It was a shock to read of the loss of influential comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins in such sad circumstances on Friday.

As a former BBC TV Head of Comedy, Perkins was involved with many hits, such as The Catherine Tate Show and The Fast Show, as well as earlier involvement on the radio with The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and devising the Mornington Crescent game on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.

The BBC’s Jana Barrett described Perkins as:

“…an outstanding creator of countless comedy hits on the BBC and elsewhere, and a very distinguished former BBC head of comedy.

“He embraced comedy talent to create unique programmes which will be enjoyed for a very long time to come. All of our thoughts are with Geoffrey’s family at this very sad time.”

Rarely has one man - producer or otherwise - been involved in so many hits on different networks. Perkins was also involved in Father Ted and The IT Crowd for Channel 4, and Benidorm for ITV.

One of his final projects was the latest Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse series, which kicks off this Friday.

A selection of Geoffrey Perkins’ hits can be found here.

The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph have all run obituaries to the writer and producer - whose ability as a script editor was described by a former colleague as knowing “where the jokes were buried” - however most touching are the words of Father Ted and IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan:

Well, I’ve just had some terrible news. Geoffrey Perkins, who produced the first series of ‘Father Ted’, has died in a road accident.

Geoffrey was the man who found our early ‘Ted’ script, (at that time, written as a mock-documentary) and suggested we turn it into a sitcom. He was the man who chose the house that became our iconic central location (poring over a pile of location photographs, stabbing it with his finger and saying “That’s the one”). He also persuaded us to use Neil Hannon’s ‘Songs of Love’ as our theme music.

This last one was a sticking point for a while. Arthur and I preferred a song by Neil that would later become ‘A Woman of the World’ off the ‘Casanova’ album. That song was jaunty and silly and to us perfect in that it seemed to be subtly making fun of the form we were working in.

“Why do you want to make fun of your show?” said Geoffrey, finally, looking wounded and worried. “People will love these characters.”

I later realised that it was a fork in the road, that discussion, and if we had not travelled the way Geoffrey suggested, we’d have ended up lost…we may never have made it to series three. Without Geoffrey, ‘Father Ted’ would have been a cacophonous riot, and not nearly as loved as it is today. He gave the show a heart, and gave me–still very young, and unsure as to what type of person I should try to become– someone to model myself on.

I hate the fact that I’m writing this. You’ll see his credits soon enough and realise what we’ve lost. Goodbye, Geoffrey. I wish we’d worked together more.

A very sad loss; our thoughts are with Perkins’ family.

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