Sharat Sardana was a talented comedy writer who supplied much of the material to the pioneering Asian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, and went on to help to devise the spoof chat show, also with an Asian cast, The Kumars at Number 42.

Goodness Gracious Me, which started on BBC radio in 1996 before transferring to television, was one of the first comedy shows to satirise, pointedly but without malice, perceptions of the British Asian community, and though Sardana was only one of several credited writers his contribution was considerable.

With his writing partner Richard Pinto he devised several of the show’s best-remembered sketches, including Going for an English, which mocked the British liking for Indian food, especially after a boozy session in the pub. Channel 4 viewers once voted it the sixth-funniest TV comedy sketch.

Often basing their characters on family and friends, Sardana and Pinto also created the Kapoors, an Indian family so English that they insisted on being called the Coopers, and Mr Everything Comes From India, a character who claimed that everything, even the Royal Family had an Indian origin. Another running sketch involved a diner who was so rude to his dates that they always walked out on him.

Sardana was the son of Indian immigrants and grew up in East London where his mother worked as a GP and gynaecologist. He attended Forest School in Snaresbrook where he met Pinto and soon discovered a shared relish for irreverent humour. He went on to take a degree in English at Queen Mary College, University of London.

He joined the BBC as a script editor, working with Anil Gupta who would become the producer of Goodness Gracious Me. After that show finished its run he joined the independent production company Hat Trick, for which he and Pinto wrote and produced a Channel 4 situation comedy, Small Potatoes. Echoing the American show Seinfeld in being heavy on inconsequential talk and light on plot, it was only patchily successful. However, Sanjeev Bhaskar had no hesitation in inviting Sardana and Pinto to join him in setting up The Kumars at Number 42, which was first broadcast on BBC Two in 2001.

It was based on the idea that an Indian family living in North London had built a television studio in their home and used it to stage their own chat show. Bhaskar played the host and Meera Syal was the grey-haired old granny liable to ask embarrassing questions.

The show was a cheeky antidote to the usual bland chat show but, as with all Sardana and Pinto’s work, it was done with good humour. Among those who subjected themselves to the gentle ribbing was a real chat-show host, Michael Parkinson, as well as Graham Norton, Jerry Hall and Stephen Fry, and The Kumars continued for several series.

Sharat Sardana, comedy writer, was born on August 20, 1968. He died of a streptococcal infection on January 27, 2009, aged 40