Benny Green
- Prizes judged
Benny Green was a jazz musician and broadcaster. Once, after appearing on television wearing dark glasses to counteract the studio lights, he received fan mail addressed to ‘the blind sax player’.
Green, who died in 1998, was a member of Ronnie Scott’s band in the 1950s before beginning a weekly column for the New Musical Express. From print he turned to radio and, displaying the same light touch as in his playing, became a presenter of programmes on the golden age of popular song and of the comedy panel game Jazz Score. The jazz critic of the Observer for 19 years, his other great loves were Hollywood movies (he was the film critic for Punch), P.G. Wodehouse (he wrote his literary biography) and cricket (he compiled several Wisden Anthologies).