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died . Jazz legend, art historian, broadcaster, critic, memoirist, and cultural icon, he lived every second of his eighty years.

In his Guardian column on 20 April 2006 ("Zimmertime Blues") he wrote these "Last words":

It was my intention to end this column with a dramatic conclusion and a visit to see my lung specialist, Dr Kohn, offered the perfect fodder. He, the most frank yet honest of men, was to tell me the results of all the tests I've had. There were three possibilities:

1. The escalating cancer dangling from the bottom of my lung had increased its pace.

2. The cancer had stayed as it was, like a nasty fish waving its whiskers about, and with my irregular heartbeat, no surgeon, anaesthetist or nurse would agree to even think of removing it.

3. The cancer had turned out benevolent rather than malevolent and I wouldn't need treatment after all.
I've had many scans over the past few years and have come to rather enjoy them. As an almost life-long surrealist, I delight in being laid out and positioned on my back, arms behind my head and being put into a tunnel with pretty coloured lights. My wife, Diana, in her role as my supervising wing commander, is always present at Dr Kohn's consultations. This is because she doesn't trust the accuracy of my own reports, my mishearings from deafness and my inability not to make jokes in public or to lapse into regional accents. These last two compulsions she especially hates and, after 45 years of a sometimes difficult marriage, who can blame her?

On this occasion Diana had bad news. I had got muddled up and the doctor was on a fortnight's holiday so I still don't know my fate. And here I am, feeling not too bad, but increasingly hungry for sleep. When the good doctor returns I shall no doubt hear the answers to my questions, but you won't. Whatever they are, I doubt they would justify what my mother, when we told her any piece of news of no special interest, used to cry: "Ring up the papers! Stop the front page!"

Goodbye now.