Linda Smith was on the cusp of "real" fame and wider appreciation of her work when she died of cancer. A stand-up comic and radio personality, she was a skilled writer of cutting, lyrical comedy and had become a regular on Just a Minute and The News Quiz.

In the fractious and politically skewed world of stand-up, where women are reviled for discussing periods and smear tests, advised to stay out of surrealism or politics and regarded as insufficiently funny on just about every other topic, Smith found her niche as a loveable moaner.

Like Victoria Wood, she found humour in the drudgery of everyday suburban existence, but added to it a youthful edginess and a heightened sense of cynicism.

Her anecdotes included an expansive - and hilarious - account of trying to estimate how much pasta to make with the aid of a spaghetti measuring device.

Times obituary: Linda Smith

Linda Smith, comedian and president of the British Humanist Association, was born in June, 1960. She died of cancer on February 28, 2006, aged 45

Background

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While Smith’s South London accent gave her working-class credibility, her intellect, verbal dexterity and quick mind made her a natural denizen of Radio 4, where she thrived on Just a Minute, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and The News Quiz.

The perfect foil to Clement Freud or Alan Coren, she was sometimes referred to as "the female Jeremy Hardy" for her explorations of everyday frustrations twinned with a broad social conscience.

Indeed, she appeared alongside Hardy in The News Quiz and on her own programme, A Brief History of Timewasting, a Radio 4 comedy in which she lived with a tortoise and a builder in an East London tower block. It ran for two series.

Smith paid her dues in stand-up, taking shows to the Edinburgh Fringe for seven consecutive years and winnng the Hackney Empire new London comic award in 1987. She returned to the stage with her Wrap Up Warm tour in 2000, touring again in spring-summer 2004.

Generally, though, she edged away from live performance in favour of radio and television work, and writing.

Lucid metaphors and flawless turns of phrase were always the strongest part of Smith’s stage performances, leading to criticism that she was more of a wordsmith than a crowd-pleaser. She appeared six times on Have I Got News For You, and on QI, Call My Bluff, Countdown and Question Time.

As a guest on Room 101, she asked Paul Merton to banish forever Tim Henman and adult readers of the Harry Potter books.

Her cockney eloquence made more cerebral Radio 4 fare, such as The Roots of English, Word of Mouth and Great Lives seem less esoteric. She also presented Pick of the Week and Home Truths.

Linda Smith grew up in Erith, south-east London, and attended Erith College, followed by Sheffield University where she graduated in English and Drama. She joined a touring theatre company before making her name on the gruelling London stand-up circuit.

Eventually good reviews raised her profile, garnered from relentless Fringe shows in collaboration with Hattie Hayridge, Henry Normal and Betty Spital. She began her radio work in the mid-1990s with the news satire show The Treatment on Radio 5.

Mousy-blonde, pretty and with an air of vulnerability, Smith managed effortlessly to pass off left-wing and sometimes rather radical ideas to audiences much older and stuffier than herself. By turns sensitive and waspish, she generally got away with saying anything that occurred to her. In 2002 her constituents on Radio 4 voted her Britain’s wittiest person in a listener’s poll.

In July 2004 Smith took over from Claire Rayner as president of the British Humanist Association, a post she was invited to take by Executive Director Hanne Stinson after several trustees heard her speak of her beliefs on the Radio 4 show Devout Sceptics.

"Linda Smith was one of the few comedians to make me laugh out loud," Stinson recalled. "She never mentioned the word humanism in that programme, but everything she said was in tune with our beliefs.

"She worked very hard in the role, and made the most of the press interest that a comedian had been appointed to what, to many, was seen as a rather philosophical organisation." Smith hoped she could assist non-religious people to people to "identify themselves not just negatively as atheists, but positively as humanists".

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