The producer David Johnson was a larger-than-life figure whose dominance of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the 1990s catapulted a generation of young comedians to fame and helped to raise the profile of new provocative playwrights to lend, as The Stage noted, “the theatre industry a taste of Cool Britannia”.

An impresario with an unerring nose for talent, among the then young unknowns he championed were Graham Norton, Sue Perkins, playwright Mark Ravenhill and comedy trio Fascinating Aida, whose Dillie Keane described Johnson as being “possessed of absolute theatrical nous and intellectual curiosity: a stalwart champion of the new, the marginal and the edgy, he loved performance that had the power to shock, but only so long as it was true”.

Johnson’s reputation for enthusiasm and generosity towards artists and venues was matched by his forthrightness in confronting any slight or injustice towards both. In 2014, he was involved in a public spat with the Ambassador Theatre Group over requests for complimentary tickets to Fascinating Aida’s Edinburgh Festival show that year.

Throwing down the gauntlet in an open letter, he attacked ATG’s “Easyjet/Ryanair mentality” towards the incidental costs it charged to touring shows and artists, pointedly adding: “My company [is] big and busty enough to tell you to pay your way in Edinburgh, or get bent.”

Born in Duffield, Derbyshire, after schooling in Harrow he studied at the London School of Economics before working for Laister Dickson as a publicist in the 1980s. His first foray into live entertainment was the Stephen Fry-led charity benefit Hysteria in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust in 1987, after which he devoted more of his time to the stage and comedy club.

A chance encounter with producer Mark Goucher, who remembers him as “a giant of our business”, during the 1991 Edinburgh Fringe, led to the pair launching G&J Productions the following year. Its meteoric rise to prominence was as sudden and swift as its collapse in 1998 following a rapid expansion that stretched resources to breaking point.

Taking virtual residence in Edinburgh throughout the decade, the pair’s portfolio of comedians read like a who’s who of emerging talent, the likes of Steve Coogan, Greg Proops, Rhona Cameron and Jackie Clune among them.

If Johnson’s eclectic theatrical tastes shared any qualities, chief among them was a bold, provocative directness, a refusal to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and an ability to delight audiences while often simultaneously shocking them.

At a time when regional theatre and the West End seemed to be creatively treading water, Johnson breathed energetic new life into both to attract new and noticeably younger audiences to a roster of shows that saw him bring Steven Berkoff’s Sturm und Drang and Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch to the Arts Theatre within months of each other, and take Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking into the Queen’s Theatre and Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting into the Ambassadors and on to New York.

David Johnson with Stephen Fry, John Mackay and production/publishing team members Katya Shipster, Sharon Burgess, Ali Day, Sally Homer and Kimberley Atkins at the Royal Festival Hall in 2014. Photo: Steve Ullathorne