Comedy writing legend Ray Galton died at the age of 88, his family has announced.

They said he had suffered 'a long and heartbreaking battle with dementia'.

With his professional partner Alan Simpson, who died last year at 87, he wrote Hancock's Half Hour and created Steptoe And Son .

Their long-serving manager Tessa Le Bars said: 'I have had the great honour of working with Ray for over 50 years and for the last 40 as his manager and friend.

'With his lifelong co-writer, the late Alan Simpson, they were regarded as the fathers and creators of British sitcom. The end of an iconic era, but the legacy of Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe and Son and over 600 scripts is huge. They will endure, inspire and bring laughter to the nation for evermore.'

Among those paying tribute today were comedy writer Simon Blackwell, whose credits include The Thick Of It and Veep. He tweeted: 'Very sad indeed to hear that Ray Galton has died. He and Alan reached such heights in terms of structure and character. Steptoe is as profound as Ibsen, and he never had an old bloke in a sink scrubbing his nuts with Ajax.'

Pete Sinclair, who co-writes Jack Dee's sitcom Bad Move, added: 'Very sad to hear the news about Ray Galton. Galton and Simpson's sitcoms transcended mere comedy. They were profound and moving. But they were also bloody funny. True genius.'

And broadcaster and poet Ian McMillan tweeted: ' RIP Ray Galton, who understood how the rhythms and narratives of so called ordinary speech are actually extraordinary; they just need shaping a little and then they’ll fly like birds from set-up to punchline via poetry.'

After meeting at the Surrey sanatorium when both were diagnosed with tuberculosis as teenagers, Galton and Simpson forged a partnership and a friendship that was to make comedy history. They were credited with adding a new social realism and fully-formed characters to a genre previously defined by old-school gags.

The pair started writing for Derek Roy on his vehicle Happy Go Lucky, but it was their partnership with Hancock that would define them. They created his radio persona in 1954, and continued to work with him until 1961, when he suddenly fired them and his long-term manager Beryl Vertue, in a bid to cast off his old associations.

After their partnership with Hancock ended, they wrote a series of Comedy Playhouse one-offs for the BBC – one of which, The Offer, became Steptoe and Son, which ran from 1962 to 1974 and reached an audience of 28 million. They cast actors Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett as the father-and-son rag-and-bone men for added dramatic clout, rather than using comedians. It was also successfully remade as Stamford and Son in the US

Galton and Simpson also wrote television, film and stage scripts for the likes of Frankie Howerd, Peter Sellers, Leonard Rossiter, Arthur Lowe and Les Dawson, among others, and both writers were awarded OBEs in 2000 for their contribution to British television.

Here they are at the 2013 Chortle Awards, when they received a lifetime achievement award from Harry Enfield.

* 'We never wanted to make a series of Steptoe & Son': 2009 Chortle interview with Ray Galton

Published: 6 Oct 2018