Interview - influential in radio in Kenya; great photographer with his Minox camera, huge photographic archive

Aero - Mr Peter Colmore as a Traffic Officer for Wilson Airways came out to them from Imperial Airways in September 1938, ……

Web - 'soldier, flying-boat traffic officer, businessman, broadcaster, musician, producer and impresario; born London 22 November 1919; died Nairobi 24 Jan 2004. In Kenya, in the aftermath of WW2, such was the fame and popularity of a young Englishman, as a bandleader, broadcaster and producer, that several parents named their children "Peter Colmore" after him. His life story is at one with that of the development of vernacular musical entertainment throughout Swahili-speaking world and beyond, and indeed with the cultural life of modern Kenya. Peter Colmore hailed from a military background. He was the only son of Harry Colmore, a captain in the 7th Hussars, and Nina Gostling-Murray, a colonel's daughter. But, ever something of a rebel, after schooling at Sherborne their talented boy opted to study aero-engineering at Hamble in Hampshire before joining Imperial Airways. In 1938 he sailed to East Africa. Recent television films recalling the colourful era of the Empire Flying-Boat Service reveal him as a young man guiding the docking of those gracious planes on the rippling waters of Lakes Victoria at Kisumu. …………….. Colmore was involved in the training of Ethiopian refugees as "irregulars" to serve with Commonwealth armies which advanced into Italian East Africa from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya and from the Sudan. The latter were halted by the stubborn defence of Keren in Eritrea but the advance from Kenya through Somalia to Addis Ababa, led by general Sir William Platt, was to prove the fastest advance in military history. Colmore was Platt's ADC. By his own admission, Colmore was not cut out for a military career; he recalled once accidentally wounding his British sergeant whilst cleaning his pistol, but that professional soldier loyally cooperated in covering up the incident. It was after a spell as intelligence officer with the 61st KAR that the Army gave Colmore an opening from which he never looked back. He was entrusted with the recruitment of artists and musicians and, with 3 other captains, established army entertainment units for EA troops by then also serving in India, Ceylon and Burma. As well as in Kenya, Colmore's unit presented very popular Ensa-type variety concerts in Uganda, Tanganyika and Somalia. Distinctly risque sketches were included warning the troops of the painful consequences of contracting VD. Before being demobilised in 1946, Colmore served as staff officer to the then Director of Education and Welfare, a certain Colonel Michael Blundell, later to become a leading Kenyan "settler", writer and politician. Africa was by then firmly in Peter Colmore's blood and he returned to Kenya in 1947 to start successful business ventures in advertising, real estate and commercial publishing. For all these he will be remembered, but more so because he formed Peter Colmore's African Band, initially employing his ex-Army musicians and presenting All-African variety shows and reviews which took audiences by storm at the Traveller's Club, Garrison Theatre, the Muthaiga Golf Club - and, in the early 1950s, Nairobi's newly opened National Theatre. ……….. Encouraged by his success as a talent scout and impresario, Colmore started a recording company, attracting young African musicians to his studio from as far away as the then Belgian Congo, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. A new African His Masters Voice Blue Label was launched. Shrugging off a forced landing in a game park on his first solo, as an amateur pilot he guided many distinguished visitors to East and Central Africa, including the Aga Khan. As a film consultant he cast Africans for such classics as King Solomon's Mines (1950), Tarzan's Peril (1951) and Where No Vultures Fly (1951). One of his proteges, Paul Ngai, went on to become a leading politician. ……………. He took Kenyan citizenship and his succession of houses in Muthaiga ………. Was always full of African guests, by no means all from the new up-and-coming good and famous classes. He was never poor and, if one overlooks the 5 Rolls-Royces he owned during this period, nor was he at all ostentatious. Ever a natural liberal, if he nevertheless unconsciously continued to insist on the attention and precedence in Kenyan daily life formerly demanded by the settler classes, most Africans cheerfully continued to accord to him, largely perhaps on account of his age and good, if quite often bawdy humour. A gifted photographer - he took the official portrait of President Jomo Kenyatta - and also no mean mimic, occasionally he could be persuaded to perform at parties and before hilarious audiences at Muthaiga Country Club. His Swahili was immaculate, but he could also converse in several other Kenyan languages and was never happier - or more popular - than when joking and haggling in vernacular markets. Colmore never married and in recent years became daily more preoccupied by his deteriorating health. He largely withdrew from a previously active social life, but retained a commitment to artistic patronage, shrewd business acumen and sound judgement of character almost to the end. (Richard Greenfield)