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Ronnie Carroll
Ronnie Carroll’s first chart hit was Walk Hand in Hand, which reached No 13 in 1956. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock
Ronnie Carroll’s first chart hit was Walk Hand in Hand, which reached No 13 in 1956. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

Ronnie Carroll obituary

This article is more than 8 years old
Singer who represented the UK in the Eurovision song contest and later became a determinedly unsuccessful parliamentary candidate

During the late 1950s and early 60s, the singer Ronnie Carroll was seldom absent from the show business pages of the tabloid press. He twice represented the UK in the Eurovision song contest, he raised hell with Sean Connery, and his lantern-jawed good looks ensured his name was often linked with female stars of the era. In later life Carroll, who has died aged 80, was renowned as a spectacularly unsuccessful parliamentary candidate – he was due to stand at next month’s general election.

He was born Ronald Cleghorn in Belfast. His father, Harry, was a plumber, but the family lived on the poverty line. While still at school, Ronnie delivered fruit and also did a milk round. He eventually took a factory job and in the evenings sang in local clubs, perfecting imitations of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra and using Carroll as his stage name.

In 1953, as a 19-year-old, he moved to London and toured in The Hollywood Doubles Show. He earned the sobriquet the Minstrel when he blacked-up to perform songs associated with Billy Eckstine and Cole. In Liverpool Cole attended Carroll’s show and was distinctly unimpressed.

After Carroll appeared in a BBC television talent show, Camera One, positive reaction to his warm baritone led to a recording contract with Philips and to frequent radio appearances on the Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg. Carroll was also a guest on the television shows of Morecambe and Wise, Bruce Forsyth, Kathy Kirby and others.

Ronnie Carroll’s top 10 hit Roses Are Red (My Love)

In 1956 his first hit record, Walk Hand in Hand, reached No 13 and the following year The Wisdom of a Fool entered the top 20. Further records were less successful, until in 1962 Carroll had a top 10 hit with Roses Are Red (My Love). In the US, Bobby Vinton’s version of the song had topped the charts, but in Britain Vinton’s original was outsold by Carroll’s recording.

In 1962 Carroll was also chosen as the national standard bearer for that year’s Eurovision song contest. His song, Ring-a-Ding Girl, came a creditable fourth, a good enough position to ensure that Carroll became the first vocalist to represent Britain in the contest for two years running. His 1963 entry, Say Wonderful Things, composed by Norman Newell, also achieved fourth place.

Ronnie Carroll performing Ring-a-Ding Girl at the 1962 Eurovision song contest

Carroll’s 1959 marriage in Barbados to the revue and musicals artist Millicent Martin was a highlight of the show business calendar, and his career outshone that of his wife until 1962 when her prominent role in the satirical television show That Was the Week That Was catapulted her to national fame. The couple divorced in 1965, something Carroll later attributed to his compulsive gambling, a habit he had picked up playing pitch and toss at the age of 11 on the streets of Belfast. His carousing with the likes of Connery and Stanley Baker may also have contributed to the breakup.

Carroll’s second wife was the 100m runner June Paul, who had won medals in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics. They planned to open a hotel to be managed by June and to feature Ronnie in cabaret. After considering Sun City in South Africa, they decided on Barbados. When there was no suitable venue on that island, the couple found a beachfront site in Grenada. Political instability led Ronnie and June to abandon the project and return almost penniless to England. In 1974 Carroll was declared bankrupt with assets of £2 and debts of £9,210.

Undaunted, the couple took a food stall at the newly opened Camden market in north London, selling hamburgers and sausages. June subsequently became involved with the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, which she eventually purchased. After divorce from June, Carroll married Glenda Kentridge, the daughter of a South African nightclub owner. That marriage ended in divorce in 1994.

Ronnie Carroll with his first wife, Millicent Martin. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

Carroll’s entry into electoral politics was encouraged, he said, by his friendship with the satirist Peter Cook, who made him promise to stand for parliament as a “new Screaming Lord Sutch”, founder of the Monster Raving Loony party. In turn, Carroll said his ambition was to gain the fewest ever votes of any parliamentary candidate.

His first attempt, in 1997, under the banner of the Emerald Rainbow Islands Dream Ticket party, disappointingly brought 141 votes, many more than the lowest previous number. This was despite his adoption of a Don’t Vote for Me Reg and Tina campaign song, which parodied Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita. Carroll had planned to stand in 50 constituencies, to qualify for a party election broadcast, but found this was not permitted.

He later stood in the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden byelection, receiving 29 votes as the Make Politicians History candidate – still well above the lowest ever polled.

Carroll’s close political colleague was Rainbow George Weiss, a Hampstead neighbour and former associate of Sutch. It was Weiss who handed in Carroll’s nomination papers for the seat of Hampstead and Kilburn at the forthcoming general election when Carroll was too ill to do so in person.

Carroll is survived by Luke and Jamie, his children with June, and by Chloe and Harry, his children with Glenda.

Ronnie Carroll (Ronald Cleghorn), singer, born 18 August 1934; died 13 April 2015

This article was amended on 16 April 2015. It was in 1997, rather than 2005, as originally stated, that Ronnie Carroll declared his intention to stand in 50 constituencies. And although he said he intended to stand as a candidate in Belfast, his name was not put forward.

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