Host of British surreal radio game show dies
LONDON, England (AP) — Jazz trumpeter and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttelton, host of the surreal British radio game show I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, died Friday at the age of 86.
The performer’s Web site said Lyttelton died peacefully at a London hospital after surgery.
Born into a prominent British family and educated at the elite Eton College, Lyttelton was a lifelong jazz fanatic who taught himself to play the trumpet as a teenager. He became an accomplished musician — Louis Armstrong once called him Britain’s best trumpeter — and made a series of records for the EMI label with his Lyttelton Band.
He toured with the band well into his 80s and made an appearance on Radiohead’s track Life In A Glass House in 2000.
Lyttelton’s varied career took in World War II service in the Grenadier Guards and a stint as a cartoonist for the Daily Mail newspaper. He also wrote several books about music.
But for many he was best known as the host of British Broadcasting Corp.’s I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, launched in 1972.
A self-styled antidote to ordinary game shows, the program built up a passionate following with its mix of silliness, wordplay and innuendo. Lyttelton was a master at delivering ribald double entendres, usually involving the show’s fictitious scorekeeper, the lovely Samantha.
He was also famous for his imaginative sign-off lines, which would begin, As the delicate mayfly of time collides with the speeding windscreen of fate or with some equally fanciful metaphor.
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