Brian Palmer, an advertising executive who wrote the first commercial to air on British television, has died at the age of 96.

Palmer made his name by writing the ad for Gibbs SR toothpaste, which aired in 1955 when ITV made its debut as Britain’s first commercial TV channel.

He held senior roles at Young & Rubicam and Doyle Dane Bernbach and co-founded Kingsley, Manton and Palmer, which had a pioneering reputation in its 1960s heyday.

William Eccleshare, a former Y&R executive and friend, described Palmer as “one of the key figures in the history of British advertising” who inspired “countless” people to embrace agency life.

Palmer was born in Dublin in 1929 and grew up in London. After National Service, he started in the advertising world at CF Higham, where he met his future wife, Brenda.

He joined Y&R as a copywriter in 1952 and landed the role of writing what became the first TV commercial “by good luck”, because the broadcaster chose the ad by picking brands “drawn out of a hat”.

The black-and-white ad featured a toothbrush and Gibbs SR toothpaste in a block of ice and described how it was “as fresh as ice”.

Decades later, he

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