Ronnie Corbett

Ronnie Corbett 

Ronnie Corbett, the comedian, who has died aged 85, achieved such fame as one of the Two Ronnies that his solo career was often eclipsed; as his fans knew well, he worked on his own for many years, exploiting to the full both his lack of height – he was only 5ft 1in – and his undoubted talent as a comic performer. Corbett maintained that after he became a professional comedian he had no regrets about being so small.

His height had been the making of him, and he would make jokes about it as long as people thought his height was funny. Fortunately for him, they never stopped thinking it hilarious.  Such was his talent that a large hall suited his style as much as the television screen or an intimate theatre. He was confident with a microphone and had the knack of drawing an audience to him.

Corbett at the Dunhill Celebrity Golf Tournament: golf was his chief recreation 

In venues like the old Talk of the Town, he could hold a dinner-dance audience with a lengthy solo spot of comic patter.  Television extended Corbett’s appeal. Although he had become a star in his own right before meeting Ronnie Barker, The Two Ronnies (1971-1987) remained the zenith of a television career that lasted more than 40 years. 

With his black-rimmed spectacles – worn at the suggestion of another comic, Jimmy Tarbuck – and rotund, smiling face, he was more obviously a comedian than the more subtle Barker, whose appearance was more like that of a senior schoolmaster or a company director. Both were funny: Corbett the more experienced as a comic, Barker the more broadly based as a character actor. They complemented each other perfectly.

Corbett’s singular contribution to The Two Ronnies was his weekly monologue, delivered full-on to camera from an oversized easy chair. Written by Spike Mullins, and later David Renwick, Corbett’s scripts were rambling and rhapsodic, full of digressions, detours and sidetracks, invariably introduced by Corbett with a preamble along the lines of: “I actually found this joke in an old Reader’s Digest in between an article called 'Having Fun with a Hernia’ and a story about a woman who brought up a family of four with one hand, while waiting for Directory Enquiries…”

Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker at Langan's restaurant, London, in 1990 

Each show opened with Corbett and Barker at the “news desk”, dispensing items of “news” in smartly paced “two-handers”.  Corbett: “Further developments tonight in the case of the Hyde Park flasher, the man who jumps out in front of lady joggers, stark naked.” Barker: “Eye-witnesses have helped police put together an Identikit picture of his face, but are still not sure of his whereabouts.” With weekly audiences of some 17 million, their programme achieved top rating throughout the 1970s and as late as 1986 was still a serious challenge to EastEnders and Coronation Street. 

In 1977 The Two Ronnies was presented as a big-scale revue at the London Palladium with great success. Such was the power of television that thousands of people, possibly not all regular theatregoers, wanted to see the Ronnies in the flesh. The show was such a hit that Sunday performances were added to an already exhausting schedule. 

Ronald Balfour Corbett was born in Edinburgh on December 4 1930, the eldest of three children. His father, a night-shift baker for the McVitie firm, stood 5ft 6in. Ronnie did well at James Gillespie School and Edinburgh’s Royal High School. After a fairly strict upbringing, complete with Bible classes and attendance at a Church of Scotland youth club, some of that religious ethic remained with him. 

Initially his lack of height created an awkwardness he was not to overcome for some years. An aunt paid two guineas for a course called “How To Become Taller”, which involved stretching exercises and a daily repetition of the mantra “Every day and in every way I’m getting taller and taller”. He was not. After a few months working as a civil servant as a clerical assistant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Corbett began his National Service with the RAF.

A still from The Two Ronnies  

After being commissioned he decided to try to lose his strong Scottish accent and after demobilisation in 1951 some voice training successfully accomplished this. As a teenager he had appeared in amateur pantomimes and taken lessons at a stage school in Edinburgh; in the RAF his friendship with the son of the actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke had encouraged him to think about showbusiness as a possible career. 

Moving to London, he endured eight lean years, taking occasional engagements but mostly living on his earnings as a caretaker, house-sitter, tennis-court superintendent and advertising salesman. For some years he lived in grimy digs, working in nightclubs or on the halls, and teamed up with Anne Hart, a singer whom he met at a club, who became his stooge and whom he later married. 

Corbett’s big chance came when he was spotted by David Frost at Winston’s, Danny La Rue’s West End night club, and cast in his BBC show The Frost Report (1966-67), followed by Frost on Sunday for ITV (1968-69). It was with Frost that he first teamed up with Ronnie Barker. Barker had been an occasional customer at the Buckstone, an actors’ drinking club where Corbett had worked behind the bar.

Before this Corbett had appeared in the musical The Boys from Syracuse and in the disastrous Lionel Bart musical Twang!; played a mad German spy instructor in the James Bond spoof film Casino Royale, as well as having his own series on ITV, No, That’s Me Over Here (1967). The Two Ronnies, although time-consuming and a long-standing hit, prevented neither Corbett nor Barker from appearing on his own.  Corbett’s films included You’re Only Young Twice (1952), Top of the Form (1953) Fun at St Fanny’s (1955) and No Sex Please, We’re British (1973).

