A WRITER whose work was influenced by his stay in Colne as a wartime evacuee has died, aged 72.

Jack , whose work includes scripts for 1960s Coronation Street, Spend, Spend, Spend, The Knowledge, P'tang Yang Kipperbang, Day to Remember and A Nightingale Sang, died from cancer-related complications in a north London hospice.

Jack, who was married to actress Maureen Lipman and had a son and a daughter, was evacuated to Colne from Manchester in 1941 and acquired his love of English at the town's grammar school.

He later used memories of his time in Colne to create famous TV characters such as Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner.

His agent Jenne Cararotto said yesterday that he had had a "Herculean struggle" against multi-myeloma, a form of cancer, but that he was "writing till the end".