Cheesford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 14

John Dankworth is largely responsible for my love of jazz. It's equal parts him, Duke Ellington and my grandad, who introduced me to both. Obviously I know my grandad well, but I never met the Duke. I did, however, meet Sir John when he played a jazz festival in Guernsey in 2004, which I was covering for Crescendo magazine. He was a delightful, patient man, who put up with all of my anoraky questions and answered them. It was a thrill also on that gig to renew my acquaintance with the great Allan Ganley, a drummer of distinction and a lovely bloke. Passing his Ludwig 400 up to him on stage, I said "Ah, you've got a brass shelled one". He said "Yes, how can you tell through the chrome?". My reply: "Mine's an alloy shell. Yours is about twice the weight." Name-drops over. When BBC4 hoiked out a few clips of the great JD recently, I was knocked bandy by this arrangement of 'Just In Time', and thrilled to see and hear heroes like Kenny Wheeler, Alan Branscombe and Ronnie Stephenson going to town (Ronnie's the drummer - he began life as a tap dancer, and he drummed like one, with great lightness and grace). A shame it was cropped to 16:9 and shown slightly out of sync. I can't fix the former, but I have the latter, and with just over 4 hours to go until day 14, here is 'Just In Time'.

Sir John Dankworth (1927-2010)

When I heard the news of Sir John Dankworth's death on the radio this morning, I thought I was hallucinating. I hoped I was hallucinating. After attending the 3 Bonzos and a Piano concert at the Bloomsbury Theatre last night, I and a few friends had stayed up all night talking (mostly moaning about the non-existence of this 24-hour drinking culture that's supposedly breaking Britain even further - try getting a glass of milk in Soho after 3am and the options are limited to Balan's Cafe and Bar Italia, each not much bigger than my front room and thus rammed to bursting), so my brain wasn't exactly in peak condition at 7.30am. Unfortunately, what I'd heard was real, and so my sleep-deprived brain had to process the fact that one of my lifelong heroes was no more. Fortunately, he leaves an amazing legacy of music, including a TV theme tune that did a lot to get the infant me into this thing called jazz. Condolences to Dame Cleo, and to Alec and Jacqui. A few years ago, I was covering a jazz festival in Guernsey for Crescendo, at which the JD5 - Sir John, Mark Nightingale, John Horler, Dave Olney (depping for son Alec) and Allan Ganley - were performing. They opened the second set with the Tomorrow's World theme, and very little can match the feeling of glee that overtook me. That was the only time I met Sir John, but I'm happy to report that as well as being a first-class musician and composer, he was also a genuinely nice chap. RIP, Sir John.

Reasons to mourn Sir John Mortimer, number 984: "For Rumpole, I thought of Alastair Sim, but he was dead and couldn't take it on."
Reasons to mourn Sir John Mortimer, number 985: "Sport brings me out in a rash."

Also, a nice line (paraphrased) from Neil Kinnock: some criticised him for not knowing right from wrong, but he knew justice from injustice.

A light's gone out.