I'm sorry I haven't a clue

Some years back I worked in Liverpool and travelled there from Southport on a daily basis. I used to travel in early and leave a bit late as traffic was easier and the drive was a lot less stressful.

My journey to work was normally accomplished with the help of Terry Wogan on Radio 2. I'd given up with Radio 1 and local radio was more or less people with forced scouse accents or Manchester accents with far too many commercials with the exception of Dune FM. Unfortunately their budget for new music ran out about 3 days after they opened and some of the DJs loved their voices and Southport's past a bit too much.

The homeward journey most nights was made easier by Johnny Walker and Sally Traffic. During a period of absence by Johnny Walker, I wasn't really enjoying his substitute and so I scanned through the stations available and came across a programme on Radio4 entitled "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue". Five minutes into the show+ I nearly crashed due to fits of laughter. The show was a sort of game show with Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke Talylor, Graeme Garden, various guests and chaired by Humphrey Lyttleton.

Humph was brilliant, he came out with so many comments and his delivery was so straight and dead pan, it was hard to believe that the man was in his 80s.

Some of his lines from the show are shown below.



Hello & welcome to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - the show that has done for comedy...oh, wait a minute, there's another bit here...the show that has done for comedy what Cyril Smith has done for breakdancing.



Hello & welcome to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. This week we can promise you a nail-biting contest...followed by a nose picking contest...



Hello & welcome to the programme that prompted John Logie Baird to invent television


Hello & welcome to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - the show which does for entertaining panel games what being hit repeatedly on the head with a large croquet mallet does for small frogs...or so I'm told.


and then there were his comments about the lovely Samantha


...as ever, Samantha spent several hours down in the gramophone archive, giving the teams' discs a trial spin on the library record deck. The nice old archivists have recently been a bit worried about their early vinyl collection getting scratched, so Samantha ordered them a new mat for the turntable. She said that they were very excited at the thought of getting felt under their old seven inchers...






.Samantha nipped out to the gramophone library earlier, and as the eager assistants down there suspected she might be a country music lover, they got out every Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson record available. Well, in my experience, she's certainly always been a big fan of Willie's, and now she's got to work her way through a complete boxed set of Johnny's...




.Hip-Hop, Jive-Talking, Disco-Bunny, DJ Samantha rolled her sleeves up and had a good rummage downstairs for the teams this afternoon. She's pulled out some dusty old seven inchers that could all be made big again given sympathetic handling...



...Samantha has to nip out now, as she's off to meet her new Welsh gentleman friend, who's offered to drive her round the area. She hopes he's going to take her to Colwyn Bay and Bangor in the back of his van.



..Samantha tells me she has to nip out now, as she's off to see a new gentleman friend who's in vacuum cleaner sales. He's offered Samantha a good deal on one of his products, and she says she can't wait to have her hands on her new Philip's upright.



...Samantha has just returned from scattering the remains of an elderly Naval gentleman friend. She says she took his ashes aboard HMS Belfast, and as his former crew stood proudly to attention, Samantha solemnly tossed them over the side


And finally his closing lines


Well, with Mickey Mouse's big hand pointing upwards and Goofy's tail pointing downwards, I realise my Rolex is a fake...




Well, a quick glance at the time tells me that it's fast coming up to eighty-one hundred hours, which means, of course, that I've put my digital watch on upside-down again...


...and so, as the Ford Anglia of time fails the MOT test of eternity, and the dappled donkey of fate ambles towards the abbatoir of destiny...



...and so, as the boiling water of time collides with the sweet and sour instant pot snack of fate, I notice that the tomato sauce sachet of destiny has been accidentally left inside...



...and so, as the plastic duck of destiny has been sunk by the loofah of fate, and Old Father Time has gone wrinkly in the bath water of eternity, it must be time to pick out the short hairs of hope from the plug hole of infinity...




...and so, as the Spanish trawler net of time ensnares the Dover sole of destiny, and the avenging Cornish crab of fate crawls up the Andalucian trouser leg of eternity...


...and so, as the rare Bengal tiger of time meanders into the cross-hair sights of Prince Philip's fateful pump-action shot gun


What's the point of all this I hear you ask, well the main reason I'm writing this is that I've just discovered that the great man has just left us and hopefully is up there with the Angels. As I write this it's chucking it down outside. It would be nice to think that it's tears of laughter from heaven.

God bless you Humph

1921 to 2008