DavidSchneider

It was there he met friend and future collaborator Armando Iannucci, who in 1991 recruited him as a key cast member for Radio 4's news parody On the Hour and its TV transfer, The Day Today, as well as for the spin-off spoof chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You, starring Steve Coogan's alter-ego Alan Partridge.

Schneider consistently breathed life into a remarkable variety of memorable characters, most memorably as BBC Commissioning Editor (and Partridge's nemesis) Tony Hayers, a role he was to reprise hilariously in the later sitcom I'm Alan Partridge.

A gifted writer, Schneider gained further on-screen fame in the mid-Nineties when co-presenting topical satirical series The Saturday Night Armistice with Iannucci and Peter Baynham, which again demonstrated his versatility as a comic performer.

He has since appeared in a number of feature films, including Mission Impossible and 28 Days Later, and has branched into writing books, drama and a witty regular newspaper column.