Comedy writer and Saturday Night Live pioneer Anne Beatts dies at 74

Anne Beatts (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Anne Beatts, a groundbreaking US comedy writer with a taste for sweetness and the macabre who was on the original staff of Saturday Night Live and later created the cult sitcom Square Pegs, has died aged 74.

Beatts died at her home in West Hollywood, California, according to her close friend Rona Kennedy.