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Despite its gargantuan size and frequent inefficiency, the BBC really is quite awesome – through the wonders of modern technology, Jay-Z’s headlining gig on Saturday night on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury was webcast live in hi-res video to the whole of the UK, as well as on BBC3 TV and BBC Radio One.

The crowd on-site would’ve been close to 50-60,000, and there were millions watching and listening nationwide. Disregarding the hype surrounding this gig, (and Zane Lowe‘s frothing-at-the-mouth introduction on TV), Jay-Z’s set felt like pop history in the making.

He opened with a cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall, a sly dis to Noel Gallagher who had earlier said that a hip-hop artist couldn’t headline Glastonbury. It was a moment of pure theatre, even if Jay-Z can’t sing (hey, he’s a rapper).

The Glastonbury coverage on the BBC and on the Guardian site has been great, and has permitted some other musical discoveries/reconsiderations. On the downside, it appears that MGMT as a live act may not live up to the awesomeness of their album. More positively, Vampire Weekend is well worth some further time listening…

Humphrey Lyttleton – One Man Went to Blow
From Platinum Series : [emusic]

Louis Armstrong referred to him as “that cat in England who swings his ass off“.

Humphrey Lyttleton led the sort of polymath life that most of us can only dream of: cartoonist, soldier, broadcaster, author, chairman of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on BBC Radio Four, and one of the greatest jazz musicians to emerge from postwar Britain.

Humph died on Friday, and it’s unlikely the world will see anyone like him again. A member of the minor English nobility, he was schooled at Eton in the 1930s, but avoided a life of privilege by buying a trumpet and developing a deep love of jazz.

In 1943 he landed on the Salerno beaches with a gun in one hand and a trumpet in the other. On V-E day in 1945 he was paraded around in front of Buckingham Palace in a wheelbarrow, playing “Roll Out the Barrel”. After the war, he drew cartoons for the Daily Mail, played and toured with Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.

In 1956 Humph’s band scored the first “jazz” hit in the UK Billboard charts – Bad Penny Blues reached number 19 and stayed there for 6 weeks: a real achievement when British ears were already picking up the intimations of a new kind of pop, courtesy of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley.

And from 1971 until his death Humph was the chairman of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, one of the longest running panel games on the BBC. A platform for the absurdist and surreal streaks in British humour, nobody had less idea about what was going on during the show than the ringmaster himself, Humphrey Lyttleton.

I hope that Humph is now jamming somewhere with his old friend Louis Armstrong. But I’d like to think that he’s also introducing the angels to the complex and ancient rules of the greatest game of them all, Mornington Crescent:

Mornington Crescent (Napoleon III Variation)
From the 2007 series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (BBC Radio 4)

The Independent has a good obituary, and Melvyn Bragg’s excellent 2007 TV documentary on Humph is on YouTube (in 6 parts).

Also, Radio France now has most of their weekly shows available on podcast! (Note, that’s “le podcast“, not “la baladodiffusion” as they’re trying to enourage in Quebec.)

France Culture and France Inter on demand is something close to pure podcast heaven if, like me, you’re trying to retain your French language. Now I can listen to what I want, when I want, and don’t have to put up with a streaming live version of Le Fou du Roi at 11 o’clock at night. Like Lionel Dersot in Tokyo, I am grateful for this new small pleasure.