Mel Smith

MEL Smith, who has died aged 60 of a heart attack, was one of British comedy's most successful actors, producers and directors of recent times, mining a deep seam of laughter from his rather dim-witted Everyman characters and the wandering "duologues" he did with Griff Rhys Jones on their long-running series Alas Smith and Jones (1984-98).

Smith came from the same Oxbridge milieu as Griff Rhys Jones, Rowan Atkinson and the Monty Python team. And, like so many of those who honed their craft in Oxford and Cambridge's theatre and revue companies, Smith made the journey up to Scotland to test himself in front of audiences and critics at the Edinburgh Fringe.

In 1974 both he and Rhys Jones could be found performing at St Mary's Street Hall, just off the Royal Mile, Smith in an Oxford production, Rhys Jones in the Cambridge Footlights revue.

But unlike many of his Oxbridge contemporaries, Smith came from a working-class background. His father had worked in the pits and ran a bookie's shop in Chiswick in London. And Smith's performances as a comic actor were rooted in an unpretentious naturalism.

He came across as just another bloke, podgy, prematurely balding, with untidy, long hair at the back to make up for the hair loss on top, not the sort of guy who would attract more than a passing glance if you saw him in the street.

And there was no hint of Oxbridge erudition in those head-to-head chats he had with Griff Rhys Jones about subjects as varied as recincarnation and Filipino wives.

Smith was the rather world-weary one, who thinks he knows thing, but is none too bright and has no self-awareness, and Rhys Jones was the one who knows nothing at all, yet inadvertently undermines every little story Smith tells.

"Sergeant Pepper- that was the first record I ever bought," says Smith. "Before that, you used to nick them did you?" says Rhys Jones. They were the personification of Dumb and Dumber, elevating stupidity to an art.

But there was nothing stupid about Smith off camera. He directed several films, including the hit 1997 film version of Bean. And he and Rhys Jones set up their own production company, Talkback, in the early 1980s to make their own show and others, including the Alan Patridge and Ali G programmes.

They sold it two decades later for a reported £62m, which financed a lifestyle that included homes in the affluent St John's Wood area of London, Oxfordshire and Barbados, as well as a passion for Rolls-Royce cars.

Melvyn Kenneth Smith was born in London in 1952, studied psychology at Oxford, worked as an assistant director with several theatre companies and was one of the original principals on the satirical TV show Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979-82), with Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson and Chris Langham. Rhys Jones was one of the supporting actors and was promoted when Langham left.

Alas Smith and Jones used several of the same writers. Its most memorable feature was the head-to-dead dialogues between Smith and Rhys-Jones. They owed something to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Pete and Dud routines, but stripped away the costume and settings to present an unashamed celebration of stupidity in glorious close-up.

There were 10 series and at one point Smith and Jones had their own series on ITV as well – The World According to Smith and Jones (1987-88), which did not go down very well with the BBC. They also wrote and starred in the film Morons from Outer Space (1985). Smith played the role of the albino in the classic film The Princess Bride (1987), he starred in the sitcom Colin's Sandwich (1988-90), as a British Rail clerk with literary aspirations, and had a Top 5 hit in 1987 when he duetted with Kim Wilde on a version of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree for Comic Relief.

As well as Bean, he directed the films The Tall Guy (1989), Radioland Murders (1994), High Heels and Low Lifes (2001) and Blackball (2003) and he voiced Santa in the animated television film of Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas (1991).

In recent years he returned to theatre and in 2006 he played Churchill in a controversial production of the play Allegiance at the Edinburgh Fringe at the Assembly Rooms, with Michael Fassbender as IRA leader Michael Collins. The controversy was not over the politics, but over the suggestion that Smith would be contravening the smoking ban if he used real cigars.

Smith had had various health problems, including gout and a dependency on painkiller drugs. He suffered a heart attack at his home in London and was pronounced dead by ambulance crew. He is survived by his wife Pam.