Biography
Hubert Gregg, who penned the enduring British standard "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner," also pursued careers as an actor, novelist, and broadcaster. Born in London on July 19, 1914, he trained at the Webber-Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art before taking on stage roles with the Birmingham Repertory Company, the Old Vic, and the Open Air Theater. In 1937 he landed the lead in French Without Tears, which opened on Broadway and then enjoyed a two-year West End engagement. During World War II he served as an officer in the 60th Rifles; while in uniform he began composing songs and created "I'm Going to Get Lit Up (When the Lights Go Up in London)" in 1940 for musical comedy performer Hermione Gingold. Because the war's outcome remained uncertain, Gingold initially declined to sing it, and the number was not recorded until 1943, when Billy Cotton & His Band captured it; according to Winston Churchill, the track later served as a radio signal to the Resistance confirming that the invasion of Europe had begun. In the meantime Gregg made his screen debut in David Lean's 1941 film In Which We Serve and worked as a military radio broadcaster. He wrote "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner" in 1944; Bud Flanagan introduced it during the four-year West End run of the revue Together Again, after which the song became a pub standard covered by artists ranging from Danny Kaye to Davy Jones. Gregg's debut novel, April Gentlemen, appeared in 1951, the same year he directed the stage version of Agatha Christie's The Hollow. Two years later he directed the theatrical premiere of Christie's The Mousetrap, an experience that later inspired his 1980 memoir Agatha Christie and All That Mousetrap. He returned to cinema in Alexander Mackendrick's comedy The Maggie and, though he occasionally wrote further songs—including "Elizabeth," composed for the Queen's 1952 coronation—his attention shifted toward full-scale stage musicals. In 1962 his Three Men in a Boat aired on the BBC Light Programme. From 1970 onward he performed a one-man show drawn from his own career, and in 1972 he began hosting the BBC Radio 2 series Thanks for the Memory, a role he maintained until his death on March 29, 2004.
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