He portrayed the vapid man-on-the-street reporter Wally Ballou, “winner of over seven international diction awards.” He played Arthur Sturdley, curmudgeonly host of a “no-talent” show. He was the pitchman for Einbinder Flypaper, “the brand you've gradually grown to trust over the course of three generations.”

And he was Harlow … P … Whitcomb, who spoke with exasperatingly long pauses as “president … and … recording … secretary … of the … Slow … Talkers … of … America.”

In a career that was as ridiculous as it was sublime, Bob Elliott, who died Feb. 2 at 92 in Cundy's Harbor, Maine, was half of the comedy team Bob and Ray. He and the late Ray Goulding were among the drollest and most inventive pop culture satirists of their generation as writers, producers and actors.

Elliott also was the patriarch of a comedy family that included his actor-writer son, Chris Elliott, and a granddaughter, actress-comedian Abby Elliott, both former cast members of “Saturday Night Live.” Brackett Funeral Home in Brunswick, Maine, confirmed the death but did not disclose the cause.

Bob Elliott's show business legacy firmly rested on his partnership with Goulding, who died in 1990. They appeared on Broadway, film and TV, notably as the voices of Bert and Harry Piel, the fictional sibling proprietors of Piels beer in a series of popular animated television commercials in the 1950s and 1960s.

On the radio, the duo's primary medium, they broadcast “from approximately coast to coast,” as they liked to say, on such outlets as NBC, CBS and National Public Radio. They were a seminal influence on comic entertainers, including Woody Allen, David Letterman, Jonathan Winters, Al Franken (who became a U.S. senator) and “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels.

A hallmark of Bob and Ray comedy was bone-dry delivery of the absurd.

With masterly comic timing — Elliott with a nasal deadpan; Goulding with booming authority — Bob and Ray mocked the cliches and banalities of newscasts, politics, sports and advertising. The characters they played were inept, pompous or shady: logic-free “experts,” sore political losers, dense reporters and dimwitted Everymen.

Their playfully warped sensibilities often involved sly commentaries of the conventions of radio and TV, and the people who take those mediums seriously.

Recurring characters included sports reporter Biff Burns, who once interviewed the world champion “low jumper,” and the women's show host Mary McGoon, who meandered from everyday recipes (frozen ginger ale salad, pabulum Popsicles) to homespun medical advice (her cold remedy: goose fat in an Argyle sock, hung around the neck).

Robert Brackett Elliott was born in Boston on March 26, 1923, and he grew up in nearby Winchester. His father, who sold insurance, introduced him to the wry humor of author Robert Benchley.

After Elliott's Army service in World War II — he was in the supply corps in Europe — the Bob and Ray partnership coalesced on failing, up-for-anything Boston radio station WHDH.

At the time, Elliott was a disc jockey, and Goulding was a news announcer, and they began improvising during the dead air between segments. Management, Elliott later said, “was very free in letting us play.”

They introduced themselves to a younger audience with their 1979 appearance on a “Saturday Night Live” special. To Rod Stewart's “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?” featuring Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner as disco backup singers, Bob and Ray are seated in business attire and declaim the chorus, “If you want my body, and you think I'm sexy, come on, sugar, let me know.”

His first marriage, to Jane Underwood, ended in divorce. His second wife, Lee Knight, whom he married in 1954, died in 2012. Survivors include three children from his second marriage, Amy Andersen, Bob Elliott Jr. and Chris Elliott, and two stepdaughters he adopted, Colony Elliott Santangelo and Shannon Elliott; 11 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren, The New York Times reported.