Jackie Trent obituary

The early 1960s saw the arrival of a new wave of British female pop singers, but one led the field in combining her talents as a vocalist with those of a songwriter. She was Jackie Trent, who wrote or co-wrote more than 400 numbers, of which the most widely known is the theme tune to the TV soap Neighbours.

Trent, who has died aged 74, topped the charts almost exactly 50 years ago with her rendition of Where Are You Now, which she co-wrote with her first husband, the composer Tony Hatch. They went on to create big hits for Petula Clark, Scott Walker and many others.

She was born Yvonne Burgess in Newcastle-under-Lyme to Les, a miner at Holditch colliery, and Lily. Little Yvonne had a precocious talent as an entertainer, winning a talent show at the age of nine, singing in British Legion and working men’s clubs from the age of  11 and being crowned North Staffordshire Coal Queen at 16. By this time she had tried out the stage name of Jackie Tremayne before settling on Trent, inspired by the river.

With the blessing of her parents, she left for London, where she soon found work as a singer and dancer. She then joined shows that toured Europe and the Middle East, entertaining British servicemen. She recalled meeting Elvis Presley during his time in the US army in Germany. “I kissed him,” she said. “But so did many other girls.”

In 1961, Trent made her first record for the small Oriole label. The producer was John Schroeder, who had composed the first hits of Helen Shapiro, and he unsuccessfully tried to present Trent in the Shapiro mode, when her big voice was more comparable with those of Vera Lynn and Kathy Kirby.

When Schroeder moved on to the larger Pye Records, he once again signed Trent. She now met one of Pye’s producers, Hatch, a skilled musician, composer and arranger with whom she would work for the next three decades. As a girl Trent had won a national poetry competition, but Hatch was the first music business professional to recognise her potential as a lyricist. After several lesser efforts, the couple came up with Where Are You Now, a lush ballad that reached No 1 in April 1965.

That was to be Trent’s only big hit, but she continued to release singles and albums throughout the 60s and to appear on TV and in cabaret at home and abroad. She had greater commercial success with her songwriting. Clark was one of Pye’s, and Hatch’s, major stars and in 1966-67, Trent contributed lyrics to three of her top 20 hits: I Can’t Live Without Your Love, The Other Man’s Grass Is Always Greener and Don’t Sleep in the Subway. Trent composed both words and music for Val Doonican’s No 2 single What Would I Be? (1966), and with Hatch wrote the Walker hit Joanna (1968), which reached No 7.

The duo, who got married in 1967, branched out into TV and theatre music. They wrote Positive Thinking as a closing number for the Morecambe & Wise Show and the theme tune to Mr & Mrs, before embarking on a musical version of the Arnold Bennett novel The Card. With book by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, it opened in 1973 at the Queen’s theatre, London, with a cast that included Millicent Martin, Eleanor Bron and Jim Dale. In 1975, Cameron Mackintosh produced the partnership’s Christmas show Rock Nativity, which went on to have provincial, youth and overseas productions.

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In 1978, the couple moved to Dublin, where they hosted TV shows. Four years later, they departed for Sydney, to become leading figures in the Australian entertainment industry. It was here that, in 1984, Trent and Hatch were asked by a TV producer to provide a theme song for a proposed series whose provisional title was Ramsay Street. Considering this to be too close to the name of Coronation Street, they came up with a song based on the idea of  good neighbours. Neighbours became the title of what has become one of the most successful soap operas in TV history, now in its 30th year and approaching its 7,000th episode.

In 1995, Trent separated from Hatch and returned to Britain. She toured in High Society before going into semi-retirement in Menorca with her second husband, Colin Gregory, having divorced Hatch in 2002. Retaining her links with the Potteries, she wrote the Stoke City anthem We’ll Be With You in 1972 and appeared often on local radio. She was due to appear in Jackie, a musical based on her life, in Stoke in May.

Trent is survived by Colin and her children by Hatch, Michelle and Darren.