Goodnight from him: Ronnie Corbett dies at the age of 85

Veteran actor and comedian Ronnie Corbett has died at the age of 85, his publicist has announced.

"Ronnie Corbett CBE, one of the nation's best-loved entertainers, passed away this morning, surrounded by his loving family. They have asked that their privacy is respected at this very sad time," said a statement. The cause of death has still to be announced.

Best known for many years as one half of double act The Two Ronnies, Corbett was born in Edinburgh in 1930, the son of a baker. After school, he worked briefly for the Ministry of Agriculture before doing national service with the RAF.

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According to the Daily Telegraph, at 5ft 1.5ins, Corbett became the shortest commissioned officer in the British armed forces. He exploited his diminutive stature for comic effect throughout his career.

After a number of minor film roles playing schoolboys – despite being in his 20s – he found fame on David Frost's weekly TV satire show The Frost Report, where he met Ronnie Barker. The two men were drawn to each other because they were not university educated, in contrast to the many Oxford and Cambridge graduates working on the show, including John Cleese.

The Two Ronnies – as they eventually became known – wrote jokes together and appeared with Cleese in the famous class sketch.

Again, their relative heights were key: the tallest, Cleese, played a bowler-hatted upper-class man, Barker represented the middle classes and tiny Corbett was the man at the bottom of the heap, with the pay-off line: "I know my place."

Their BBC TV show, The Two Ronnies, ran from 1971 to 1987 and was a national institution. Corbett became known for his rambling monologues, delivered directly – and genially, with the comic wearing a casual golf jumper – to camera from an easy chair.

His solo sitcom, Sorry!, ran from 1981 to 1988, after which he remained in the limelight through chat show appearances and guest roles on television.

He was still working in his later years, starring in Ricky Gervais's Extras in 2006, in which he played an exaggerated version of himself, acting in several Radio 4 plays and appearing on TV panel shows, where he often outwitted guests half his age.