Obituary: Beryl Vertue 1931-2022

Beryl Vertue, who died last month at the age of 90, was one of that handful of people who deserve to be described as an industry legend.

Beryl Vertue obituary

Writers' agent who became a television producer with credits including Sherlock, Men Behaving Badly and Coupling.

Beryl Vertue: People don't give British comedy a chance

She represented Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock and Frankie Howerd. But Beryl Vertue refuses to believe that comedy's best days are behind us.

How we made Men Behaving Badly

From farting in a birthing pool to rolling down a giant penis, Martin Clunes and producer Beryl Vertue remember the laddish sitcom that defined an era.

Men Behaving Badly: Tube Talk Gold

In 1989, Simon Nye wrote a book charting the exploits of two laddish layabouts. Soon, the novel - Men Behaving Badly - had been earmarked by producer Beryl Vertue, who felt it had the potential to become a hit on television. Vertue was correct, but the show's path to success was not an easy one...

In Radio 2's Very Nearly an Armful - a quote from The Blood Donor, as any self-respecting baby boomer will know - the comedy writer Stephen Merchant analysed their lasting appeal, with the help of Denis Norden, Ben Elton, Beryl Vertue and David Mitchell.

It was to Norden and his writing partner Frank Muir that the two working-class lads, thrown together in a TB sanitorium in their late teens, sent their first efforts at comedy scriptwriting. Norden recognised their raw talent instantly and later put them "in a class of their own". They broke more new ground than any of their contemporaries, he said.

Apart from anything else, Galton and Simpson pioneered what Norden called "the jokeless radio comedy", by which he meant a series (Hancock) which relied on situation and character, rather than an endless stream of gags. It was the beginning of the sitcom.

Its apogee was Steptoe and Son, each half-hour episode a perfect little mini-drama of aspiration, conflict and disappointment, distinguished as much by the fine playing of Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett as it was by the masterly writing of Galton and Simpson.