Co-creator of ‘The Simpsons’

SAM Simon, who has died at the age of 59, was the brilliant but irascible co-creator of The Simpsons, both the longest-running US sitcom and the longestrunning animated programme in TV history; he was also a creative force behind such critical and commercial successes as Taxi, Cheers and The Drew Carey Show.

In 1989, at 34, Simon was already a TV veteran when James Brooks, his fellow producer on The Tracey Ullman Show and a colleague from his days on Taxi , approached him to help turn Matt Groening’s one-minute cartoon shorts into a fully-fledged series.

Over the next four years, Simon took personal responsibility for assembling the team of writers who would propel The Simpsons to great acclaim.

In 1991, the story editor, Jon Vitti, referred to Simon as “the most undermentioned guy in the series”, with a presiding influence over storyboards, scripts, soundtracks and recording sessions.

He introduced sophisticated storytelling techniques and three-dimensional characters.

For his part, Groening regarded Simon as one of the most talented writers he had ever worked with, but he also found him to be “unpleasant and mentally unbalanced”.

At one stage the two were not on speaking terms, and Simon would call on other writers to convey his messages and insults to Groening.

Simon was doubtful as to whether the show’s blend of vulgarity and satire would find a large audience.

“I was hoping for 13 episodes that my friends would like,” he later recalled.

As the show got off the ground, however, a much more damaging conflict arose over the division of both writing credit and financial gain.

Simon resented the public perception that Groening had primary responsibility for what he saw as a collaborative success.

Simon left Gracie Films, the production company for The Simpsons, in 1993. He stood to receive an annual share of profits, from episode fees and merchandising, amounting to about $10-million a year, as well as an executive producer credit in all subsequent episodes.

Over the next two decades, the continued association would earn him seven of his nine prime-time Emmys.

Although many of the original staff paid tribute to him when recounting the success of The Simpsons, even Simon acknowledged that he could be a difficult colleague.

“I would say that any show I’ve ever worked on, it turns me into a monster,” he admitted. “I go crazy. I hate myself.”

This realisation, coupled with his new-found financial security, drove him to retire from full-time TV work after his next project, The George Carlin Show, was cancelled in 1995. While he continued to be successful as a writer, consulting producer and director, much of his energy went towards his ’I GO CRAZY’: Sam Simon was brilliant but difficult greatest passions: animal rights, boxing and high-stakes gambling.

Samuel Michael Simon was born on June 6 1955 in Los Angeles, and brought up in Beverly Hills.

After Stanford University, where he drew cartoons for the college paper, he began to re- ceive commissions from the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, before securing a job as a storyboard artist with Filmation Studios.

His big break came at the age of 23, when he submitted a script on spec for Taxi . It was accepted and filmed for the show’s third series in 1981, and later that year Simon came on board as executive story editor, rising to show runner for the fifth series.

When ABC cancelled Taxi in 1982, Simon was one of several writers who moved to the staff of Cheers , where he remained as a writer and producer for the next three years.

From 1999 to 2003, he was a writer, consulting producer and director on The Drew Carey Show, striking up a friendship with the show’s host.

Both men were avid players of poker and blackjack, and both were prepared to stake thousands of dollars on a hand. At the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas, he and Carey once played $1 000-a-hand blackjack in exchange for a meal. By the end of that particular game, Simon later joked, his toasted cheese sandwich had cost him $75 000.

A vegetarian-turned-vegan in later life, Simon made regular large donations to the animal rights organisation Peta, serving on its executive committee. In 2003, he established the Sam Simon Foundation in Malibu, California, to take in rescue dogs and retrain them as companions for the disabled. A further donation, to the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd, in 2012, allowed for the purchase of a new antiwhaling vessel, which was named Sam Simon.

In 2012 Simon was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer and given months to live.

Simon married actress Jennifer Tilly in 1984; the marriage was dissolved in 1991. He married Jami Ferrell in 2000; that marriage was also dissolved. — © The Daily Telegraph, London