Linda Helen Smith (29 January 1958 – 27 February 2006) was a British stand-up comic and comedy writer. She appeared regularly on Radio 4 panel games, and was voted "Wittiest Living Person" by listeners in 2002. She met her partner, Warren Lakin, at university, and they were together for nearly 30 years until her death.
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Smith was born in Erith in Kent in 1958, and was educated at Erith College (now Bexley College), and at the University of Sheffield where she graduated in English and Drama. She joined a professional theatre company before turning to comedy. In 1987, she won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year,[1] then known as the New London Comic Award, and performed on the Edinburgh Fringe before breaking into radio comedy.
Many of her early stand-up appearances were benefit concerts, staged in solidarity with the British miners during the Miners' Strike in the 1980s. She was a lifelong socialist.
Her first appearances on national radio were on Radio 5's The Treatment in 1997. She was subsequently a regular panellist on The News Quiz and Just a Minute, and appeared frequently on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (from June 2001 onwards), Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week, Countdown and QI. She wrote and starred in her own Radio 4 sitcom, Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting. After appearing on Radio 4's Devout Sceptics, to discuss her beliefs, she was asked by the British Humanist Association (BHA) to become president of the society – a role that she occupied with great commitment from 2004 until her death.[2] In 2002, she was voted 'Wittiest Living Person' by listeners to BBC Radio 4's Word of Mouth.[3] During The News Quiz, she would often mockingly use Richard Littlejohn's catchphrase "to hell in a handcart".
On 27 February 2006, Smith died at the age of 48, following a battle with ovarian cancer.[4] Before she died, she chose that her funeral be humanist,[5] and her memorial at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, on 10 March,[6] was dedicated to the BHA. Her life and work were honoured at the British Academy Television Awards in 2006. The first episode of Dawn French's Girls Who Do: Comedy was dedicated to the memory of Linda Smith. Her obituaries described her style as beguiling, apparently vulnerable and whimsical, but often waspish. She excelled at deadpan diatribes about everyday irritations. A typical and frequently quoted joke was her labelling of former home secretary David Blunkett as "Satan's bearded folk singer". She also famously retorted, in response to Clive Anderson's suggestion that Jeffrey Archer should not be given "the oxygen of publicity", "I'm not that happy with him having the oxygen of oxygen, actually".[7]
Two tribute gigs were held in her memory. The first took place on 14 May 2006, at the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, In Praise of an English Radical; the second on 4 June 2006, at the Victoria Palace Theatre, London, entitled Tippy Top: An Evening of Linda Smith's Favourite Things. In August 2006, Andy Hamilton presented a BBC Radio 4 tribute entitled Linda Smith: A Modern Radio Star. An anthology on CD, entitled I Think the Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes: The Very Best of Linda Smith, was released in November 2006, as was a book with the same name. A tribute show of the same name was aired on BBC Radio 4 on 10 November 2006. Smith's sell-out stage show Wrap Up Warm has been available on CD since November 2006.
Linda Smith was working on a third series of A Brief History of Timewasting before she became incapacitated by her illness. As a tribute, digital radio station BBC 7 ran the previous two series, the first all on one day.