In the theatre he played an Ugly Sister in Cinderella at the Palladium, and he made a number of appearances with Harry Secombe and Jimmy Tarbuck. Sorry!, starting in 1981, proved to be another successful television series on his own.  Meanwhile The Two Ronnies continued to attract enormous audiences, and when it looked as if it might run for 20 years Ronnie Barker suddenly, and to Corbett’s surprise, announced that he wanted to leave. 

Anyone who assumed there had been any sort of feud between them were totally wrong. They had always been friends and remained so, but not surprisingly their private family lives kept them apart. Barker may have been worrying about his health; one way or another he felt he was becoming stale and that enough was enough. 

The Two Ronnies 

Corbett’s career continued along its successful path. When, with Barker, he was appointed OBE in 1978 (advanced to CBE in 2012), he was thrilled to discover that the Queen was a Two Ronnies fan.

Single-minded, a man with great drive, he now was living a very full life. He published a Small Man’s Guide to Life and Armchair Golf. Much attached to his comfortable home, his interests outside his family included racing, soccer, cooking and woodworking – he was sometimes to be seen at the annual Woodworker Show – but his main recreation was golf. he belonged to golf clubs both near to his home at Addington (the name of his house was Fairways) and in East Lothian. In 2004 he moved to a three-bedroom bungalow nearby, and in retirement would take the morning tea and The Daily Telegraph back to bed after letting the dogs out. He enjoyed countless appearances in charity tournaments including the Harry Secombe Golf Classic, and during his presidency of the Lord’s Taverners Corbett was able to boost funds for the charity by such participation. 

Corbett was a notable Lord’s Taverners president in 1982 and 1987 and was particularly active in his first year in office. He was able to relax at his first President’s Ball when not only did he organise an excellent cabaret but rounded off the evening with a brief double act with his wife Anne.

His autobiography, High Hopes, appeared in 2000. 

Ronnie Corbett married Anne Hart in 1965. She survives him with their two daughters. A son born in 1966 died at the age of six weeks.

Ronnie Corbett, born December 4 1930, died March 31 2016

Garry Shandling, comedian

Garry Shandling 

Garry Shandling, the American comedian and actor, who has died of a heart attack aged 66, plundered his own neuroses to create a comic persona – vain, self-centred and riddled with anxiety – which he exploited brilliantly in The Larry Sanders Show, a fly-on-the-wall-style spoof about a chat show and its egomaniacal host.

The series inspired a new form of self-referential, realist comedy that would be developed by British comic performers such as Ricky Gervais. “Without comedy as a defence mechanism I wouldn’t be able to survive,” Shandling said.

Garry Emmanuel Shandling was born in Chicago on November 29 1949. His father ran a print business and his mother a pet shop. The family moved to the dry climate of Tucson, Arizona, because Shandling’s older brother suffered from cystic fibrosis; he died when Garry was 10. The event had a profound impact on comedian’s life.

Shandling did not at first aim for showbusiness but after school studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona, switching to Marketing and eventually working at an advertising agency in Los Angeles. He studied creative writing for a year as a graduate student and, having received encouragement from the stand-up comic George Carlin, began writing sitcom scripts. In 1973 he sold one to Sanford and Son, the American adaptation of the BBC’s Steptoe and Son. He sold material to several sitcoms, but found writing formulaic jokes frustrating.

In 1977 he was involved in a car accident and while recovering decided to live the life he really wanted to. As a stand-up comedian he rose quickly. He did not do “shtick”; he was dead-pan and his jokes sometimes took a few seconds to roll around an audience before detonating.

Garry Shandling  

By 1981 he was a regular guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Carson enjoyed Shandling’s work and the young comedian might have taken the presenter’s chair when Carson retired. But Shandling wanted to explore deeper themes, and was aware of the destructive effects of fame.

“The whole world is show business now,’’ he said in 1998. “Everyone wants to be famous. They think being famous will change their life. I’m here to tell them that it doesn’t.’’

Shandling, in effect, turned himself into a sitcom character, first on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, about a sitcom star supposedly playing himself (aired in Britain in 1986 on late-night BBC Two) and then, in 1992, on The Larry Sanders Show (HBO and BBC Two).

Larry Sanders was set backstage at a late-night television chat show much like Tonight. Shandling was the highly strung host who is tactfully protected from network interference by his vodka-swilling producer Artie (Rip Torn). Much comedy derives from Sanders’s interactions both with Artie and with his insensitive “sidekick”, the announcer Hank Kingsley, played by Jeffrey Tambor.

