While listening to the BBC News Quiz, I’ve just learnt via an aside from Jeremy Hardy that Humphrey Lyttelton died a week ago, at 87 years old. Like many others, I know him mostly from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, but he was also a legendary jazz trumpeter, and sometime cartoonist. His extraordinary comic timing and ability to deliver the most appalling double entendres in a plummy deadpan helped to a surprising degree to get me through some hard years.

Now, as the little grey mouse of Time gnaws through the plastic shielding of Fate, sending the 747 of Destiny plummeting towards the church fête of Eternity, I see that it’s time to say goodbye.