Comedian and TV star Bob Newhart dies at 94

Bob Newhart, the deadpan accountant-turned-comedian who became one of the most popular TV stars of his time after striking gold with a classic comedy album, has died at 94.

Mr Newhart's publicist said the actor died on Thursday, local time, in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses.

Newhart, best remembered now as the star of two hit television shows of the 1970s and 1980s that bore his name, launched his career as a stand-up comic in the late 1950s.

He gained nationwide fame when his routine was captured on vinyl in 1960 as The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which went on to win a Grammy Award as album of the year.

He waited 10 years before undertaking another Bob Newhart Show in 1972. This one was a situation comedy with Newhart playing a Chicago psychologist living in a penthouse with his schoolteacher wife, Suzanne Pleshette.

Their neighbours and his patients, notably Bill Daily as an airline navigator, were a wacky, neurotic bunch who provided an ideal counterpoint to Newhart's deadpan commentary.

The series, one of the most acclaimed of the 1970s, ran through 1978.

Over the years, Newhart also appeared in several movies, usually in comedic roles.

Among them: Catch 22, In and Out, Legally Blonde 2 and Elf, as the diminutive dad of adopted full-size son Will Ferrell.

More recent work included Horrible Bosses and the TV series The Librarians, The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon.