Comedian Norm Macdonald, who first shot to fame as a member of the Saturday Night Live cast on NBC in the 1990s, has died.

Lori Jo Hoekstra, the 61-year-old Macdonald’s producing partner, told Deadline he had been privately battling cancer for the last decade.

“He was most proud of his comedy,” Hoekstra said.

“He never wanted the diagnosis to affect the way the audience or any of his loved ones saw him. Norm was a pure comic. He once wrote that ‘a joke should catch someone by surprise, it should never pander’. He certainly never pandered. Norm will be missed terribly.”

After five years on SNL, from 1993 to 1998, during which he spent three years as the anchor of the ‘Weekend Update’ sketch, Macdonald starred in his own sitcom, The Norm Show. Besides his on-camera performances, Macdonald also voiced Lucky the dog in the Dr. Doolittle series of movies that starred another SNL veteran, Eddie Murphy.