The sad news of the death of Humphrey Lyttelton on Friday evening was not a great start to the weekend. I was hardly a devoted fan of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue but I always enjoyed it when I tuned in. I never grasped the rules of Mornington Crescent, but that was the point. Humph was, indeed, a hugely affable host, able to get a laugh with the minimum of effort and often the minimum of words. You'd never have thought he was 86 to hear him keeping his panel and audience in stitches.

One can hardly say that Lyttelton was taken away early, but the last couple of years seem to have been particularly hard on gentle wits. First there was Linda Smith, then Alan Coren, Ned Sherrin and Miles Kington. I can't quite put my finger on what links them, but they all felt like they cropped up on each other's Radio 4 programmes. And were all comedians who were not particularly part of the new wave of comedy yet hardly old-fashioned either. There was a timelessness to Kington's columns, a universality to Smith's whimsical asides. And if we were drawing up some kind of Deceased Comedy Family Tree we could add in George Melly on the jazz branch alongside Humph.

By contrast abrasive comedians seem to go on and on. Apart from Bernard Manning the roll-call of dead obnoxious comedians is a pretty short one.

This could all be a coincidence, but somehow I don't feel that it is. Are sensitive, creative souls more prone to serious disease than the hard-hearted? I remember thinking this when Dennis Potter died while his nemesis Rupert Murdoch continued to conquer the world. Purely anecdotal but curious. Your homework this week? Artists are a more thin-skinned bunch than businessmen. Discuss.