COMEDY writer Alan Simpson – who enjoyed visiting Bournemouth for reunions of the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society – has died at the age of 87.

Together with Ray Galton, he wrote 166 TV and radio scripts for the Bournemouth-raised comedian before going on to write Steptoe and Son.

The future writers met as teenagers at a sanatorium in Guildford, after they were both diagnosed with tuberculosis.

After success at sketch-writing, they were teamed with rising comedian Tony Hancock. Hancock’s Half Hour was a huge hit on radio and TV. After parting company with Hancock, Galton and Simpson created another enormous success, Steptoe and Son, which ran for eight series.

Alan Simpson visited Bournemouth several times to share his memories with Hancock fans.

In 2010, he told the Echo how their work had reached young people who knew the programmes better than the writers did.

He said: “I saw Junior Mastermind. There was an 11-year-old on it. His subject matter was Hancock. He got 15 questions out of 15.

“I could answer four of them, like ‘Who wrote Hancock’s Half Hour along with Ray Galton?’ I thought ‘Hang on, I know that’.”

In 2012, he told the Echo:

He said: “The amazing thing about Hancock is how young people seem to relate to it. I’m told that the average age of the audience is about 35. When you think Hancock died 44 years ago, it’s amazing. Most of them weren’t born when he died.”