Ronnie Hazlehurst

Ronald Hazlehurst (13 March 1928 – 1 October 2007) was an English composer and conductor who, having joined the BBC in 1961, became its Light Entertainment Musical Director.

Hazlehurst composed the theme tunes for many well-known British sitcoms and game shows of the 1970s and the 1980s, including Yes Minister, Are You Being Served?, I Didn't Know You Cared and Last of the Summer Wine.

Early life Ronald Hazlehurst was born in Dukinfield, Cheshire in 1928 to a railway worker father and a piano teacher mother. Having attended Hyde County Grammar School, he left at the age of 14 and became a clerk in a cotton mill for £1 a week. In 1968, he became the Light Entertainment Musical Director and (during his tenure) he composed the theme tunes of many sitcoms, including Are You Being Served?, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Last of the Summer Wine (where he also wrote all the instrumental music for the series), I Didn't Know You Cared, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, To the Manor Born, Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister, Just Good Friends, and Three Up, Two Down. He also arranged the themes for Butterflies, Sorry! and the first series of Only Fools and Horses. During his BBC career, he composed the music for the opening of the BBC's coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics held in Montreal. In 1977, as well as conducting the British entry, he also conducted the German entry. Having been married twice (with two sons from his second marriage) at the time of his death, his partner was Jean Fitzgerald.

In popular culture By the early 1980s, Hazlehurst's work had become sufficiently well-known to the general public that he was lampooned in a Spitting Image sketch (voiced by Harry Enfield and written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, with music by Keith Strachan) in which his career and music (including a fictional 15-second Requiem mass, in the style of one of his TV themes) was covered by The South Bank Show. The sketch was also included on the CD 'Spit in Your Ear', released in 1992.