Humphrey Littleton (center) from the I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue Christmas Special, 2003
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (1921-2008)
Trumpeter, clarinetist, bandleader, author, radio host
Grandson of a viscount, educated at Eton, commissioned in the Grenadier Guards during World War II, Humphrey Lyttelton did what every silver-spoon sort would have done after the war: he started a jazz band and became a cartoonist. His first recording came on VE Day in London, in May, 1945: joining the throngs with his mates, he rode in a wheelbarrow toward Buckingham Palace, loudly playing, “Roll Out the Barrel.” You can hear him in the background of the BBC broadcast that day.
Based at The Daily Mail, 1949-56, Lyttleton also wrote for Punch and collaborated on a daily comic strip. He became a major figure in the New Orleans-style jazz revival of the 1950s, and his band toured England for half a century from its founding in 1958.
In 1967 he became host of a weekly BBC Radio 2 program, Best of Jazz, which ran until weeks before his death; five years later, he was named host of the Radio 4 program, “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue.” Billed as “the antidote to panel games,” the show turned the genre on its head, with Lyttleton playing the gruff, bored, sometimes clueless straight man surrounded by lunacy (much as Kenneth Horne did in his sketch comedies, “Round the Horne” (1965-68) and “Beyond My Ken” (1958-64)).
Lyttleton hosted the show for 36 years; characteristically, when he needed surgery for an aneurysm in 2008, he sent a recorded apology to that week’s taping: “I’m sorry I can’t be with you today as I am in hospital...I wish I’d thought of that sooner.”
Lyttelton died of surgical complications in April 2008, aged 86. As a mark of his unique role, the BBC did not replace him. The show ended with his death. An intensely private man, he designed a house around a courtyard with blank outer walls, changed his unlisted number whenever someone unauthorized got it, and almost never used the phone anyway, preferring letters in his elegant script (he was president of the Society for Italic Handwriting for many years).
Related Sites:
BBC Obituary (2008)
An episode of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue”:
No comments:
Post a Comment
We enjoy hearing from visitors! Please leave your questions, thoughts, wish lists, or whatever else is on your mind.