George Melly, the jazz singer who has died at the age of 80, was a man who lived his life outrageously.

He wore fedoras and deafeningly loud wide-striped suits; his sexual appetite was prodigious and included gay partners – in the days when same-sex relationships were still illegal – as well as bisexual and heterosexual lovers and two marriages; his appetite for alcohol was equally voracious and would have felled most men far younger; yet his excesses merely served to underline his wit, charm and style.