Dressed in a pale charcoal suit, he gave a bow and brushed back his silver hair. When he began to play, I was close enough to study his aged hands: the raised blue-grey veins, the bony knuckles, the thin, spatula tipped fingers that danced on the trumpet keys. I watched as his glasses slipped down the bridge of his long nose, like a sleigh sliding towards the foot of a steep hill.

And I saw the eyes behind them widen and bulge slightly when he strained for the top notes.

Afterwards, I stood obediently in the queue so he could autograph his book for me. And here it is on the shelf, sandwiched between Philip Larkin's jazz criticism and a biography of Bix Beiderbecke. I turn to the title page and the elaborate swirls of Humphrey Lyttelton's signature stare back at me in black ink.

Proust had a thing for taste. He thought it and "smell alone" were responsible for preserving memories that might otherwise be lost (it explains his Madeleine obsession). On the same principle, I'm grateful to have a sliver of Lyttelton's handwriting because this week it instantly brought back that night at the Cambridge Arts Theatre just as I've described it to you. A day or so after the concert I ran into a jazz bore. I made the mistake of mentioning how grateful I'd been to see Lyttelton before it was too late.

"But his top lip has gone," the jazz bore said condescendingly, "he can't really do it any more". On he droned, his pomposity swelling like a balloon being pumped up, before he ended with the line: "At least he keeps going, doesn't he?" The jazz bore completely missed the point, which is that some performers possess such charisma and presence that their performance itself doesn't necessarily matter to the audience. It is sufficient to experience it at any stage of their careers.

As a boy, I once travelled hours to watch George Best. He had a tortured game, the ball always a yard or two adrift of him. But he was still Best. The journey was still worthwhile. Even when he slouched on the touchline in front of me – a fed-up expression on his face and his hands stuck to his hips – he was still a class act. As Shakespeare suggested: A rose is a rose is a rose.

After Lyttelton finished his set at Cambridge, George Melly followed. His legs were so unstable that he sang from an over-stuffed armchair. He wore a lime-green suit, which made him look like a benign frog. No one cared. You were thankful to have been there.

Almost two years ago, I saw Lyttelton again at Leeds Town Hall. Neither his act nor he had changed much. The stalls were choked with people who must have been in nappies when he was blowing out the candles on his 70th birthday cake.

Whether Lyttelton was admired because of his jazz, or because of his humour on I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue, is immaterial. The old trouper had style.

It's enough to say of him what he said of Fats Waller. He was "indivisible from his own personality".

Humphrey Lyttelton dead? I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.