George Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades. As a writer and composer, he created 18 comic operas, nearly 100 musical sketches, some 600 songs and piano pieces, three books and both serious and comic pieces for newspapers and magazines. Grossmith is best remembered for two aspects of his career. First, he created a series of nine memorable characters in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan from 1877 to 1889, including Sir Joseph Porter, in H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance (1880) and Ko-Ko in The Mikado (188587). Second, he wrote, in collaboration with his brother Weedon, the 1892 comic novel Diary of a Nobody.Walter Weedon Grossmith (9 June 1854 14 June 1919), better known as Weedon Grossmith, was an English writer, painter, actor, and playwright best known as co-author of The Diary of a Nobody (1892) with his brother, music hall comedian and Gilbert and Sullivan star George Grossmith. Weedon Grossmith also illustrated The Diary of a Nobody to much acclaim.Grossmith trained as a painter, but was unable to make a living in that capacity and went on the stage largely for financial reasons. He was successful as an actor and as an impresario, and wrote several plays. As an actor, he specialised in comedy roles, and his typical characters, harassed and scheming, became so identified with him that the "Weedon Grossmith part" became a regular feature of the theatre of his day.