Actor and learning disability campaigner Lord Brian Rix has died at the age of 92.

The chief executive for charity Mencap, for which Lord Rix was president, confirmed the news and paid tribute to "a beloved colleague and friend".

Once a fixture in the West End, known for his Whitehall farces, Brian Rix became a campaigner for people with learning disabilities when his eldest child Shelley was born with Down's Syndrome.

He was made a cross-bench peer in 1992, and after that spoke regularly in the House of Lords on the issue. He often voiced frustration that more could not be done to help his daughter, who died in 2005.

Mencap chief executive Jan Tregelles said the charity had lost "a very dear friend."

It comes just weeks after the peer pleaded for a change in the law on assisted dying to allow him to "slip away peacefully".

Previously opposed to such laws due to concerns that people with learning difficulties could be vulnerable, he said his position had changed after his illness had left him "like a beached whale" and in constant discomfort.

Speaking earlier this month, he said he now believed it was "wrong" that people like him should be "stranded like this".

"I'm not looking for something that helps me only, I'm thinking of all the other people who must be in the same dreadful position," he added.

"I have wrapped up my affairs and I am ready to go and I can't do anything but lie here thinking 'Oh Christ, why am I still here?' They won't let me die and that's all I want to do."

His wife, actress and fellow Mencap campaigner Elspet Gray died in 2013 aged 83.