My friend Steve Smith, who has died aged 68 of prostate cancer, was a successful advertising copywriter. Imaginative and funny, in the late 1980s and early 90s he created many of the scripts for the classic Time for a Sharp Exit campaign for Harp lager, which was his concept. His stories all had blokes in awkward situations, such as in the “Randy the Dog” advert in which a man inadvertently causes his nextdoor neighbour’s pooch to jump out of a top floor window.
Among other campaigns, Steve was also responsible for the 1984 Leyland Roadrunner Truck advert featuring some spectacular driving by the French stuntman Gilbert Bataille, who balanced a lorry on two wheels.
In 1986 he adapted the central image of the French short film Le Ballon Rouge in the service of advertising Milton Keynes, with specially composed music by Michael Nyman. The advert was so popular it ran for several years.
Steve’s World’s Apart cinema commercial for Pepe Jeans, also 1986, intercut Native Americans doing a rain dance with a young couple meeting in the rain in a bleak British city. But what really gave it cultural resonance was the use of the Smiths’ How Soon Is Now? track, with its haunting Johnny Marr tremolo guitar riff and Morrisey’s lyrics about social alienation.
Steve did his best work at the Cogent Elliott agency in Birmingham from 1980 to 1989, after which he moved to McCann Erickson and then on to Publicis. He had also started writing TV comedy scripts part-time in 1987, but carried on with Publicis until 1995, when he decided to switch full-time into comedy writing.
Among the sitcoms he wrote was Sleeping Together, about two insomniacs who dislike each other but find they get good sleep together. The script never made it into TV production, but had a dramatic afterlife when it was taken up in the US by Disney as a romcom feature film, No Sleep Til Christmas (2018).
Steve was born in Coventry, to Sydney, a groom for cavalry officers in the army, and his wife, Edna (nee McGrory). After attending Bablake school he studied English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he and I met in 1975 and where he was a triple blue at boxing.
After his spells in advertising and comedy, in his 40s Steve retrained at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London before setting up a low-cost private practice in Balham, south London, helping people with a variety of conditions, including anxiety, depression and anger management. He continued to see clients until late 2022, when he became ill.
A keen cyclist, Steve had accumulated 10 bikes by the time he died – and also kept fancy rats.
He is survived by his wife, Pat Sharpe, whom he met in 1983 and married in 1990, their daughters, Amy and Bethany, and granddaughter, Bella.
