Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show "Family Feud" died Saturday night. He was 79.

Dawson, known to TV fans as the Cockney POW Cpl. Peter Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes," died from complications related to esophageal cancer in Los Angeles, his son Gary said.

The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What do people give up when they go on a diet?" He made his hearty, soaring delivery of the phrase "Survey says ..." a national catchphrase among viewers.

Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best game show host. The Washington Post's Tom Shales called him "the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on 'You Bet Your Life.'"

Dawson was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed "somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000."

Biden's daughter weds plastic surgeon Vice President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley Blazer Biden, 30, was married Saturday to Dr. Howard David Krein in Wilmington, Del. She is a social worker for the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. He is a New Jersey native and a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, according to the News-Journal of Wilmington. The couple exchanged vows at the same church where she was baptized, St. Joseph on the Brandywine, in a joint Jewish-Catholic ceremony. It was followed by a reception at the Biden residence in Greenville. The guest list numbered about 200. Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill, issued a statement saying the couple's close family and friends attended the private ceremony.