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Eric Sykes, one of Britain’s finest comedy actors and writers, and a star of postwar radio, TV and film for more than 60 years, has died aged 89 after a short illness.

Tributes came in thick and fast for a man who was seldom off radios, stages or screens for long in a wide-ranging career that will spark different memories for different generations.

Mark Gatiss tweeted: “The wonderful Eric Sykes has left us. A giant of comedy and a gentleman – funny to his very core. RIP.”

Katy Brand wrote: “Eric Sykes goes just as the god particle is found – coincidence? I don’t think so. RIP Eric.”

Stephen Fry tweeted: “Oh no! Eric Sykes gone? An adorable, brilliant, modest, hilarious, innovative and irreplaceable comic master. Farewell, dear, dear man.”

Eric Sykes

And Paul Daniels wrote: “RIP Eric Sykes. This man was a REAL Comic Genius and one of the funniest men you could ever meet and talk to.”

Sir Bruce Forsyth called him “one of the greats of comedy in this country”. He added: “He was just one of the funniest men ever in comedy. We used to play golf together with Sean Connery. We were a great golfing fraternity.

“He used to love smoking cigars on the golf course. I’d spike his cigar with my shoes … That’s a loving memory I have of his face when I did that. It was very expressive. He was very lovely, very gentle and not a loudmouth. He was a very clever writer. His scripts were amazing.”

TV star Michael Palin said: “He was one of the nicest, most decent men in the business and one of a kind.

“No one else could do what Eric could do. To me, he was a great inspiration, both as a writer and performer.”

Actor Bernard Cribbins, who starred in two of Sykes’s short comedy films, also paid tribute. “He will be very sadly missed,” he said. “I just wish him a lot of rest up there with all the other comics, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. They will all be up there, having a laugh together.”

Eddie Braben, who wrote for Morecambe and Wise and Ken Dodd, said: “Any funny line that I write from now on will be dedicated to his memory as a thank you … we were great friends.”

He added: “Like Spike Milligan and PG Wodehouse, he was a great British man of comedy. He had a very quirky sense of humour. He had a way with his body – he was the only man I ever knew who could do a double take with his feet. Others could do it with their eyes or head – he could do it with his feet.”

Oldham-born Sykes, like many performers of his generation, was introduced to the world of showbusiness through his wartime service. Postwar, Sykes became one of the most in-demand radio comedy writers, providing scripts for programmes such as Educating Archie, Variety Bandbox and, by the mid-1950s, The Goon Show.

Perhaps his best-known role was as Eric Sykes in seven series of the 1970s sitcom Sykes, in which Hattie Jacques played his perpetually exasperated sister.

He also wrote and directed the classic 1967 short slapstick film The Plank, which had no dialogue – apart from grunts and the like – and seemed to star most British comedy performers, including Tommy Cooper and Jimmy Edwards. Sykes remade the film in 1979 with a similarly all-star cast.

Sykes became partially deaf quite early in life but never let it stop him – he worked regularly well into his 80s and became known to a new generation, appearing in films such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and, in 2007, the low-budget British comedy Son of Rambow.

His manager, Norma Farnes, said he had died peacefully. “His family were with him,” she said.

guardian.co.uk