English musician, writer and critic George Melly was BOTD in 1926. Born in Liverpool to a middle-class mercantile family, he was educated at private schools, discovering jazz music, Surrealist art and homosexuality in his teens. During World Two, he served in the Royal Navy, supposedly telling his recruiting officer that the uniforms were “so much nicer”. Assigned to desk duty, he was almost court-martialled for distributing anarchist literature among the cadets. After the war, he moved to London, working in an art gallery and joined Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia Jazz Band as a singer. He performed in jazz clubs for 14 years, modelling his performance style on his hero Bessie Smith. In 1956, he began writing a satirical newspaper strip for the Daily Mail. He rose to wider public attention in 1962 as The Observer‘s film and television critic, and also wrote and lectured extensively on Surrealist art. In the 1970s, he returned to live performance, recording six albums with jazz band John Chilton’s Feetwarmers. Openly bisexual, he was married twice and had two children. In later life, he and his second wife Diana retired to the Usk Valley in Wales, where he helped co-found the Brecon Jazz Festival. He died in 2007, aged 80. Two years before his death, Diana published a memoir, Take a Girl Like Me, describing their life and open marriage.