George Melly

George Melly, blues singer, had an extraordinarily full and varied career. He sang with Mick Mulligan’s Jazz Band in the 1950s and was with with John Chilton’s Freewarmers from 1974. He wrote the Flook strip cartoon balloons (drawn by Trog) from 1956 to 1971, was successively pop music, television and film critic for The Observer between 1965 and 1973, and wrote scripts for two films, Smashing Time and Take A Girl You. He was also author of several books on art, including Revolt into Style (1970), Tribe of One: Great Naive and Prinitive Painters of the British Isles (1981) and of three highly acclaimed volumes of autobiography. He collected modern paintings and was an enthusiastic patron of the arts.