Peter Tinniswood, the novelist and playwright who said his recent writing helped him to cope with his cancer, has died aged 66.

The Manchester writer, who began his career writing satire in the 1960s for That Was The Week That Was, had been diagnosed with oral cancer in 1995 and underwent surgery to have his larynx removed.

Tinniswood died at a London hospice yesterday morning.

His Radio 4 plays starred many of Britain's finest actors, including Judi Dench, Billie Whitelaw, Timothy West and Richard Wilson.

His recent plays such as Croak, Croak, Croak and The Last Obit, were he said, some of his best work, but it is for the long-running BBC television series I Didn't Know You Cared that he is best known.

The series, based on his three Carter Brandon novels, brought to life the Brandon family in a sitcom featuring the miserable Uncle Mort, an indomitable northerner who contracted cancer.

He recently worked on the the television adaptation of HE Bates' Uncle Silas, which stars Albert Finney, although his early days saw him working as a journalist, writing fiction in his spare time until he could afford to give up his reporting career.

He was born in Sale, Manchester, and lived with his mother above the family dry cleaning shop, where he would sit underneath the counter listening to customers. It was this that allowed to hone his talent for dialogue.

Tinniswood's cancer was the result of 40 years of pipe smoking, and after four years of treatment and radical surgery to remove his larynx and part of his tongue he never overcame it.

He had moved back to live with his ex-wife Liz Goulding, who cared for him while he battled the disease.

He continued to work throughout his illness and shortly before his death said: "I am writing better than I have in my life."

Helen Boasden, Radio 4 controller, said: "Radio gave Peter the voice nature had robbed him of and he gave us in return some of the finest and funniest plays of recent years."

Gordon House, BBC head of radio drama, said: "Peter Tinniswood was one of radio's finest writers.

"His plays were prose-poems, often wickedly funny but rooted in truth and structured like musical scores. Radio drama is the poorer for his death."