of pranks. He recalled: “Once, we left Ronnie Scott’s [club] – me and him and the wives – and tried to find a cab. One came around the corner, we climbed in, and then after a while the driver leaned back and said: ‘Is that Mr ’Umphries? I’d like to say how much I admire your art, Mr ’Umphries.’ Note the word ‘art’. Then the cabby said: ‘As a matter of fact, I’d like to have a drink with you,’ and produced a bottle of champagne and four glasses on a tray from the front of the cab. It turned out Barry had set all this up.”
The Humphries-Davidson collaboration on television continued through Barry Humphries’ Scandals (1970), The Barry Humphries Show (1976-77), The Dame Edna Experience (1987-89), Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch (1992), The Dame Edna Treatment (2007) and Dame Edna Rules the Waves (2019), as well as theatre shows such as the West End production of Housewife! Superstar! (Apollo theatre, 1976).
At Oxford University, Davidson wrote and performed with the future Monty Python stars Michael Palin and Terry Jones. They were reunited, together with Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam, in Monty Python’s Flying Circus when he joined the supporting cast for 1969-70 episodes of the surreal series. The dozen characters he played included an RSPCA man intervening in the “How to feed a goldfish” sketch and a chief commissioner of police waving from a morgue drawer.
He and his other long-term writing partner, Peter Vincent, both wrote for Frost on Saturday (1968) before they joined the scriptwriting team for all 12 series (1971-87) of The Two Ronnies, starring Corbett and Barker, who had made an impression as part of the ensemble cast in David Frost’s satirical series. Davidson also served as script editor from 1977.
Together, he and Vincent created the sitcom Sorry! (1981-88). Corbett starred as Timothy Lumsden, a fortysomething librarian still living with his parents. Barbara Lott played the domineering mother, Phyllis, eager to keep him tied to her apron strings while William Moore acted her henpecked husband, Sidney.
Much later, the trio teamed up on radio for When the Dog Dies (2010-14), featuring Corbett as Sandy Hopper, widowed and resisting attempts by his grown-up children to make him downsize to cash in by selling the house. The title came from Sandy’s insistence that it will not go until his canine companion, Henry, has passed away. The Sunday Times critic Paul Donovan observed that “it is brisk, funny and has sharply drawn characters”, including Sandy’s manipulative lodger (played by Liza Tarbuck).
Born in Romford, Essex, Ian was the son of Denise (nee Free), a school secretary, and John Davidson, a headteacher, and attended the town’s Royal Liberty school.
On graduating in geography from Keble College, Oxford, in 1963, he wrote a sketch for the BBC satirical series That Was the Week That Was, directed an Oxford Theatre Group revue in the West End (Phoenix theatre, 1963), then became a research assistant on regional news at the ITV company Granada Television. While there, he, John Bird and Michael Frayn wrote scripts for the satirical series Second City Reports (1964).
Travelling to the US, he performed with the Second City improvisational theatre group in Chicago and took part in the warm-up for a Lyndon B Johnson speech at the city’s stadium.
Then, back at Granada, he had a short stint as Coronation Street’s script editor before Ned Sherrin, producer and “godfather of satire”, hired him to direct “silly” filmed inserts for the series titled BBC3 (1965-66).
He was assistant director on The Frost Report (1966-67), produced the second series of Do Not Adjust Your Set (1969) and provided scripts for The Kenneth Williams Show (1976), The Dawson Watch (1979), Kelly Monteith (1979), Not the Nine O’Clock News (in 1979, also performing), Carrott Confidential (1987-89), Frankie Howerd on Campus (1990) and The Ben Elton Show (1998). He was script editor on Dave Allen (1993-94).
With Vincent, he also created the sitcom Comrade Dad (1984-86) and jointly contributed scripts to All at No 20 (1986-87) and The Brittas Empire (1991-97). He devised French Fields with John Chapman and produced Keep It in the Family (1971 episodes) and Queenie’s Castle (1971 and 1972 episodes).
Davidson married Anthea Proud in 1967. She and their daughters Clemency, Grace and Hannah survive him, along with their grandchildren, Tobias, Ella, Joshua, Honor, Henry and Arthur. Another daughter, Rose, predeceased him.
• Ian Roger Charles Davidson, actor, writer, director and producer, born 4 August 1940; died 8 September 2024
