David Nobbs

Writer Born: March 13, 1935; Died: August 9, 2015. DAVID Nobbs, who has died aged 80, was the master of knowing how to construct a great comic story and create some wonderful comic characters.

A novelist and writer of TV comedy, his best loved creation was that of Reggie Perrin, the disillusioned executive who first appeared on television almost 40 years ago, played by the late Leonard Rossiter.

He wrote 20 novels, several of which he adapted for television, and was a committed humanist.

Nobbs’s comedy and comic situations were often bizarre, ridiculous even, but they were firmly rooted in reality and living in the modern world, with all its frustrations, concerns and absurdities.

Nobbs was the master of the running joke, with Reggie’s excuses for being late for work at Sunshine Desserts growing ever more outlandish, from “Signal failure at Vauxhall” in the first episode to “Badger ate a junction box at New Malden” in Series Two. They served almost as a subconscious cry for help.

And then there was Reggie’s intimidating boss CJ forever announcing “I didn’t get where I am today by…”, a sentence finished by increasingly ridiculous comments bearing some tenuous relevance to preceding plot developments.

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin starred Rossiter as a middle-manager, experiencing a mid-life crisis. He fakes suicide and starts over with a new identity, but ultimately is still surrounded by characters from his previous life.

It originally ran for three series between 1976 and 1979, developed a passionate following and is now regarded as a sitcom classic.

Nobbs’s later series A Bit of a Do (1989), with David Jason, was more mainstream and attracted a bigger audience. But it was Reggie Perrin who entered the public consciousness and various catchphrases were adopted and adapted by f ans (and indeed journalists).

It was not only in the UK that it developed a devoted fan base.

“I met a man in a bar of a London hotel, from Idaho I think,” Nobbs recalled in an interview a few years ago. “I said my name was David Nobbs. And he said ‘Not The David Nobbs?’ He said ‘I didn’t get where I am today by being in a hotel in London with The David Nobbs’.”

Rossiter died in 1984, but Nobbs returned to the other characters in The Legacy of Reginald Perrin in 1996. Reggie has also passed away, but left family, friends and former colleagues a fortune, with strings attached.

Despite the strong cast and the quality of Nobbs’s writing, Rossiter had been the heart of the show and the sequel proved short-lived.

However, the character of Reggie Perrin was so strong that he was revived in 2009 with Martin Clunes as Reggie. Nobbs co-wrote it with Simon Nye and it ran for two series.

Born in the London suburb of Bromley in 1935, David Gordon Nobbs attended Marlborough College and Cambridge University. He worked as a reporter on the Sheffield Star and began as a comedy writer in the early 1960s on the landmark satirical sketch show That Was The Week That Was. He brought that same satirical edge to Reggie Perrin in the following decade.

TW3 led to The Frost Report, which in turn led to work on The Two Ronnies. Nobbs also wrote for such comedy legends as Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd.

But he had serious literary ambitions too and was heavily influenced by Samuel Beckett in his absurdist debut novel The Itinerant Lodger (1965). The Death of Reginald Perrin was his fourth novel, it appeared 10 years later and he readily adapted it for television.

Although some of the darker episodes were toned down or omitted on television, Nobbs managed to do what few other sitcom writers have achieved in marrying comedy and tragedy, and ending up with something that was still genuinely and hilariously funny.

Nobbs effectively developed the character of Reggie’s brother-in-law Jimmy, an inept army officer, in Fairly Secret Army (1984-86). The plotline about training a secret paramilitary organisation was outlined by Jimmy in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, although the character’s name was changed in the new series.

Nobbs enjoyed further success with A Bit of A Do. The novel came out in 1986 and featured two Yorkshire families, one working-class, one middle-class, and again he adapted it for television, beginning with a wedding at which the father of the groom and mother of the bride begin an affair.

Later television included Rich Tea and Sympathy (1991), The Life and Times of Henry Pratt (1993), Love on a Branch Line (1994), and Gentlemen’s Relish (2001).

He was very active in the British Humanist Association and is survived by his wife Susan and f ou r stepchildren.