This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The comedian and satirist John Fortune, described by his agent, Vivienne Clore, as "so formidable of brain and so fearless and generous of heart", has died aged 74.

Fellow comedians mourned his passing. Rory Bremner, a longtime collaborator, said Fortune had "the most beautiful brain of any man I've ever known".

Fortune's most frequent screen persona was as a shambolic, dense and stuffy bureaucrat – such as his Tory MP George Parr – baffled and outraged by the world, but the character concealed Fortune's sharp satiric intelligence as a writer and performer.

He was renowned for his work with John Bird – they first worked together in 1967, and shared a Bafta award in 1997 – and Rory Bremner. The latter tweeted "I'm so sorry to let you know that my friend John Fortune died this morning. Lovely man, dear friend, brilliant & fearless satirist."

Bremner later told the BBC: "In some ways Bird and Fortune were the pillars of the anti-establishment. Their timing was so superb and they had the ability to dissect a subject like a scalpel."

Stephen Fry tweeted: "Oh how sad John Fortune has died. He was in the first play I was ever in, 40 Years On. Huge influence on the satire boom. Loved parrots too."

The film director Nigel Cole said he had cast Fortune in his Golden Globe-nominated comedy Saving Grace, and in Calendar Girls, "mainly because I was a big fan".

The actor John Challis, Boycie in Only Fools and Horses, a friend who acted with Fortune in a 1980s teleivision series, said: "I played henchman to his chief villain in Cat's Eyes and we laughed a lot. Another goodun gone."

The ITV newsreader Alastair Stewart said Fortune, Bird and Bremner had created "some of the cleverest funniest stuff ever".

Fortune was born John Wood in Bristol in 1939, and first met John Bird at Cambridge University. He was an early member of Peter Cook's Establishment Club,and a television satire fixture from the 1960s onwards. Although best known as a screen actor, he appeared in the West End in 1999 with Warren Mitchell and Ken Campbell in the play Art.

His long partnership with Bird included The Long Johns, in which one interviewed the other in a series of guises as appalling establishment figures, all called George Parr – using the formula to lambaste targets including bankers, armchair generals in the Iraq war and faithless Tory MP husbands.

Clore said he died peacefully in his bed, with his wife Emma and dog Grizelle by his side.