IN OCTOBER 1998 a letter in The Times from John Junkin read: “May I confess to not being quite as upset as many people at the loss of first-class cricket by BBC Television, principally because it will give viewers a chance to see the three new series I have devised.

“These consist of 26 programmes on gardening, 26 on travel and 26 on cooking, with a Christmas special in which a well-known gardener is invited to take a celebrity chef to some glamorous location and cook him.”

Junkin, by then living in near poverty in rented accommodation in Buckinghamshire, had good reason to feel perplexed by the new direction of television entertainment, an industry which for three decades could hardly do without him. Junkin wrote, often in his garden shed, for some of Britain’s best-known comedians, including Morecambe and Wise, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker and Mike Yarwood. Between 1961 and the mid-1970s Junkin was constantly on the screen in situation comedies such as Sam & Janet, On the House, Marty, Hello Cheeky and The Rough with the Smooth, and in dramas Emergency Ward 10, Z Cars and Dr Finlay’s Casebook.

He played the character Shake in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, and went on to appear in Chicago Joe and the Showgirl, Handful of Dust and, recently, The Football Factory. Junkin’s main contribution to entertainment, however, was his innumerable and consistent contributions, through writing and acting, to the success of others.

Born in Ealing, West London, Junkin began his working life as a schoolteacher but was gradually drawn into writing. He was a member of Associated London Scripts, a co-operative based in W12 that included Dave Freeman, Spike Milligan, Terry Nation, Johnny Speight and Eric Sykes, managed by Beryl Vertue. Through Milligan’s connection with the group Junkin contributed scripts to Peter Sellers’s The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d, a radio show before its time in sheer silliness. It ran for five series until 1956. Junkin teamed up with Freeman and Nation to write the radio sitcom The Floggits for Elsie and Doris Waters. Sensing further success, in 1960 he committed himself to scriptwriting but worked as a labourer to support himself.

Junkin wrote for the comedians Ted Ray and Jimmy Logan, and joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, taking the lead role in the original production of Sparrers Can’t Sing. He appeared with Rex Harrison in August for the People at the Royal Court in London, and after that work in television and radio was plentiful.

In 1961 he first appeared in the Benny Hill Show, playing bystanders and the butt of jokes; something for which he would be enrolled in The Goodies and Marty, in which an evil old couple played by Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke- Taylor would each week conspire to reduce him to tears.

Junkin’s range in small roles was infinite; his appearance in A Hard Day’s Night led to the role of “Large Child” alongside John Lennon in another Richard Lester film, the anti-war, anti-narrative and possibly anti-film How I Won the War. For years he voiced one of the Brooke Bond chimps, and he continued to work on the stage and to write quiz-show formats. He appeared on several anti-quizzes in the Mornington Crescent style, such as Lucky 13 for Radio 2. “Is it possible to hear a tangerine speak?” “Yes, if you go to Tangier where he lives.”

In 1970 Junkin was given a rare lead role in On the House, in which he played Charlie Cattermole, a harassed site foreman continually at odds with a firebrand shop steward played by Kenneth Connor. His success peaked in 1976 when he was given equal billing with Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor in Hello Cheeky, which moved from radio to a prime-time slot on ITV. The sketches, most of which involved obvious set-up gags and appalling puns, did not bring Junkin or Brooke-Taylor the acclaim they had won in Marty; the show was moved to a late-night slot and allowed to expire.

In the mid-1980s, while working on a spoof pantomine for Russ Abbot, Junkin and Cryer were asked by a reporter what they thought of the upstart “alternative” comedy writers and comedians. While Cryer replied that he found much that he recognised and admired, Junkin said that he had no idea who they were, nor much cared. Yet his own brand of punnery and family-orientated whimsy was on the wane. He wrote, with Bill Tidy, The Fosdyke Saga and The Grumbleweeds for radio, but as the 1980s drew to a close the work dried up.

Junkin fell out with a producer — he never told the press which one — over the writing of a game show for which he had devised the format. Litigation cost him £70,000, and was swiftly followed by a tax bill for £120,000 after years of financial indiscipline.

When radio and television work petered out completely he got up at 4.30 in the morning to submit jokes to a DJ in Newcastle. Junkin’s wife left him, but he managed to joke: “We became incompatible. I no longer had an income and she was no longer pattable.”

In recent years his fortunes were repaired slightly with an appearance in EastEnders and decent roles in two British films, Girl from Rio and The Football Factory.

He is survived by his daughter.

John Junkin, scriptwriter and comic entertainer, was born on January 29, 1930. He died on March 7, 2006, aged 76.