Goodbye to a genius

But his influence, like the ripples of laughter he created, spread much wider, around the globe and in the showbiz world. Comics like Eddie Izzard and Harry Enfield say it was McCarthy who spurred them into a career in comedy.

Without McCarthy, percussion sensation Stomp might never have happened. It was he who introduced founding members Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas. And he unwittingly played matchmaker to at least one Brighton couple.

But it was McCarthys books that brought him international stardom that surprised and delighted him. Fans in pubs around the world will undoubtedly be raising a pint of Guinness in his honour.

Steve McNicholas knew Pete for almost 30 years. He said: He and I were in the theatre group Cliffhanger and played in rooms above pubs. We were on the road together for five years. One night he introduced me to Luke.

Pete was one of the wittiest people I have ever known. He would single-handedly get 200 to 300 people rolling around in fits of laughter just by improvising with off-the-cuff stuff with the audience. Its something he didnt do so much of late but they are my golden memories of him.

Steve said Eddie Izzard and Harry Enfield both saw Pete perform and later acknowledged his easy-going style and improvisational abilities left an impression on them.

Steve said: With his books I think Pete found his voice and his feet. He was actually working on a third, I think it was an extension of the Irish abroad theme.

McCarthy also found material closer to home. He moved from his native Cheshire to Sussex in the mid-Seventies, settled in Brighton and found rich pickings in neighbouring Hove.

One of his favourite sayings was Red sky in the morning shepherds warning. Red sky at night Hoves on fire.

Luke hailed McCarthy as one of the sharpest wits in the business.

He said: We definitely owe him a debt of gratitude. I had known him since I was 17 or 18 and he was part of my formative years. I knew he was ill but you always assume these things will take much longer. We never had the chance to have that last laugh.

Mind you, if he had had to pick a date, announcing his death on the first day of the comedy festival would probably have given him a laugh.

And for all the jokes he made about Hove, I think they should put up a plaque to him.

Steve said Quadrophenia day, part of next month s Cinecity film festival, would be dedicated to McCarthy who was a proud extra in the film.

Liverpudlian musician and poet Roger McGough, another lifelong friend, said: We had the same birthday, November 9, although I was a bit older, as he kept reminding me.

We shared the same Irish Catholic and school background and one of the shows we did was based on that. We were supposed to be the romantic poet and the brash comedian, although it didnt always work out that way.

Pete was very hard-working, very focused but it struck me he was sometimes less happy being a comic. It was writing he enjoyed more.

I did travelogue with him and he was just brilliant at thinking on his feet. He could talk to people, put them at their ease and get the best out of them.

McCarthy came down from Warrington to visit a girlfriend in Brighton and never left. He said: I thought I like it here, so I stayed.

Brighton composer and producer Andy Roberts worked with Pete and became another friend. The comic also shaped Andys life, unwittingly introducing him to his partner Sally.

Andy said: He arranged a ticket for me to see a show involving six strange Australian women and I found myself sitting next to Sally. Fifteen years later, here we are.

Andy introduced McCarthy to composer and playwright Willy Russell. He said: A couple of years ago Willy was staying with me and each had expressed an interest in meeting the other. We all went for a pint and it was like lighting the blue touch paper. It was a terrific encounter.

In whatever medium McCarthy was working, his starting point was his sense of humour. He cut his comic teeth in the vanguard of the alternative comedy boom of the Eighties with the Cliffhanger Theatre Company. He graduated to writing for and appearing with Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones in Alas Smith & Jones, the BBCs flagship show at the time.

McCarthy said: I used to play all the coppers and next-door neighbours anyone Mel had to head butt.

His imagination and unique approach to comedy led him to do a series of shows called the Live In Your Living Room World Tour where he would perform in peoples front rooms.

On TV he was a great believer in being himself, rather than putting on an act. He said: It also means I dont really get nervous when Im performing because theres no artifice in it. I feel like Im in someones kitchen in Southover Street (Brighton).

Another of McCarthys comic inventions was the three-hour coach tour which began and ended in The Greys in Southover Street. As he crossed the boundary into Hove he would stop the coach and serve sherry in the street.

Word got around there was free sherry on offer and McCarthy found himself sipping it with some of the towns alcoholics.

Then there was the Black Magic and Boredom in Hove show which won the award for best comedy at the Brighton Festival in 1987 and the Hangover Show, a series of sharply-observed drunken ramblings which earned him a Perrier Award nomination at the Edinburgh Festival in 1990.

When Ned Sherrin invited him to appear on the radio show Loose Ends, he did his routine as a man with a hangover at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. One listener that day was a Channel 4 producer who was putting together a new show called Travelog.

McCarthy said: I did it for seven years.

That show led him into him becoming a full-time writer. Inspiration for his books came from his Irish heritage.

In McCarthys Bar he journeyed from Cork to Donegal with the laudable aim to drink Guinness in bars called McCarthy. The book sold nearly a million copies and won him the newcomer of the year prize at the British Book Awards 2002.

The Road To McCarthy was a more ambitious project and took him on a pilgrimage across four continents in search of far-flung Irish connections.

His friend and tour manager Adrian Mealing said: These books endeared him to several generations around the globe who were either Irish, part Irish or who embraced the Celtic alternative to the Anglo-Saxon rule book.

Petes books caused seismic public laughter on suburban trains, transatlantic planes, storm-tossed ferries, in cheap student accommodation and very definitely on the Underground.

McCarthy was a technophobe and did not own a computer or typewriter. He locked himself away in his studio in Kemp Town, Brighton and wrote books with pen and paper. There was no TV, stereo, computer or phone.

Last year he said: At 14, when I read A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce, I knew that I wanted to write. If you write, you can make up your own rules. It was never a desire for fame. I was drawn to earning a living from a creative act. It seemed impossibly wonderful.

True to his word, out of the limelight McCarthy was a very private man. Happily married to wife Irene with three daughters, Alice, Isabella and Coral, he retreated to the countryside near Lewes when he wasnt working.

Another of his former colleagues is former BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard, who worked with him on The Pier for two years. She said: He was a funny, funny man droll and witty and never took himself too seriously.

I will never think of him without hearing the words, Hove, actually. His hatred for it was truly hilarious.

While McCarthys wit continued to sharpen, his horror of Hove mellowed with age. A couple of years ago he said it had become more groovy and dare I say it youthful although he couldnt resist adding although all these things are relative.

McCarthys funeral will be a private family event but a memorial service will be held later.