Linda was our cup of tea

IN happier times. LINDA SMITH
at a comedy benefit for Jewish Socialist magazine, June 1994

"Having a cup of tea with Linda, you'd think this is a cup of tea I am going to enjoy", says comedian Jeremy Hardy, mourning friend and oft-times co-worker Linda Smith, who has died aged 48 in London.

I can well believe it. In fact, had she been type-cast in a sitcom, I can imagine her in a drab overall setting down cups of tea in a workers' cafe before coming out quietly with a subtle one-liner to finish off a pompous conversation. Linda's slight-voiced deadpan humour always left one feeling like another cuppa, but alas there is no more, just a pleasant but sad aftertaste.

Here's an excerpt from one obituary:
Linda Smith Comedian with a deft satirical edge
to her turns of phrase
Jeremy HardyWednesday March 1, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1720290,00.html

She was born at Erith in Kent, a town of which she said: "It's not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham." She had no fondness for the place. Her father worked on the railway. Her family was hard-up and she very much enjoyed shopping when she eventually became comfortable, describing her spending habits as "working-class fecklessness".

After Erith College and Sheffield University, where she read English and drama, she lived in the city for many years. Despite a strong south-east London twang, she had a very Yorkshire way with words. She was very particular in finding (often in an instant) the most precise and elegant language. I think she also absorbed a lot of Jewishness from Warren Lakin, her partner for 23 years.

She mentally stored quaint expressions, bizarre and silly turns of phrase, literary and biblical text and movie dialogue. She loved films old and new, and could reference Frank Capra and Billy Wilder as readily as she could Martin Scorsese. And she went beyond the obvious in her use of simile. She once described the designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen as looking like Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady.

She read voraciously despite being dyslexic. Her writing was done in her head or longhand on bits of paper. She never mastered the computer keyboard, and her beloved and devoted Warren would type everything up for her. She could be quite scatty, but her brain was extraordinary. She also had a very big heart, and was adored by a lot of people.

In fact, she was one of the most popular people I have known. Her fans felt not only admiration but great affection for her. And you knew if you were going to be working with her, that it was going to be a good show and a lot of fun.

In 1983, she started working with Sheffield Popular Theatre, where she met Warren. She wrote, devised, produced and directed productions. She cut her teeth as a performer during the miners' strike, when she performed many benefits in South Yorkshire Miners' Welfare clubs. She began performing in a double act called Tough Lovers with Ann Lavelle. It was the stand-up element of the show that she really took to and she decided that that was where her future lay. She was the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 1987. In 1993, she moved with Warren to east London. But she is still held in high regard in South Yorkshire for the political and theatrical work she did there.

In the mid 1990s, she started to become well-known to radio listeners. She appeared on many shows, of which the News Quiz, Just a Minute and her own series, Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting, are best known. She also racked up numerous television appearances, but, as a wordsmith, she always seemed happiest on radio and on stage. In 2002, she was voted Wittiest Living Person by Radio 4 listeners.

She was a true satirist with an eye for the ridiculous, the bogus and the vain. Her left-wing politics were never dry nor passionless, nor did they stray into rhetoric. They came from a basic sense of what is decent, fair, sensible and humane. She was an observant atheist and had been president of the British Humanist Association for two years. She was deeply sceptical about many things and her wit could be savagely cutting, but I do not think it was ever cruel. She was hard but fair.

She was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 but kept the fact very quiet. She was extremely proud and never wanted to be defined by her illness. She spoke of it as little as possible. At times, I would forget she was ill and would moan about my own problems. Then, when I apologised, she would wryly say: "No, no, for me it's light relief."

She was strong and brave, and determined to live for as long as she could. She could be darkly humorous about what she was going through and, if she had ever decided to write about it, she would have set an unattainable standard for the genre. But she hated her cancer and I don't think she wanted to give it the publicity. As Linda might have said about herself: "She didn't exactly rage against the dying of the light, but she gave it quite a look." She died at home with family and friends around her.


Two quotes from Linda Smith:
In serious mode, on becoming president of the Humanist Association:
"With fundamentalism on the rise, the rational voice of humanism needs to be heard."

In wickedly satirical mode, talking on the News Quiz about the Blair government's Anti-Social Behaviour Orders(ASBOS):
"People are always down on ASBOs but these are the only qualifications some kids are going to get"

And about her (Jeremy Hardy again:
"The quirky English expressions she used were the most wonderful daft ways the English express themselves".