Each episode was built around a work day and preparations for the arrival of a special guest. Real film-star guests playing themselves would willingly undergo the required humiliations, to rich comic effect. The tone was that of a documentary or “reality” television programme. Most of all, Shandling/Sanders himself was the wellspring of the humour; the scripts specialised in the comedy of insecurity, toe-curling embarrassment and the ever-present fear of unravelling under the pressures of performance.

The Larry Sanders Show gained a devoted cult following in Britain and its techniques were taken up by writers and performers such as Ricky Gervais, Armando Iannucci and Sacha Baron Cohen. Among the staff writers on the show was Hollywood’s current “king of comedy”, the writer and director Judd Apatow. It went off the air in 1998, the year it won a Bafta, and Shandling himself an Emmy award for writing.

Shandling appeared in films, such as Town & Country (2001) with his friend Warren Beatty and Iron Man 2 (2010), but never enjoyed the same success again. He became a mentor to younger comedians and in recent years he worked with Apatow and Baron Cohen, helping them sharpen up their scripts.

He was a revered figure in his world. “Nice guys finish first,” he would say. “If you don’t know that, then you don’t know where the finish line is.”

Garry Shandling, born November 29 1949, died March 24 2016

Johan Cruyff, footballer

Johan Cruyff 

Johan Cruyff, who has died of cancer aged 68, was the most complete footballer of his generation and one of the few great players to be equally successful as a manager.

Cruyff dominated football during the 1970s, becoming the first player to win the title of European Footballer of the Year three times and inspiring the Dutch team – of which he was captain – to the heights of “Total Football”.

The side’s finest moment came against Germany in the World Cup final of 1974. From the kick-off, the Dutch strung together 16 passes before finding the deep-lying Cruyff. He set off on a swerving run, his lissom frame gathering pace until he burst into the box past a startled Berti Vogts, the German defender, whose late tackle brought Cruyff to the ground. Johan Neeskens converted the resulting penalty, and the hosts were a goal down without having touched the ball.

It was the most sensational start to a World Cup Final, and soon exposed the flaw in the temperament of both Cruyff and his side – arrogance. It rarely counted against the Dutch maestro during the rest of his playing career, but on this occasion it was fatal; his team thought the game would be easy, so letting the less skilful but energetic Germans score twice and win the match.

Cruyff, as happened when things went against him, became argumentative and was booked in the tunnel at half-time. His complex personality and penchant for footballing politics denied him the chance to grace another World Cup.

Cruyff in 1968  

Hendrik Johannes Cruyff was born in Amsterdam on April 25 1947. His father was a grocer, and the family lived across the street from Ajax’s stadium. His mother worked as a cleaner at the club’s offices, and it was she who persuaded the staff to sign her son to the youth team at the age of 12. Young Johan’s potential was encouraged by Ajax’s English coach, Vic Buckingham, and it was he who gave Cruyff his senior debut at 17; he scored in his first match.

Buckingham was soon replaced by the sterner Rinus Michels, in partnership with whom Cruyff evolved the style of play that became known as Total Football. Based on an idea first propounded by the Austrian Willy Meisel 15 years earlier, Total Football broke with the idea of rigid team formations and demanded of each player that he be equally adept in every outfield position. This bred a most attractive and fluid style of game, with players able to take turns in sustaining the momentum of near-continuous attack.

While the intelligence and versatility of other Ajax players such as Johnny Rep and Neeskens were vital to the team’s success, the system revolved around Cruyff, who orchestrated the rhythm of a game with an authority and grace not seen since the heyday of Di Stéfano. Cruyff was nominally a centre-forward, he would invariably appear at the apex of each attack, but his coltish pace carrying him down the wing, his nimble feet controlling the midfield; in the days before squad numbers, Cruyff’s choice of the No 14 for the back of his shirt was symbolic confirmation that on the field he would not be confined to one position.

Cruyff in action for Ajax during the match against FC Den Haag on January 2, 1972

Between 1964 and 1973 Cruyff played 215 league games for Ajax and won six league championships and four domestic cups. Ajax also won three consecutive European Cups – the first team to do so since the Real Madrid of Di Stefano and Puskas; the latter was the coach of Panathinaikos when they were beaten by Ajax in the final in 1971. The next year Cruyff scored both goals to defeat Inter Milan, and in 1973 completed a hat-trick of wins with victory over Juventus, a game that for many observers contained the finest ever passage of football by a club side – a 20-minute spell of total domination by Ajax that was inspired by Cruyff.

Cruyff’s principal attributes – which, unusually for a great footballer, he put at the service of his team – were speed of thought, vision and acceleration. He was a wonderful player of long passes and noted for the pace at which he drove into the box, often winning penalties, as in the 1974 world cup final.

He married cheek and skill, exemplified in the manoeuvre that bears his name, the “Cruyff turn”, a combined inverted drag-back of the ball and reverse of direction that could twist a defender inside-out. He knew his value too, and his aloof manner made him unpopular in the Ajax and Dutch dressing-rooms, as well as with his sponsors. Contracted to wear one brand of boots, he renounced them when he decided that they hurt his feet, incurring stiff financial penalties for each time he played without them; undeterred, he did so 98 times. Cruyff was also no respecter of the Dutch football authorities; he lobbied successfully for better conditions for professional footballers and once refused to play against Poland because he had not been insured against injury.

