From: mig73allenford2002@yahoo.co.uk   
      
   Comedy was in Ian Davidson’s veins. He wrote, directed and acted in   
   programmes featuring some of British television’s biggest stars,   
   including the Monty Python team, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker, Les   
   Dawson, Dave Allen and Little and Large. Davidson, who has died of   
   cancer aged 84, enjoyed his longest association – 53 years – with Barry   
   Humphries, the British-based Australian most famous for his performance   
   as the outrageous Dame Edna Everage, Melbourne “housewife superstar”,   
   alongside characters such as the offensive Les Patterson and Sandy   
   Stone, “Australia’s most boring man”. They met when Davidson was   
   directing The Late Show (1966-67), a satirical BBC Two series, and   
   collaborated on scripts for both TV and theatre productions, in the UK,   
   US and Australia.   
      
   https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/sep/24/ian-davidson-obituary   
      
   “He knows I’ll start work on anything, with no money, no agreement, just   
   for the joy of writing with him,” Davidson told the Independent in 1997.   
   The friendship extended to Davidson being the butt of pranks. He   
   recalled: “Once, we left Ronnie Scott’s [club] – me and him and the   
   wives – and tried to find a cab. One came around the corner, we climbed   
   in, and then after a while the driver leaned back and said: ‘Is that Mr   
   ’Umphries? I’d like to say how much I admire your art, Mr ’Umphries.’   
   Note the word ‘art’. Then the cabby said: ‘As a matter of fact, I’d   
   like   
   to have a drink with you,’ and produced a bottle of champagne and four   
   glasses on a tray from the front of the cab. It turned out Barry had set   
   all this up.”   
      
   The Humphries-Davidson collaboration on television continued through   
   Barry Humphries’ Scandals (1970), The Barry Humphries Show (1976-77),   
   The Dame Edna Experience (1987-89), Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch   
   (1992), The Dame Edna Treatment (2007) and Dame Edna Rules the Waves   
   (2019), as well as theatre shows such as the West End production of   
   Housewife! Superstar! (Apollo theatre, 1976).   
      
      
   At Oxford University, Davidson wrote and performed with the future Monty   
   Python stars Michael Palin and Terry Jones. They were reunited, together   
   with Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam, in Monty   
   Python’s Flying Circus when he joined the supporting cast for 1969-70   
   episodes of the surreal series. The dozen characters he played included   
   an RSPCA man intervening in the “How to feed a goldfish” sketch and a   
   chief commissioner of police waving from a morgue drawer.   
      
   He and his other long-term writing partner, Peter Vincent, both wrote   
   for Frost on Saturday (1968) before they joined the scriptwriting team   
   for all 12 series (1971-87) of The Two Ronnies, starring Corbett and   
   Barker, who had made an impression as part of the ensemble cast in David   
   Frost’s satirical series. Davidson also served as script editor from   
   1977.   
      
   Together, he and Vincent created the sitcom Sorry! (1981-88). Corbett   
   starred as Timothy Lumsden, a fortysomething librarian still living with   
   his parents. Barbara Lott played the domineering mother, Phyllis, eager   
   to keep him tied to her apron strings while William Moore acted her   
   henpecked husband, Sidney.   
      
   Much later, the trio teamed up on radio for When the Dog Dies (2010-14),   
   featuring Corbett as Sandy Hopper, widowed and resisting attempts by his   
   grown-up children to make him downsize to cash in by selling the house.   
   The title came from Sandy’s insistence that it will not go until his   
   canine companion, Henry, has passed away. The Sunday Times critic Paul   
   Donovan observed that “it is brisk, funny and has sharply drawn   
   characters”, including Sandy’s manipulative lodger (played by Liza   
   Tarbuck).   
      
   Davidson had a short stint as Coronation Street’s script editor before   
   Ned Sherrin hired him to direct inserts for the series titled BBC3   
   Born in Romford, Essex, Ian was the son of Denise (nee Free), a school   
   secretary, and John Davidson, a headteacher, and attended the town’s   
   Royal Liberty school.   
      
   On graduating in geography from Keble College, Oxford, in 1963, he wrote   
   a sketch for the BBC satirical series That Was the Week That Was,   
   directed an Oxford Theatre Group revue in the West End (Phoenix theatre,   
   1963), then became a research assistant on regional news at the ITV   
   company Granada Television. While there, he, John Bird and Michael Frayn   
   wrote scripts for the satirical series Second City Reports (1964).   
      
   Travelling to the US, he performed with the Second City improvisational   
   theatre group in Chicago and took part in the warm-up for a Lyndon B   
   Johnson speech at the city’s stadium.   
      
   Then, back at Granada, he had a short stint as Coronation Street’s   
   script editor before Ned Sherrin, producer and “godfather of satire”,   
   hired him to direct “silly” filmed inserts for the series titled BBC3   
   (1965-66).   
      
      
   He was assistant director on The Frost Report (1966-67), produced the   
   second series of Do Not Adjust Your Set (1969) and provided scripts for   
   The Kenneth Williams Show (1976), The Dawson Watch (1979), Kelly   
   Monteith (1979), Not the Nine O’Clock News (in 1979, also performing),   
   Carrott Confidential (1987-89), Frankie Howerd on Campus (1990) and The   
   Ben Elton Show (1998). He was script editor on Dave Allen (1993-94).   
      
   With Vincent, he also created the sitcom Comrade Dad (1984-86) and   
   jointly contributed scripts to All at No 20 (1986-87) and The Brittas   
   Empire (1991-97). He devised French Fields with John Chapman and   
   produced Keep It in the Family (1971 episodes) and Queenie’s Castle   
   (1971 and 1972 episodes).   
      
   Davidson married Anthea Proud in 1967. She and their daughters Clemency,   
   Grace and Hannah survive him, along with their grandchildren, Tobias,   
   Ella, Joshua, Honor, Henry and Arthur. Another daughter, Rose,   
   predeceased him.   
      
    Ian Roger Charles Davidson, actor, writer, director and producer, born   
   4 August 1940; died 8 September 2024   
      
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