Mike Craig

With his partner, the late Laurie Kinsley, he put words in the mouths of Morecambe and Wise, Ken Dodd, Harry Worth and many others. In fact, it was his script that caused the newsreader Angela Rippon to show her legs and dance to the music of Irving Berlin in Eric and Ernie's 1976 Christmas Show.

Mr Craig was also a noted radio producer at the BBC in Manchester, from where he brought to the air the Leeds showband the Grumbleweeds and the female impersonators Hinge and Bracket.

Born Hugh Michael Craig in Batley, he developed a taste for showbusiness watching the music hall turns at the old Dewsbury Empire while still a pupil at the Church of England Junior School in Hanging Heaton.

He got his first taste of performing at the Hanging Heaton Operatic Society, Carlinghow Amateur Operatic Society and the Batley Amateur Thespian Society, where he also met the Dewsbury-born mill worker Mr Kinsley – already a veteran of several amateur pantomime scripts.

The duo formed a comedy double-act and in the 1960s began writing for fellow comedians on the burgeoning northern club circuit.

But it was television that was to prove their natural home. Almost to a man, the biggest comedians of the time relied on freelance scriptwriters to make them funny. Very few wrote their own material, and those who did, Les Dawson included, still needed others to pen the sketches and quickies that made up their TV half-hours.

Mike Craig and Laurie Kinsley, joined later by a third writer, Ron McDonnell, turned out a production line of such material, contributing to some 1,200 programmes for television and radio.

An old showbusiness adage dictated that a script could be funny or on time, but not both. "Do you want it good or do you want it Tuesday?" With Mike Craig, you got both.

When in the early 1970s, Thames Television wooed the Barnsley-born Harry Worth away from the BBC, it was to Mike, Laurie and Ron that they turned. Jimmy Tarbuck was also a grateful recipient of many a script from them.

But it is the Angela Rippon dance number that stands out as a career highlight. The BBC had brought in Messrs Craig and Kinsley, along with John Junkin and the Leeds-born Barry Cryer, when Morecambe and Wise's regular writer Eddie Braben needed time off. The resulting high-kicking routine is one of Eric and Ernie's best remembered.

One of Mr Craig's most prized possessions was a gold-plated statuette of Eric Morecambe, one of only four to have been produced, which was bequeathed to him by the actress Thora Hird

As the old acts retired and tastes changed, especially among TV executives, Mike Craig turned his hand to producing, and carried on a tradition of northern entertainment at BBC Manchester that had begun with Jimmy James, Al Read and the Clitheroe Kid.

He also wrote four books of showbusiness reminiscence, performed a one-man show on cruise liners and at after-dinner engagements, and wrote a play about the comedian Robb Wilton, The Day War Broke Out.

After his retirement he was diagnosed with Pick's Disease, a terminal illness which causes dementia.

Nevertheless, he attended a 72nd birthday party in his honour, at which the actress Kathy Staff and comedian Bernie Clifton were also present.

Mr Craig, who lived for many years in Timperley, Cheshire, is survived by his wife, two children, three stepchildren and five grandchildren.