In 1973 Cruyff moved to Barcelona for £922,000, a sum that doubled the previous world record for a player; money was always important to Cruyff, and he collected £400,000 himself for the deal. Cruyff had threatened to retire unless Ajax sold him, and the transfer was completed after the Spanish Federations’ deadline; as ever, the rules were bent to accommodate Cruyff’s talent.

Cruyff on the pitch in the late 1970s

His fee was quickly justified. When he arrived at Barcelona the club was in the relegation zone; within six months Cruyff had taken them to a league championship that included a 5-0 away win against Real. His status as the greatest player of his era was confirmed in 1974 by his third award in four years as European Footballer of the Year.

Yet Cruyff won only one more trophy with Barcelona, a domestic cup, and when he left the Nou Camp in 1978, having retired the previous year from the Dutch team after a spat with the manager and after making only 48 appearances, his career seemed destined for an embarrassing end. He refused to play in the 1978 World Cup and, having been fleeced of much of his savings by business partners, began to drift around the infant American League, playing for the Washington Diplomats. He then tried to hire himself as a footballing mercenary to clubs on a weekly basis for half the gate receipts, even contemplating an offer from Derby.

He was rescued by Ajax in 1982 and repaid them by winning two league titles before, in typically chimerical fashion, deciding that the club could not afford him and joining their arch-rivals Feyenoord. There he took a young side, including Ruud Gullit, to the Dutch title and was paid a pound for each spectator above the average gate who was drawn to the ground; at the age of 37, Cruyff played some of the most sublime football of his career.

In 1986 Cruyff returned to Ajax as manager. He again proved his value as an inspiration to young players, bringing through the talents of Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Dennis Bergkamp and winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup. But his demands once more proved too much for the club, and after a quarrel with the directors, he left for Barcelona in 1988.

He remained at the Catalonian club for nine years, becoming their longest-serving manager. Cruyff took the club to four successive Spanish titles, the European Cup Winners’ Cup and, in 1992, their first European Cup, beating Sampdoria at Wembley. The team cultivated a free-wheeling style, using the full width of the pitch to tire and then dismantle opposing defences, while Barcelona’s defence was based as much on passing as tackling, forcing opposing forwards into positions that denied them space to attack and left room behind them that could be exploited; the Dutch team had used the same system in 1974.

The proud and mercurial Cruyff’s managerial career was not without incident. He refused to sit for his coaching exams in Holland and at Barcelona discipline players who did not conform to his playing instructions, notably Gary Lineker, whom he insisted on playing on the right wing, not his natural position.

Cruyff in 1991  

Cruyff’s determination was never better evidenced than when he returned to watch his team play a tense European semi-final only a month after having had heart bypass surgery in 1991. Having lost the opportunity to coach the Dutch side after a squabble, he left Barcelona in 1996, after his side had lost the European Cup Final 4-0 to Milan.

Cruyff was unusual in his ability both to play international football and smoke upwards of 40 cigarettes a day. He gave up the habit after his heart surgery, and agreed to take part in an anti-smoking television commercial. As the director was explaining that trick photography would be used to make it seem as if Cruyff was juggling a cigarette packet, the finest player of his era began nonchalantly to flick a packet around with his feet, thighs and shoulders, before volleying it into a bin.

He married Danny Coster in 1968; she survives him with their two daughters and a son, the footballer Jordi Cruyff.

Johan Cruyff, born April 25 1947, died March 24 2016

Paul Daniels, magician

Paul Daniels, who has died aged 77, was the most successful British magician and illusionist of his time; throughout the 1980s and early 1990s he was a permanent fixture on BBC television, where, aided by his assistant (and later wife), “the lovely Debbie McGee”, he would intersperse his tricks with pugnacious comedy banter.

Daniels made his television debut in 1970 on the talent show Opportunity Knocks, then produced by Thames Television, and he was soon given a regular spot on Bernard Manning’s Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club for Granada. Meanwhile he toured constantly. Then in 1978 ITV gave him a Sunday night show, Paul Daniels’ Blackpool Bonanza, but it was the BBC’s Paul Daniels Magic Show, running from 1979 to 1994, that turned the diminutive magician into a star of light entertainment.

Although the show invited guest magicians to perform their own tricks, it was dominated by Daniels and his patter, which could range from corny one-liners to cheeky put-downs. The magic was impressive. He combined sleight-of-hand card tricks with new variants of favourite old illusions and the long-suffering Debbie McGee seemed to spend most of the 1980s confined to a box. Occasionally Daniels would take the act too far; a number of children were said to be distressed by an illusion on a Halloween edition of the show in 1987 that seemed to show that he had died inside an iron maiden device, and viewers complained when he appeared to have cremated Debbie McGee.

