Writer Simon Gray, author of literate, bittersweet plays and diaries, has died at 71 after a year fighting cancer.
The rakish figure, who claimed to consume three bottles of champagne a day, penned more than 30 plays, including Quartermaine's Terms, Otherwise Engaged and The Old Masters.
In 1995, the West End run of Cell Mates was famously curtailed when star Stephen Fry suffered a breakdown and disappeared for days.
Gray just made the episode into a book Fat Chance.
He also wrote five novels and the screenplay for 1987 film A Month in the Country.
But Hants-born ex-lecturer Gray's best-known works were set in universities.
Butley, about a dyspeptic professor in meltdown, was turned into a movie starring Alan Bates and The Common Pursuit was a story of students on a literary mag.
Although Gray sometimes went out of fashion, several of his plays had successful recent revivals. And lately he'd won a new following for his witty memoirs - including The Smoking Diaries and The Last Cigarette - on his battles with producers, alcoholism and a 60-a-day tobacco habit.
He is survived by wife Victoria and a daughter and son from his first marriage..
