Ted Kavanagh

Ted Kavanagh (1892, New Zealand 1958) was a British radio scriptwriter and producer.

Initially a medical student in Edinburgh, Kavanagh switched to a career as a writer. Best remembered as the writer of the immensely popular It's That Man Again (ITMA) comedy series which ran for a decade from 1939, it was intentionally devised by Kavanagh, producer Francis Worsley and the comedian Tommy Handley as Handley's specific vehicle; Kavanagh had been writing for him since 1924.

Kavanagh's biography of Handley was published in 1949, the year of the comedian's death and the end of their radio show. A prolific writer, ITMA and his work for Handley constituted only a small proportion of his total oeuvre.

His son is the poet P. J. Kavanagh who describes childhood among the ITMA characters in his autobiographical The Perfect Stranger (1966, republished 2015).