Daniels was not desperate to be liked, and his abrasive manner and self-confidence, interpreted by some as arrogance, would often rub people up the wrong way. He was a workaholic and a perfectionist. Described by one critic as “entirely devoid of warmth”, he nevertheless maintained a tremendous rapport with audiences who delighted in his catchphrases (chiefly “you’ll like it, not a lot, but you’ll like it”) and seemed to enjoy being teased, obediently playing along with his gentle ribbing and agreeing to “say ‘Yes, Paul’”. But he aroused the ire of tabloid newspapers when he claimed in 1992 that Jesus was “nothing more than a magician”, adding: “Changing water into wine? Easy? Walk on water? I’ve done that.”

It was hard to fathom with Daniels how much of the self-aggrandisement and smugness were part of the act. “I know I’m a star,” he said, “because the press say I am, my income says I am and the audiences who come to see me say I am.”

Paul Daniels' family announced he had cancer in early 2016 

He was born Newton Edward Daniels, known in his family as Ted, on April 6 1938 in a two-up two-down council house at South Bank, “a very polluted area”, as he later recalled, of Middlesbrough. A weekly bath was taken in the front room, with buckets of water heated on a boiler in the back room. His father was a cinema manager and his mother sold the tickets at the box office, so many of his early years were spent in the auditorium.

His interest in magic was first sparked when he was 11 and read a book called How to Entertain at Parties. He had soon mastered card tricks and practised his showmanship with a collapsible dancing cane.

Young Ted attended Sir William Turner’s Grammar School, Redcar, and would perform small conjuring acts there and at local clubs and parties. At 16 he left school to work as a council audit clerk, after which he spent two years on National Service with the First Battalion, the Green Howards, and was on active duty in Hong Kong.

On demobilisation he joined his parents in a mobile grocery business, eventually starting a grocery shop of his own. Throughout this period he continued to perform his magic tricks on the club circuit, where criticism would be loud and robust and he learnt to tough it out with the audience. His inferiority complex (stemming from his height – at 5ft 6in he was too short for conventional magician’s props and had to have them specially made) disappeared, he later recalled, after he saw in one of the shows a male stripper prancing in front of the audience wearing only a Viking helmet. “I reckoned,” Daniels later reflected, “that I would never look as silly as he did.”

At the age of 30, as his first marriage was foundering, Daniels decided to become a full-time magician. He changed his name to Paul, because, his ex-wife would explain, “he thought it was posher” and got his first summer season at the Cosy Nook theatre in Newquay. By 1980 he was starring in his own show, It’s Magic, which ran for 14 months at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

Daniels, as he described it later, brought some much-needed razzmatazz to the world of magic. “Whereas most magicians at that time,” he said, “were doing cards, billiard balls, silk handkerchiefs and so on to waltzy classical music, I hit the stage in Lurex with rock’n’roll music going and lighting and lots of smoke and everything going mad. It took David Copperfield 35 years to catch up with me.”

Some of Daniels’s finest displays of magic included copies of Houdini’s tricks, such as the escape from a glass tank full of water in which he was suspended head downwards. Daniels claimed, unsurprisingly, that while Houdini sometimes took half an hour to free himself, he himself could do it in a few seconds. But on one occasion, when he attempted a Houdini escape from three locked boxes one inside the other, he found that one had warped and he could not get out. Luckily, his assistant at the time noticed he was in trouble and unlocked the boxes.

In 1978 Daniels, then aged 40, first met Debbie McGee, the 20-year-old blonde former soloist in the Iranian National Ballet who had been given the job of assisting him for a British tour with a summer season show at Great Yarmouth. Despite the age gap, romance blossomed, although they did not marry until 1988. “When I proposed to Debbie,” Daniels recalled 10 years later, “I said: 'Look, I’m not very tall or good looking and I’m older than you and all that jazz, but the one thing I promise you is it’ll never be boring.’ ” They were aware of but impervious to the mockery of their relationship and Debbie McGee was unruffled when Caroline Aherne’s parody chat-show host Mrs Merton asked: “What first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Following his move to television, Daniels was rarely seen without “the lovely Debbie McGee” (as she was always introduced) by his side, dressed in a spangly and revealing little outfit. She became his staunchest defender and greatest ally, always willing to laugh at the lamest of jokes.

By 1989 The Paul Daniels Magic Show had been sold to television companies across the world and Daniels was a rich man. He presented three quiz shows in succession for the BBC as well as a children’s programme. In 1985 he bought a Ferrari with the personalised number plate, MAG 1C. (He advertised it for sale in 2012, together with the Izuzu Trooper to which it was by then attached.)

