Those we have lost in comedy, 2018

It had already been a bad year for comedy industry deaths even before the late-breaking news that legend Dame June Whitfield had died.

Obituary: Neil Shand, comedy writer

Neil Shand, who has died aged 84, was a versatile comedy writer best known for his long and fruitful associations with David Frost and Spike Milligan.

A journalist by training, he excelled in topical material, a quality that Frost drew on extensively for 40 years. However, he also proved to be one of the select few, like Eric Sykes, who could keep up with the surreal inventiveness of Milligan, which he did successfully for more than a decade from 1969 on the Q series and, later, There's A Lot Of It About.