Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton in 2007

Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (23 May 1921 – 25 April 2008) was an English jazz musician and broadcaster, for 36 years chairman of the BBC radio programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

Quotes

• An interviewer had researched Lyttelton's other interests and asked him about "orthinology" (sic). Lyttelton said that he kept a straight face and answered the question but 24 hours later thought of what he should have replied: "Oh, you mean word-botching".
  • BBC Radio 4 Midnight News (26 April 2008)

• Now it's time to play a brand new game called Name That Barcode. Here's the first one: "Thick black, thin white, thick black, thick white, thick black, thin white." OK who's going to identify that?
  • The Guardian (26 April 2008)

• Well as the vanquished charwoman of time begins to Shake-n-Vac the shagpile of eternity, I've noticed that we've just run out of time...
  • The Guardian (26 April 2008)

• After tasting the meat pies, Samantha said she liked Mr Dewhurst’s beef in ale; although she preferred his tongue in cider.
  • The Times (26 April 2008)
• Coincidence is a wonderful thing.
  • ISIHAC after Jeremy Hardy came in on time in the round of pick up song.

About Lyttelton

• One musn't be misled by the amiable, bumbling persona. ... He is a toughly intelligent man moving confidently in any kind of surroundings from Windsor Castle to Birdland.
  • Philip Larkin cited in Times obituary (28 April 2008)

• Radio personality, humorist, writer, cartoonist, ex-Guards officer and aristocrat – Humphrey Lyttelton’s status as one of Britain’s favourite all-rounders sometimes overshadowed his true stature as a jazz musician. But jazz was always his first, abiding love. In 1936, as an Eton schoolboy, he fell under the spell of Louis Armstrong, taught himself trumpet and formed a band. After World War II, he spearheaded Britain’s trad-jazz revival, though he was always more in it than of it. Bored by the purists’ dogmatic style, he broke ranks in 1953 by adding a non-trad saxophone to his group. At the concert, outraged zealots responded with the banner: ‘Go home, dirty bopper!’ But as the title of one of Lyttelton’s books put it, I play as I please; what pleased him was imaginative, swinging jazz with plenty of emotional energy. This was evident from the washboard whimsy of his early recordings and his jovial forays into calypso, to the jump-band vigour of the mid-1950s that evolved into the smooth, hard-driving mainstream which he continued to the end of his life. In a career spanning over six decades, till his death in 2008, he encouraged and inspired many of the most prominent jazz musicians in Britain.
  • Geoffrey Smith of BBC Music (March 19, 2024) [1]