His relationship with the BBC became strained, however, particularly after 1991, when he denounced BBC management as “horrendously bad”. In 1995 his contract was terminated after the corporation rejected his plans for “the sort of family show that Andy Williams used to do”. He continued to tour, performing on stage and on cruises and giving after-dinner speeches. He taught seminars for magicians and set up an online magic shop.

He was the author of a number of books including The Paul Daniels Magic Book, More Magic and Paul Daniels – Magic Journey. In 2000 he published Under No Illusions, a frank autobiography in which he claimed to have slept with more than 300 women before his relationship with Debbie McGee.

Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee at their Thameside home: 'Our life is like the show, unscripted'  

In later years Daniels had undergone a renaissance. In 2000 he appeared in a television documentary, Paul Daniels in a Black Hole, in which he agreed to travel to America posing as an unknown magician looking for work. Calling himself Eldani The Unusualist he rose manfully to the challenge, despite being described by one Hollywood publicist as “too old and not good looking enough” to work there.

He and Debbie McGee seemed to relish their status as “icons of naff”, sending themselves up in television advertisements for Heineken beer with the tagline: “Buy a pint of Heineken or we’ll keep running this commercial” and in a campaign for Surf washing powder along similar lines.

But Daniels’s greatest coup was to take part in an episode of When Louis Met… (2001), a television documentary series presented by Louis Theroux; during the course of the programme it became clear that Theroux, far from ridiculing the couple, found them endearing and likeable.

“I don’t like everybody I see on television,” Daniels once said, “so I don’t expect everybody to like me. And I can certainly laugh at myself.”

In 2011 he sold one of his wigs on the auction website eBay for charity for £1,100, explaining that it was a chance to own a toupee that had “decorated the head of one of the greatest sex symbols of all time”.

Paul Daniels married Jackie Skipworth in 1960; the marriage was dissolved in 1971. He is survived by three sons from his first marriage (one of whom, Martin, is a magician) and by his second wife, Debbie McGee.

Paul Daniels, born April 6 1938, died March 17 2016

Ray Tomlinson, email inventor

Ray Tomlinson 

  Ray Tomlinson, who has died aged 74, was a computer programmer generally credited as the man who invented the email, in the process transforming the way we communicate and socialise.

The first electronic messaging system, developed in the 1960s, would only allow messages to be exchanged between users on the same computer. In the late 1960s, however, the American Defence Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency launched the Arpanet, a program designed to create a network tying together disparate computer science programs it was funding around the country. This is now considered the precursor to the internet.

In 1971 Tomlinson was working at the Boston-based technology company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, a major contractor on the Arpanet, trying, in his own words “to find things to use this new-fangled network for”. He had heard about a proposal to send messages to be printed with a printer and stuffed away in mail boxes for people to read and had the idea that messages should go to computers instead: “I thought about it for a bit and then decided to put together a system that might do that.”

Borrowing a code from a file-transfer program he had created called Cpynet, Tomlinson modified an existing internal computer messaging program so that messages could be sent between two machines that were side-by-side on his desk. When he wrote the program he needed to find a punctuation symbol to separate the name of the recipient from their computer location. He chose the symbol “@” (known as the asperand), the least used sign and only preposition on the keyboard.

At first, Tomlinson did not consider his email messaging system to be significant. “Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on,” he told a colleague. Yet email quickly matured from a fun idea to a central feature of the Arpanet – and later the internet.

“I’m often asked 'Did I know what I was doing?” Tomlinson said when he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012. “The answer is: Yeah I knew exactly what I was doing. I just had no notion whatsoever about what the ultimate impact would be.”

History, sadly, does not record the content of the first ever email message, Tomlinson describing it as “insignificant, something like QWERTYUIOP”.

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, New York, on April 23 1941 and brought up in nearby Vail Mills. From Broadalbin Central School, he took a degree in Electrical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, followed by a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed an analogue-digital hybrid speech synthesiser.

In 1967 he joined Bolt, Beranek and Newman (now Raytheon), where he continued to work until his death.

Tomlinson did not become rich from his invention, confessing that he had often wondered what fraction of a cent per @ sign it would it take to make him very comfortably off: “It’s a very small fraction.”

Described by a friend as “surprisingly, not addicted to email”, Tomlinson lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where he and his partner Karen raised miniature sheep. She survives him with two daughters from an earlier marriage.

Ray Tomlinson, born April 23 1941, died March 5 2016

Martin Crowe, cricketer

Martin Crowe 

Martin Crowe, who has died aged 53 of lymphatic cancer, was certainly one of the greatest batsman ever to play for New Zealand, with 17 Test centuries to his name; as a personality, however, his reputation was more complicated.

Extraordinary talent tends to set a man apart, and some of those who played cricket with Crowe, or who worked with him, found him remote, prickly and unpredictable. During his last years he himself came to acknowledge these difficulties.

In his autobiography, Raw, published in 2013, Crowe faced up to his flaws and attributed them to the fact that his youth had been completely swallowed up by cricket. He had never, he reckoned, enjoyed the chance to develop as a properly rounded personality.

