Victor Lewis Smith Obituary, Death – After a brief battle with sickness, the satirist Victor Lewis-Smith passed away. He was responsible for writing the “Funny Old World” column in Private Eye for nearly three decades. He was 65. The publicist and agent for Lewis-Smith, Mark Borkowski, was the one who broke the news of his passing away over the weekend in Bruges. He tweeted the following: “I am in deep shock… Having a difficult time coming to terms with the loss of a singular and irreplaceable talent.” Lewis-Smith was known for making prank calls and starring in television comedy sketch shows, such as Inside Victor Lewis-Smith, which aired in the 1990s on BBC2 in the United Kingdom. In order to con Diana, Princess of Wales, he pretended to be the renowned astronomer Stephen Hawking and used the same same computerized voice technique as the professor did. The entirety of their chat, which included a talk concerning Charles and the Clinton family, was made public in 2015 after having been locked up in a safe for the preceding twenty years.
After beginning his career in broadcasting in the late 1970s at BBC Radio Medway, Lewis-Smith went on to attend the University of York to study music in the late 1980s. After that, he went on to work as a producer for the programs Midweek and Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 during the 1980s.
His column, Private Eye, often featured reader-submitted articles from several newspapers. A man in Halifax, Canada, who was driven to “his wits’ end” by a tormentor who repeatedly yelled “porridge” through his letterbox was recently featured on it. Also recently featured were identical twin sisters from Perth, Australia, who had entered into a relationship with a man who claimed to love them both equally. “Ben sleeps in the middle of our king-sized bed, which the three of us use as a triple… As identical twin sisters, we engage in all activities together… They shared with the media that “you name everything, we do it, and we’re never apart.” Many of Lewis-admirers Smith’s have taken to social media to share their favorite clips and lines from the comedian. Some of these followers have pointed out that some of Lewis-jokes Smith’s and sketches may have been inappropriate and probably would not be broadcast or written now.
Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Mirror during the time that Lewis-Smith published a column for the publication, referred to him as “Britain’s rudest, funniest, and most dangerous columnist.” I once caught him recycling old jokes in his column for the Mirror, and he retorted in an indignant manner, “When Sinatra sang My Way, did people ask for their money back because they’d heard him sing it before?” I was referring to the question of whether or not people had asked Sinatra for a refund because they’d heard him sing it before. Having loved him”
The author Sarfraz Manzoor has been quoted as saying that his humorous television reviews for the Evening Standard are “masterpieces.” He was described as “biting, quite unpleasant, and most importantly, incredibly humorous” by Monty Don, the gardener and presenter. This coming Wednesday, Sky Arts is going to air Hitler’s Jazz Band, which was the last television program that Lewis-Smith worked on. It depicts the story of Karl Schweidler, who was the frontman of a swing band that the Nazis organized despite their prohibition on jazz at the time. Virginia, Lewis-wife, Smith’s and Lucia, their daughter, are the only members of their family he leaves behind.