Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:17 am Post subject: George Melly
Jazz singer and author George Melly has died at his London home at the age of 80, his wife Diana has announced.
The flamboyant performer had been diagnosed with lung cancer and vascular dementia, a condition which affects the brain after small strokes.
Despite his illness, the jazz veteran was still appearing on stage in the weeks leading up to his death.
In January, the Liverpool-born musician was taken to hospital after collapsing on stage in East Sussex.
His final concert took place at the 100 Club in London on 10 June in aid of Admiral Nurses, part of the charity For Dementia.
According to his wife, Melly was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 for which he refused all treatment.
Melly, who began his career in the Navy, was also a lecturer on art history as well as a film and television critic.
He also wrote the words for the Flook cartoon strips in the Daily Mail, drawn by his friend Wally Fawkes.
Melly combined his jazz career with writing and broadcasting
Friend and contemporary Roy Hudd described him as "the perfect Victorian man - he could do everything".
"He brought us a lot of fun and a lot of pleasure," he told BBC News 24.
"It was rather a tight-arsed thing, this revival of trad jazz, but George brought huge fun to it."
The son of a wool broker and an actress, Melly was born in Liverpool in 1926 and educated at Stowe.
He joined the Navy at the end of World War II before joining jazz trumpeter Mick Mulligan's band, travelling the length and breadth of Britain.
"They were terrific times we had. Hard drinking and squalid digs but absolutely no regrets," Melly recalled.
After quitting music in 1962 to concentrate on writing, he resumed his jazz career in the 1970s and went back on the road with John Chilton's Feetwarmers.
Away from show business, his main recreation was fly fishing - a passion he indulged at the mile-long stretch of the River Usk he owned beside his holiday home in Wales.
He was renowned for his zoot suits, jaunty fedoras and outrageous ties
The jazzman continued to perform despite collapsing on stage in January during a concert with his band, Digby Fairweather's Half Dozen.
"I don't fear death," he said recently. "I'm a fatalist, although I would rather death came as a shock to me.
"I've always said I wanted to die either coming off stage with the applause in my ears or of a terminal stroke on a river bank with two trout by my side."
Melly is survived by his wife, his son Tom, his daughter Pandora, his stepdaughter Candy and his four grandchildren.
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