Such were his gifts that he played for Auckland Under-23s at 14, for New Zealand Under-20s at 15, and won his first Test cap at 19. Under this stress, he admitted, “that innocent boy became a man who harboured grudges, he became the record-holder for grievances … a disconnected spirit and soul overwhelmed by the ego and the emotional instability created from my unfinished teenage development.”

Martin Crowe in action in 1990  

Martin David Crowe was born at Henderson, Auckland, on September 22 1962. His father David had played for both Wellington and Central Districts in the 1950s, though his children considered that the real talent for games lay with their mother.

Whatever the truth, sporting genes were very successfully transmitted. Martin’s brother Jeff, four years older, would score three Test centuries and captain New Zealand in the 1980s. Everyone liked Jeff. “People see Jeff as the ultimate diplomat, the nicer guy,” Martin wryly reflected. “I’m Darth Vader.”

The film star Russell Crowe, born in 1964 and also a keen sportsman, is a cousin of the brothers. In about 1900, their mutual Crowe ancestor had run a wholesale fruit and vegetable business in Wrexham, north Wales.

At Auckland Grammar School Martin was not merely a dazzlingly talented cricketer; he played in the rugby XV with the future All Black Grant Fox, and was also outstanding at golf and tennis. In January 1980, aged 17, he made his first-class cricket debut for Auckland against Canterbury, top-scoring with an innings of 51.

Yet it was another two years before Crowe made his first century for Auckland. Immediately, in February 1982, aged 19, he was thrust into the New Zealand side to confront Australia at Wellington. The opposition, which included the fearsome fast bowlers Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, could scarcely have been more daunting, and in his first three Tests Crowe failed to make any mark.

But it was his own team mates who really worried him. “Only John Wright welcomed me into the team,” Crowe remembered. “The captain [Geoff Howarth] called me a show pony the whole time, and treated me like s---. The Australians Greg Chappell and Rod Marsh were nicer to me than my own team mates.”

On New Zealand’s tour of England in 1983 Crowe batted superbly against the counties, scoring three hundreds, but failed to make any great mark in the Test matches.

Back in New Zealand in February 1984, however, he helped to save the first Test against England at Wellington with his maiden Test century. New Zealand would go on to win their first series against England.

Up to this stage Crowe’s Test record had been far from outstanding. His batting, however, took a decisive leap forward when, in 1984, he took the place of Viv Richards (appearing for the West Indies that summer) in the Somerset side. This was a daunting challenge, and Crowe’s experience of the county championship began disastrously, with five low scores. In June, however, he showed himself worthy of comparison with Richards with four centuries in four successive matches.

In particular Crowe recalled the last of these games, against Leicestershire at Taunton, when he had to confront the relentlessly hostile West Indies fast bowler Andy Roberts on a flying wicket. In the battle for survival he found himself relying on instinct rather than theory; in his own words, he stopped thinking and started batting. At the end of Somerset’s innings he was still there, 70 not out. And when the county batted again on a more placid wicket, needing 341 to win, he carried them home with a score of 190.

Martin Crowe hits out during a match between Somerset and New Zealand in 1994 at the County Ground, Taunton 

Besides scoring 1,870 runs that season, he also took 44 wickets with his lively in-swingers. Above all, after his difficulties with New Zealand, he had found a measure of content with Somerset.

He would return to the county in 1987, in difficult circumstances after the controversial sacking of Viv Richards and Joel Garner, and the concomitant departure of Ian Botham. Although some lunatic supporters, outraged at the loss of their heroes, sent death threats, Crowe again performed superbly, scoring six centuries and averaging 67 over the summer.

Crowe – “Hogan” to his team mates – was now in his prime. Always immaculately turned out, he naturally drew attention on the pitch, whether in the field and at the crease. He could play all the strokes, being especially strong with the hook and the pull, and spectacular with his cover driving. Even against the fastest bowling he always seemed to have time to shape his response.

This was especially evident at Georgetown in April 1985, when, in an innings of 188 against the West Indies, he was completely at ease against the attack of Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding. Later that year, he scored another 188 against the Australians at Brisbane.

Now Test centuries seemed almost a matter of course: 137 against Australia at Christchurch early in 1986, despite being felled by a bouncer from Bruce Reid; 106 against England at Lord’s that July; 119 and 104 in successive matches against the West Indies in New Zealand early in 1987; 137 against Australia at Adelaide later that year; 143 against England at Wellington in March 1988; 174 on the same ground against Pakistan in February 1989; and 113 against India at Auckland in February 1990.

Later in 1990 Crowe took over the captaincy of New Zealand. His record as skipper was unimpressive, for he gained only two victories in 17 Tests. Although a fine tactician, he proved unable to inspire his players, who found him hard to read – matey one moment, explosive the next.

