He also presented the quiz programme Name That Tune, and was a team captain on the televised charades gameshow Give Us a Clue.

[2] Blair came to Britain when he was two years old, and the family settled at Stamford Hill in north London, where his father continued to work as a barber.

During the Blitz, mother and children were evacuated to Oxford, but when they saw a German plane crash from the back garden, the family decided they might as well be in London.

[11] Before his break into television, Blair was the juvenile lead in The Five Past Eight Show at the Alhambra Theatre, Glasgow, acting as "straight man" to many Scottish comedians, including Jimmy Logan and Rikki Fulton.

He also appeared in the films The Limping Man (1953), The World of Suzie Wong (1960), The Cool Mikado (1963), The Beauty Jungle (1964), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Maroc 7 (1967) and Absolute Beginners (1986), cameoed in an episode of The Persuaders!, and appeared in television comedy, including the short film, The Plank.

[14][15] Blair was one of the team captains on the game show Give Us a Clue from 1979 until the early 1990s, and was the second presenter of the British version of Name That Tune in the 1980s.

[17] In 1988, Blair made an appearance in aid of charity on the British television game show Catchphrase, hosted by Irish comedian Roy Walker.

[20] He took part in the 2007 Christmas special of the Ricky Gervais show Extras, as himself, portraying the end-stages of his showbiz career by trying to keep up his profile by appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.

[21] In 2009, twenty-one years after Chris Rea's "Driving Home for Christmas" was first released, Blair starred in an original video for the song that was made in aid of Shelter.

The same year, he took part in the BBC's The Young Ones, in which six celebrities in their seventies and eighties attempted to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.

On 14 December that year, he guested on the ITV panel show, Loose Women, to announce and celebrate his recent 88th birthday.

[3] Blair, and his incorrectly assumed homosexuality, was a recurring joke on the long-running BBC Radio 4 series I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

[35] On 21 September 2006, Blair and comedian Alan Carr helped save a man about to fall from a pier in Blackpool.