Andy Smart, master of improvisation at the Comedy Store in London – obituary

Andy Smart, the comedian, who has died from a heart attack aged 63, was one of the country’s most gifted practitioners of improvised comedy, as demonstrated by the fact that he was a long-standing member of the Comedy Store Players, the troupe that set a bench-mark for the form at London’s prestigious stand-up club.

Live comedy often has an ephemeral quality, and improv, especially, is written in the sand. Smart told an interviewer in 2020 that he could not remember the myriad riffs and ad-libs he conjured in the half dozen or so games in the Players’ bi-weekly show – shifting character, attitude and parodied genre in response to audience suggestions, with a nimble wit essential.

Compared to the more gladiatorial form of stand-up that prevailed at the venue, particularly in its early days in the 1980s, this was a benign breed of adrenal entertainment and Smart was in his element participating in its campfire communality. Joining as a regular from 1995, after appearing often the previous decade, he conspired with original member Neil Mullarkey plus Josie Lawrence, Lee Simpson and Richard Vranch (who had all joined shortly after the show’s inception in 1985) to make the place crackle with warmth; he likened the Store’s auditorium to his “living room”.

While some performers with a bent for improvisation are household names, assisted by their other work and television exposure – Eddie Izzard and Paul Merton (who was with the Players from the start in 1985, up to the pandemic) being obvious examples – Smart was one of the scene’s undersung heroes. But his contribution helped to cement the staying power of this live institution, which in 2010 was accorded a Guinness World Record for the longest-running comedy show with the same cast.

“He’d always say yes to everything… whatever the scene required,” Mullarkey recalled. “He’d play a courageous captain, a villainous coward or a beautiful princess.” That risk-taking openness was of a piece with Smart’s irrepressible personality off-stage. In his 2019 memoir about his early years and youthful exploits hitch-hiking, A Hitch in Time, he wrote simply: “I’ve never planned a career – it’s just happened, by being optimistic and making the most of each opportunity that life throws up.”

Andrew Keith Smart was born in Portsmouth on June 16 1959, the son of a civil engineer, Keith; a brother, Neil, arrived in 1961, at which point the family (completed by his mother Shirley and, in 1967, a sister, Rosalind) relocated to Farnborough and Smart was educated at Cove Manor and Farnborough Grammar, staying on when it became a sixth-form college.

He was fond of larking around, and his education was not marked by academic prowess: “I ended up with three A-levels in geography, maths and biology – D and two Es,” he admitted. But he discovered a love of drama, and getting attention. In the lower sixth he played the jester Trinculo in The Tempest, eliciting a laugh by shouting “man overboard” at the start.

After he failed his degree in geography and drama for failing to hand in his dissertations on time at Notre Dame College in Liverpool, he lived a bohemian, auto-didactic life in the city, trying his hand as a performance poet before writing and acting with a theatre-in-education company.

But it was his wanderlust, which saw him hitch around the UK and Europe, which set him on the circuitous path to entertainment. In 1982 he mastered the art of juggling oranges in Biarritz and Pamplona (where he braved the running of the bulls, claiming in 2019 to have since done that 60 times) and developed a good busker’s patter.

In 1983 he had a stint as a street entertainer, drawing crowds in Covent Garden, first miming to songs as part of a double act called Soft Shoe Shuffle then, with Angelo Abela, sending up circus stunts as Circus Berkus, before moving on to parodying films under the new name, the Vicious Boys.

Doors opened when they won the 1984 Time Out Street Entertainer of the Year award. They did runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and were invited to provide the on-board entertainment after Virgin launched flights to New York. In 1985 they got their own LWT show, Wake Up London, a punchy Sunday-morning guide to the capital, and they went on to provide the comedy on Get Fresh, a Saturday-morning broadcast for younger viewers (also LWT). Their most notorious appearance was on Channel 4’s The Tube when, pretending to be a Great Dane, Smart licked the aghast face of host Paula Yates.

After Abela and he went their separate ways in 1990 and the Players’ line-up altered, Smart became a grinning-faced fixture at the Store from 1995. He performed at 40 consecutive Edinburgh festivals, his solo shows including one about marijuana, The Dope (1998), and he demonstrated his acting skills there playing a juror in an acclaimed 2003 staging of Twelve Angry Men that went on to tour in Australia.

He travelled to comedy festivals across the world with regular trips to Ireland and the Altitude Festival in Austria, as well as shows as far afield as China, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.

Vranch, so close in age and friendship to Smart that the pair held a joint 30th-birthday party at the Comedy Store in 1989, also paid tribute to his love of sport – “the more dangerous the better,” said Vranch. “He presented TalkSport’s coverage of the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match in Ashbourne and the Cheese Rolling at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire. He was a dedicated fan of Farnborough Football Club, travelling the country to watch them play and provide commentary.”

A biopic of Smart’s life would be spoilt for material. He was a free spirit who scoffed somewhat at health and safety, and his memoir recounts many brushes with death and injury, colourful incidents while hitching, including waking up in the home of the Liberal leader David Steel – who cooked him breakfast – and such varied incidents as witnessing the Toxteth riots and daring to hitch to and from Ben Nevis (and climb it) within 48 hours.

He lived for the next laugh and adventure, describing the moment of maximum improv bliss: “When from absolutely nothing it comes together into a massive rolling wave of laughter… you soar on the emotion of a collective magic.”

Andy Smart is survived by his partner Judith Powell, a daughter Grace, born in 1993 to the actress Victoria Willing, and his son Joe Shavin, born in 2001 to the voice artist Laura Shavin.

Andy Smart born June 16 1959, died May 16 2023