Obituary: George Melly

With his flamboyant suits, oversize hats and Havana cigars, George Melly was a good-time Renaissance man who indulged, often over-indulged, his passions for jazz, film, art, fishing, writing, drink and sex.

He was born in Liverpool in 1926 and educated at the ultra-liberal Stowe public school in Buckinghamshire, where he pursued his interests with vigour and without inhibition.

At school, he first became interested in art, particularly Surrealism.

He served as an able-seaman in the Royal Navy towards the end of World War II, where he got into trouble for distributing anarchist literature.

He moved to London in 1948 to work in an art gallery run by Belgian artist ELT Mesens, a leading light in the International Surrealist movement.

Melly became recognised as an authority on the subject and later wrote a book, Paris and the Surrealists.