My wife and I were driving down from Scotland on January 2nd and were so desperate for entertainment that we had switched on the Radio 4 news. It was all about the mystery cabinet minister whose son had allegedly done what every student in history has done (allegedly), and as we had bought the Scottish papers that morning we were well aware that it was Jack Straw, and even then couldn’t find it in ourselves to think it interesting, when suddenly the newsreader said: “The death has been announced of the scriptwriter, humorist and broadcaster, F.....” and then the car went under a bridge and reception ceased and by the time we came out the other side they were back on the mystery cabinet minister, and I had to wait ten minutes to find out who it was, though already I had a horrible feeling it might be Frank Muir.

I felt flattened, a lot more flattened than I did when I heard that Princess Diana had died, though I don’t suppose anyone wants to go into that again. I didn’t know Frank that well, but he had been to lunch at our place a month or two back when staying with his daughter Sally in Bath, and .. and ... well, I always felt the sun was out when he was around. I first met him at Punch twenty, twenty-five years ago, when he became a guest at the Punch Lunch, and I was struck even then by the fact that he was the only person I have ever seen put into practice the old adage that if you want to attract the attention of a crowd, you go quiet. All the assembled hacks and wits were clamouring for a turn to speak, from Alan Brien to Alan Coren, when Frank Muir suddenly said something very softly and everyone stopped talking in case they missed it, the way Stan Getz used to play.

What he said then I cannot remember, but I can remember some of the things he said when he got me as a team member on Call My Bluff. (Apparently producer Johnny Downes was anxious to get outside the usual showbiz crowd, and Frank suggested the usual Punch crowd instead. I was lucky enough to be asked back several times, and first met the lovely Joanna Lumley that way, even if she did spend the whole time talking to her ex-husband who was also on the show. She told me later that he needed advice about his current life, poor dear....)

“The only way to play this game is to play it seriously,” said Frank as we rehearsed beforehand. “Make jokes by all means, but only if you’re trying to win.” Yes, we rehearsed beforehand - he would be very serious about which team member should do which word, and make us do the word over and over again if he wasn’t happy. He would also try to arrange the order of our Bluffs and Trues as neatly as a cardsharp would position the lady under the cups, though his sense of order let him down once when he was called upon to define some odd word.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Interesting one, this. Kind of transport used only in Rome, and only by the Pope. Sort of ceremonial chair raised high above the crowd, in the days before cars were invented and rifles, too. Nowadays the Pope travels in a bullet-proof showcase on wheels, but then ...”etc, etc.

The odd thing was that this wasn’t the definition he had prepared at all. He had quite a different one lined up. Why the sudden change ? I asked him afterwards.

“I lost my notes,” he said. “Hadn’t the faintest memory of what I was going to say, so I had to make it up on the spur of the moment. I was just praying that it wasn’t me who had the True definition. The odds against making THAT up are tremendous ...”

He said to me once: “Miles, although I like to win, ‘twould be no bad thing were Paddy to be victorious tonight. He hasn’t won a game for a month or more and it’s getting to him. So don’t be too upset if we lose.”
I remember that we did in fact lose both games that evening, and I said to him later: “Well, Patrick should be happy. We lost.”

“Yes,” he said. “Fuck it.”

One of the things that hit you about Frank was his elegance, not just his bow-ties, in his movements, but in his very phrasing. I can remember him specifically using that slightly dated inverted subjunctive clause in “ ‘Twould be no bad thing were he to win ... “ and I can remember that when he said “Fuck it”, the timing was so spot on that it didn’t sound at all scabrous, just archly funny. I can remember standing next to him at a public urinal in Manchester, where Call My Bluff was recorded, and a man peeing in the far stall looking up at him, double-taking, and then - wishing to say something, anything, to the famous Frank - commenting: “Hey, you’re tall, Frank.”

“Yes,” said Frank, still peeing, “yes, but beautifully proportioned, wouldn’t you say?”

It was just right. It sounded spontaneous, it sounded funny and it made the man happy.

I think, though, that Frank would have most wanted to be remembered for his books. Not maybe for his novel, or even his recently hailed memoirs, but for the Frank Muir Book and the Oxford Book of Humorous Prose, which he edited. Recently I have been raking through the ashes of Punch for pieces for a Folio Society anthology and I came across a review I had written for the magazine of the Oxford Book of HP. I couldn’t remember having written it, so I reread it somewhat nervously, in case I hadn’t liked it. No worries - I had raved about it, saying it was a one-volume university education in humour. I n fact, I was so impressed by my own review that I got Frank’s book down from the shelves before Christmas and I’ve been travelling through it again, and by gum, I was right. It IS a university course.

(Come to think of it, Frank Muir never did go to university, and I think he missed it, and like some writers - I think also of Benny Green - gave himself a self-inflicted education in later life which made him better informed than most of us.)

But now I am beginning to sound like the friend at the farewell service who doesn’t know how to wind up, so I will end with two small memories of the man.

One, when I was about to go off to do a speech for the Jerome K. Jerome Society in Walsall, tricked into it by Jeremy Nicholas. (Fun evening. No regrets.) I asked Frank what his advice was when addressing literary societies.

“Don’t criticise the food,” he said. “I once addressed the Dr. Johnson Society. Had the worst dinner of my life. Said to the man next to me, ‘This food is rubbish’. He said,’It was Dr Johnson’s favourite dish’....”

Other memory, of a film Frank Muir made moons ago for a TV programme. The host (Russell Harty? Someone like that) had asked all the guests to make a five minute home video. Everyone else was slapdash. Frank’s was a masterpiece. It was called “Englishman Changing on the Beach”, and had been shot at his holiday home in Corsica. It showed Frank coming down cautiously on to this empty beach, looking in every direction, seeing nobody and STILL insisting on changing into his swimming kit beneath a huge towel. Thrashing around inside the towel ... anguished expression as nudity is avoided ... trembling expression as readiness is reached......moment of truth as Frank looks round once more. Then he casts off the towel. He reveals that he is clad in full dinner jacket with black tie ! And then he rushes into the sea and swims away!!

Great man. Goodbye, Frank.

OLDIE Jan 8 1998