A spiffing tribute to the real-life Jeeves

THIS is bally good news, what ho. Damned deserved and all that. Might even be time to crack open the fizz or down a stiff G&T.

For the real-life cricketer who inspired Jeeves, one half of the greatest comic duo in literary history, has had a tree planted in his honour.

Percy Jeeves was playing in a county cricket match for Warwickshire in August 1913 when PG Wodehouse “by chance” saw him play. The surname would stick in the writer’s memory and he would go on to use it for the character of Bertie Wooster’s brilliant valet who gets his charge out of all manner of scrapes.

The real Jeeves died 100 years ago in the Battle of the Somme, never knowing he had helped inspire the novels that would entertain generations to come.

His tree was planted last week during the Cheltenham Cricket Festival, at the Cheltenham College Ground where Wodehouse saw Jeeves play.

“We wouldn’t have Jeeves the famous character unless we’d had Jeeves the cricketer,” said Hilary Bruce, chairman of the PG Wodehouse Society.

“Names were always important to Wodehouse and suddenly Jeeves floated into his mind and he thought ‘that’s it – that is the name, that is the one I’ve been looking for’. Jeeves became world famous but sadly Percy Jeeves would never know that because he was killed in the Somme.”

The life of the real Jeeves was cut short at the age of just 28. His namesake, meanwhile, lives on.