Read The Times obituary

The jazz singer and author George Melly has died at his London home, his wife Diana said today. He was 80.

Melly had been suffering from lung cancer but had refused treatment and carried on entertaining his fans on stage. He had also developed dementia.

Nicknamed Goodtime George, Melly cultivated the image of an outrageous, hard-drinking habitue of smoky jazz clubs. He dressed the part in checked zoot suits, jaunty fedoras and loud ties.

Alongside the larger-than-life persona he was also an accomplished author, having published three critically well-received volumes of autobiography and several scholarly books on art, his other great passion.

He had a long career as an award-winning newspaper film critic, and wrote the words for the Flook cartoon strips in the Daily Mail, drawn by his old jazz clarinet-playing friend Wally Fawkes.

Digby Fairweather, a long-time friend and presenter on national radio station theJazz, said: “He said he wanted to either go on stage after a perfect performance, or having landed a very large trout.

“He was unique, an irreplaceable culture icon.”

George Melly was born in Liverpool in 1926, the son of a wool broker and an actress.

He was educated at the liberal, arts-orientated public school at Stowe, where he was introduced to two things which had a profound effect on him - jazz and homosexuality.

At school, Melly wrote, he once seduced the future Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne on a sofa, but he said that he found a 78rpm record by Bessie Smith was far more satisfying.

He joined the navy as the war ended and travelled the world, experimenting with both jazz and sex in a series of escapades which he hilariously recounted in his book Rum, Bum And Concertina.

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010