The Daily Novel

Up the road to South End Green for the ninth Humphrey Lyttelton concert organised by the Friends of the Royal Free Hospital. It proved the perfect antidote to all the form-filling and anxieties of buying and selling houses. After a wake-up start with A Good Bounce, Humph himself sang I like to go back in the evening. Where he actualy goes back to in the evening is Barnet, a few miles north of Gospel Oak, but the song was thick with nostalgia, which proved the dominant tone of the evening. By the time he did his second song, Sad sweet song, in perfect harmony with Ted Beament on the piano, my tranquility had reached the top of the scale.

For me the highlight of the evening was the clarinet solo by Wally Fawkes, Lyttelton’s old friend, who just happened to be passing and came up on stage to show, they still have enough breath around eighty to excel. Trog’s Blues transcended sadness and depression into something profoundly joyful and life affirming.

As always with this occasion there was plenty of variety. Fawkes was followed by the hugely exuberant Wicker Woman, written by Karen Sharp, one of the two young female tenor saxophonists who played it. And the audience was whipped into frenzy of clapping in the finale, the usual Frankie and Johnny.

Lyttelton first met Fawkes in 1947 when they were both students at the Camberwell Arts and Crafts. The following year Fawkes became a founding member of the first band Lyttelton formed. Fawkes had just secured himself a job with the Daily Mail producing a new strip cartoon, Flook by Trog, which was to run for several decades. Fawkes introduced Lyttelton to the features editor, who barely looked at the few drawings he had brought in and told him, ‘You start tomorrow.’ This story is in Lyttelton’s book, It Just Occurred to Me… (Anova Books, 2006). It led to one of Chairman Humph’s utterances, ‘Whatever assignment you are offered, say ‘yes’ first and learn about it afterwards. It kept Lyttelton on the Daily Mail payroll for eight years and is still good advice for young journalists.