Writer David Nobbs, the creator of Reggie Perrin, has died, aged 80. 

While Nobbs was best known for his novel featuring disgruntled salary man Perrin and the subsequent BBC sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter in the title role, the former reporter had a long and successful career as a comedy writer. He first established himself as one of the team on satire programme That Was The Week That Was and went on to write for Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd, the Two Ronnies and Les Dawson.

Apart from the Perrin books, Nobbs was also the author of numerous best-selling novels and wrote a number of other sucessful TV comedies, including A Bit of a Do and Fairly Secret Army.

Bruce Dessau, editor of Beyond The Joke, remembers meeting David Nobbs. "I had the pleasure of interviewing David Nobbs about fifteen years ago and it was one of the few interviews with someone from the comedy world that was a pure pleasure. It was for a corny magazine feature entitled something like "Me & My Fridge" in which celebrities talked about their jams and cheeses etc in return for a plug for their latest product. I travelled from London to Yorkshire to meet Nobbs and he generously picked me up from York station and drove me through a thunderstorm to his home near Harrogate. I think we talked more about our shared love of Tottenham Hotspur than we did about cheese or the new book. When the photographer arrived he was even more accommodating for the photoshoot. Having taken a break outside I walked back in on them and Nobbs was perched on all fours on his kitchen table while holding a mug which said 'I didn't get where I am today by eating meat' on it."