Satirist and actor whose pairing with John Fortune gave him a long career in popular entertainment
The satire boom of the early 1960s heralded the end of the age of deference in public life generally and in the media specifically. On television, Robin Day began giving politicians a tough time, and in the theatre Beyond the Fringe set a tone of mockery and irreverence that spawned Peter Cook’s Establishment club in Soho, the magazine Private Eye, and Ned Sherrin’s ground-breaking satire shows on BBC television, That Was the Week That Was, or TW3 as it became known, and Not So Much a Programme More a Way of Life.
John Bird, who has died aged 86, was a central figure in this phenomenon, appearing on stage and television with a voice in various timbres of reasoning dismay, comic self-justification and utter incredulity.
