This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 26/04/08
To The Last Note
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttleton
Musician, broadcaster and cartoonist
b. 23 May 1921, d. 25 April 2008
Humphrey Lyttleton was a legend.
The son of a housemaster at Eton, he went on to become one of the world's top jazz trumpeters (no less than Louis Armstrong referred to him as "that cat in England who swings his ass off"), and continued playing right up to the last few weeks.
He spread the word on jazz in other ways too, not least in his Best Of Jazz show which ran on BBC Radio 2 for over forty years until March of this year. I well remember as a boy of about nine or ten years of age listening to that programme and being given my entreé to jazz by his warm and knowledgeable enthusiasm.
My fondest memories of 'Humph', however, must be of the 36 years he spent as the chairman of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (subtitled, "The Antidote To Panel Games"). Apart from sharing the chairmanship duties with Barry Cryer for the first series in 1972, he held the job continuously thereafter.
In the early years, he didn't have a great deal to do, being cast as a chairman in the traditional mould (although he would make the odd world-weary remark from time to time). It was only when Jon Naismith took over as producer in 1991 that Humph's role expanded. In fact, he become almost the star of the show, and his disgruntled, deadpan remarks were as enjoyable as anything that the professional comedians around him could come up with.
His real forte however, and one which surprised many, was his remarkable ability to deliver a double entendre. These were usually written by Iain Pattinson, and were made doubly funny by the fact that Lyttleton knew exactly how to deliver them: totally straight-faced, without any hint of a smile in face or voice, thus leaving the evil entirely in the mind of the listener. Written down, perhaps lines like:
"Samantha tells me she has to nip off to a rare breeds farm where they still plough with huge beasts of burden. She's become friendly with a couple of farm hands who are going to show her their gigantic ox..."
or
"Samantha has to go now, as she's off to meet her Italian gentleman friend, who's taking her out for an ice cream. She says she likes nothing better than to spend the evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan..."
may not look much. But they were delivered in such a way that they produced maximum hilarity. And this was in the pre-watershed part of the schedules!
All the things he did, he did with passion, humour and integrity. I mourn his loss, but I delight in having had the chance to hear him so often down the years.
Goodnight, Humph.
