Norman Hackforth

Norman Hackforth (20 December 1908 – 14 December 1996) was a British musician and radio broadcaster, who worked as accompanist to Noël Coward and gained fame as the "mystery voice" on the BBC's Twenty Questions radio programme.

Born in Bihar in British India in 1908, son of a railway engineer, Hackforth was sent to England at the age of six, and was raised by four aunts. After his schooling, at Aldenham School, he intended to begin medical studies, but failed the preliminary examinations. He found himself drawn to music. He was never a fluent sight-reader of a musical score and as a performer he had to overcome what he called "this awful barrier".

Hackforth's first job was as nightclub pianist in Soho, and in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s that was his principal occupation, working at a range of clubs. He had a sideline in songwriting, while working for the Dix Music Company. His compositions 'Today's A Sunny Day For Me' and 'Cute Little Flat' enjoyed modest success. He also accompanied music hall and other singers of popular songs, both on stage and in the recording studio – the latter, principally for the Piccadilly label. In the words of his obituarist in The Times, he appeared "with the Whispering Lunatics at the London Pavilion, and accompanying Fanny Ward (the suggestively clad 'Flapper Granny') as she titillated the patrons of the Willesden Empire". He also provided the voice for advertisements on Radio Luxembourg and performed on early television broadcasts in the UK. During the late 1920s and early 1930s he was occasionally seen acting on both television and cinema screens.

At the start of the Second World War, Hackforth volunteered for military service, but was turned down on medical grounds. He joined Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), which provided entertainment for the troops. With ENSA he toured France, in the early days of the war, and then North Africa. In 1941 he worked briefly as an assistant and arranger for an ENSA colleague, Noël Coward, and on meeting him again in Egypt in 1943 was recruited to work as Coward's accompanist and assistant on a charitable fund-raising tour of South Africa. The two continued to India, where Coward performed for military audiences. They made a number of recordings together while in Calcutta, mostly of Coward's songs, but also "Music Hath Charms" by Hackforth.

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