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.
[1][2] Hazlehurst joined the BBC in 1961 and became a staff arranger; his early works included the incidental music for The Likely Lads, The Liver Birds and It's a Knockout.
[3][7] To conduct the British entry that year, Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran, he used a closed umbrella instead of a baton and wore a bowler hat.
[4] On 27 September 2007, he suffered a stroke and, without regaining consciousness, died on 1 October at Princess Elizabeth Hospital in St Martin, Guernsey.
[4] 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.