Linda Smith (1958–2006), comedian, was born on 29 January 1958 in Erith, Kent. She found Erith uninspiring, later describing it as ‘not exactly a city that never sleeps, more a town that lies awake all night staring at the ceiling’. At Lessness Heath primary school and Bexleyheath School she acted out comedy sketches and appeared in school productions, later being offered a place at RADA, which she could not take due to lack of funding. Instead she went to Erith College of Technology to get the A-levels she needed to study English with Drama at Sheffield University from 1979 to 1982. After graduating, Smith helped form a group that became known as Sheffield Popular Productions, where she met her devoted lifelong partner, Warren Lakin. They produced community theatre and ran benefit gigs in support of the miners during the strike of 1984–5, reflecting her passionate political beliefs. Her stand-up career emerged, initially in sketches in variety nights in Sheffield pubs, then in a double act with Anne Lavelle and finally as a solo act, mainly on the fledgling provincial comedy circuit, in which she found the audience ‘not as jaded’ as in London. Smith's early routines were dominated by her imaginary boyfriend Clive, a parody of painfully feminist men. Jo Brand described her as the ‘only genuinely funny, female, political comedian’ and the politics of her act meant she had more in common with comics like her friend Jeremy Hardy than with other women on the circuit. She joked about health cuts (‘I don't like this new fun-sized National Health, do you?’), miscarriages of justice (‘The Guildford Four. I don't know, I think that Jeremy Beadle goes too far, sometimes’), and her racist grandmother, whom she described as being ‘personally twinned with Birmingham, Alabama’. Her disappointment with Labour's lack of radicalism was a constant theme, as in a routine that sent up Neil Kinnock's line on the poll tax: ‘You resist by paying. But when you pay—Ooh, you give that town clerk such a look!’ While in Sheffield, Smith collaborated with comedians including Henry Normal, Hattie Hayridge and Steve Gribbin, as well as putting together the Chuffinelles (a left-wing comedy trio made up of working-class women who had never performed before) and compèring Sheffield comedy club, Route 52. In 1993 she moved to London and became a regular at the Comedy Store's topical comedy show The Cutting Edge, where her fellow team mate Mark Thomas described her as ‘completely at ease amidst the rising tide of testosterone and bad puns’. This led to appearances on Radio 1's Loose Talk, and by the late 90s she had moved away from live comedy to concentrate on radio. She became a stalwart of comedy panel game shows The News Quiz, Just a Minute, and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and starred in her own radio sitcom, A Brief History of Time Wasting (2001–2). A Radio 4 interview about her atheism led her to become President of the British Humanist Association in 2004. She appeared less frequently on TV, but made guest appearances on Room 101, Question Time and Have I Got News for You, among others. Her popularity allowed her to return to stand-up and in 2002 she was voted ‘wittiest living person’ by listeners to Radio 4's Word of Mouth. In the same year she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She continued to work for several years, keeping her condition quiet, but treatment was eventually unsuccessful and she died at her home in London, on 27 February 2006, surrounded by close family. She was survived by Warren Lakin.