Jeremy Beadle died yesterday from pneumonia at the age of 59. He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That much is clear from the fact that he was simultaneously voted the second most hated man in Britain and one of the most popular TV presenters of the 80s and 90s. When he first came to prominence in 1981 as one of the four presenters of Game For A Laugh (along with Henry Kelly, Matthew Kelly, and Sarah Kennedy), he was responsible for some of the most consistent and often painfully side-splitting laughter television has ever produced. He continued in a similar vein with Beadle’s About, which became one of the most-watched shows on TV, and then moved on to present You’ve Been Framed for 7 years ending in 1997.

But it was as a charity worker and multi-million pound fund raiser that Beadle would perhaps most like to be remembered. Suffering from Poland’s syndrome since childhood and recently diagnosed with leukemia, his work for both of those charities led to him being awarded the MBE in 2001. [BBC Obituary] [Guardian Obituary]