Humphrey Lyttelton

In 2001, he joined rock band Radiohead for a seven-hour session while they were recording their album "Amnesiac". They had written to him asking for help, as they were "a bit stuck".

In 1993, Humph was also the recipient of the radio industry's highest honour: The Sony Gold Award.

A 1949 recording contract with EMI was followed by many recordings, including 1956's Bad Penny Blues, the first British jazz record to enter the Top 20. Today Humphrey is busier than ever. His band, one of the most versatile in the world, still tours regularly. He presents The Best of Jazz on BBC Radio 2 and has chaired the hugely popular panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on Radio 4 for 30 years. His authoritative and exquisitely bored tones lend the half-hour of innuendo and improvised madness an air of gravity.

He got to meet his idol, Louis Armstrong, at the 1948 Nice (France) Jazz Festival. Armstrong always spoke warmly of the man he called "that cat in England who swings his posterior off".

But his love affair with the trumpet, which began in 1936, saw him form his first band in 1948.

Humph was born on May 23, 1921 in Eton College school, where his father was a housemaster and so he later attended England's most famous public school. During the War, he was an officer in the Grenadier Guards. After discharge, studied for two years at Camberwell Art School.