There were complaints that he courted publicity, even – shock, horror – in women’s magazines. Certainly he seemed incapable of the genial philistinism expected of a New Zealand sportsman.

“Martin cultivates that class thing with all his talk about wine and fine restaurants,” complained a former team-mate, John Bracewell. “That irritates the Hell out of everybody outside Auckland.” There were also ugly, and unsubstantiated, rumours about Crowe’s sex life.

Yet through all these stresses he remained the master batsman. Against Pakistan at Lahore in October 1990, he was left on 108 not out as the rest of the batting collapsed around him.

The following February at Wellington he saved a Test against Sri Lanka with his highest score, 299, smashing his bat in frustration at missing a treble century as he returned to the pavilion. With Andrew Jones, however, he had put on 467, then the highest partnership in Test history, and even today in third place.

There had been plots to replace Crowe as captain before the world cup of 1992, held in Australia and New Zealand. In the event, though, this tournament proved his finest hour. Not only was he in superb form with the bat, scoring 456 runs at an average of 114; he also proved a master tactician, introducing a new ploy by opening the bowling with Dipak Patel, an off-spinner.

In the semi-final, against Pakistan, Crowe top-scored with 91, but tore a hamstring and was unable to field and guide New Zealand’s tactics. Pakistan won by four wickets with six balls remaining. This did not prevent Crowe being chosen as Player of the Tournament.

Though increasingly handicapped by a recurring knee problem, he continued to score heavily: 140 against Zimbabwe at Harare in November 1992; 107 against Sri Lanka at Colombo a month later.

That was his last match as New Zealand captain, but by no means the end of the complaints against him. Critics accused him of undermining his successor Ken Rutherford.

Crowe’s last tour of England, in 1994, yielded his final two Test centuries, 142 at Lord’s and 115 at Old Trafford. But in 1995 two series, in South Africa and in India, proved chiefly that he should have retired. At the end of the Indian tour he did so.

Martin Crowe at the crease in the England v New Zealand 2nd test at Lords in 1994   

He had played in 77 Tests, scoring 5,444 runs (second among New Zealand batsmen only to Stephen Fleming, who appeared in 34 more Tests) at an average of 45.36. He also took 14 Test wickets at 48.28 apiece; and held 71 catches.

In New Zealand Crowe had played successively for Auckland (1979-83), Central Districts (1983-90) and Wellington (1990-95), always hungry for runs. In a total of 247 first-class matches he scored 19,608 runs (including 71 centuries) at an average of 56.02. As a bowler he claimed 119 wickets at 33.69. He took 226 catches.

After retiring as a player, Crowe tried unavailingly to establish Cricket Max, a version of the short game which served as a forerunner of Twenty20, albeit with each side having two innings of 10 overs each.

Between 1997 and 2012 he worked for Sky Television, appearing as adept as ever at arousing opposition. In 2008 a spell as Chief Cricket Officer with Royal Challengers Bangladesh proved short-lived. Yet he was always eager to help young cricketers.

In 2009 a second marriage, to Lorraine Downes, Miss Universe in 1983, seemed to bring Crowe some peace. When, three years later, he was diagnosed with lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, he confronted his situation with great fortitude.

Previously, he said, he had worn a mask; now he was ready to look at “the real me”. “I want a life that is fearless,” he wrote in 2013, “that is without judgment or scrutiny, let alone have any negative motions of hate, resentment or grievance. I am so tired of that life, of fighting, of ego, of trying to win opinion and of needing acceptance.”

The cancer went into remission in 2013, but this respite proved brief. Yet Crowe kept up his interest in cricket to the end, writing on-line commentaries on the world cup, and even turning out as 12th man, substituting for Sir Ian Botham, for a charity match in February 2015.

Martin Crowe being inducted into the ICC cricket hall of fame during the 2015 Cricket World Cup match between New Zealand and Australia at Eden Park in Auckland 

Previously, he had contributed an article to Wisden 2014, attacking sledging, and pleading for a kindlier approach to the game.

“The truth is,” he wrote, “we have all been guilty of taking cricket too seriously. Instead we should consider the consequence ofWINNING at any cost. Sport is an athletic activity, not a religion or a ritual. It’s not about life or death. It needs to be natural, light, free, healthy and humane.

“When we add in boring made-up and acted-out elements, we miss the point. winning becomes not merely everything, it becomes the only thing. It’s not. Loving and learning are.”

In addition to Raw, Crowe also wrote For The Love Of The Game (1991) and Out On A Limb (1995).

In February 2015, he was inducted into the ICC’s Hall of Fame. He had been appointed MBE in 1992.

His first marriage, in 1991, to Simone Curtice, an interior designer, was dissolved. In 2003 he had a daughter, Emma, with Suzanne Taylor. His second wife, Lorraine Downes, who had previously been married to the All Black Murray Mexted, survives him.

Martin Crowe, born September 22 1962, died March 3 2016