British composer Ronald Hazlehurst, born 13 March 1928, died in St Peter Port, Guernsey 1 October 2007.
Ronnie Hazlehurst was a master of tv tunes, writing, arranging and conducting the music for many of the BBC’s biggest successes including The Two Ronnies, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, Yes Minister and Last of the Summer Wine.
Hazlehurst was born in Duckinfield, Cheshire, in 1928. His father was a railway worker and his mother a piano teacher. Although Ronnie went to a grammar school, he left when he was 14 and became an office clerk in a cotton mill. Despite working long hours, he found time to play the cornet with George Chambers’ band and became a professional musician. The band made regular broadcasts on the BBC Light Programme, but Hazlehurst left when Chambers refused to give him a raise.
During the 1950s, Hazlehurst was a freelance musician around Manchester, before the bandleader Woolf Phillips employed him as his deputy at the Pigalle nightclub in London. He also began working with Peter Knight, head of music for Granada TV, but when Knight left Granada a year later, Hazlehurst’s own position came to an end. To make ends meet, he worked on a record stall in Watford market.
Hazlehurst was then appointed a BBC staff arranger, making his first significant contribution on The Likely Lads in 1964. He wrote the music for the TV play Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton (1965) and the series It’s a Knockout (1966). In 1968, he became head of music for Light Entertainment.
Hazlehurst also wrote the themes for The Two Ronnies (1971), the first series of Only Fools and Horses (1981) and the generation-gap comedy Three Up, Two Down (1989). He wrote the music for the inane quiz series Blankety Blank (1979), which was hosted first by Terry Wogan and then Les Dawson, and also came up with the signature tune for Wogan’s talk show. He was a man with a good northern sense of humour and he loved Spitting Image mocking him as the man with a four-second attention span.
Hazlehurst was often involved with the Eurovision Song Contest and was the musical director when it was hosted by the UK in 1974, 1977 and 1982; he conducted the British entry on several other occasions, notably for Michael Ball’s “One Step Out of Time” in 1992.
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