Humphrey Lyttelton - Radio Personality

Radio Personality

From 1967 until April 2007, Lyttelton presented The Best of Jazz on BBC Radio 2, a programme which featured his idiosyncratic mix of top-quality recordings of all ages, including current material. In 2007 Lyttelton chose to cut his commitment to two quarterly seasons per year, in order to spend more time on other projects.

In 1972 he was chosen to host the comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue on BBC Radio 4. The show was originally devised as a comedic antidote to traditional BBC panel games (both radio and television), which had come to be seen as dull and formulaic, and in keeping with the staid middle-class "Auntie Beeb" image. Lyttelton continued in this role until shortly before his death, and was famed both for his deadpan, disgruntled, and occasionally bewildered style of chairmanship, and for his near-the-knuckle double entendres which, despite always being open to an innocent interpretation, went much further than most BBC pre-watershed humour. ISIHAC's success had considerable influence on the manner in which comedy was presented on radio, and Lyttelton's persona was a significant part of that success: he was a straight man surrounded by mayhem. At the time of his death, Lyttelton was the oldest active panel game host in the UK, being two and a half years older than his closest rival, Nicholas Parsons.

On Tuesday 22 April 2008 Lyttelton and the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue team were due to appear in the stage version of the programme at the Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth. Due to his indisposition, his place was taken by Rob Brydon, but a pre-recorded message from Lyttelton was played to the audience ("I'm sorry I can't be with you today as I am in hospital — I wish I'd thought of this sooner!"). The panellists on that night were Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Jeremy Hardy.

As well as his other activities, Lyttelton was a keen calligrapher and President of The Society for Italic Handwriting. He named his own record label "Calligraph" after this extracurricular interest. This label, founded in the early 1980s, not only issues his own albums and those of associates, but also re-issues (on CD) his analogue recordings for the Parlophone label in the 1950s. He is reported to have turned down a knighthood in 1995.