Adam Faith

Terence Nelhams (Adam Faith), singer and actor: born London 23 June 1940: married 1967 Jackie Irving (one daughter, and one son deceased); died Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire 8 March 2003.

Adam Faith came to fame in the early Sixties with a succession of pop hits including "What Do You Want" and "Poor Me" and later became well-known as an actor.

He created the television characters of Budgie (in the series of the same name) and Frank Carver (in Love Hurts) and was also noted for several stage roles, notably in the Eighties revival of Alfie. However, when he published an autobiography, Acts of Faith, in 1996, it was more about his personal life than his achievements. "There's a grave danger that you will boast your head off when you write an autobiography," he said, "and I didn't want to do that. Anyway, if I had gone through everything in detail, I would have been writing four or five volumes."

Faith's life was extraordinary from the very start. He was born Terence Nelhams under a kitchen table in Acton during an air raid over London in 1940. His father, Alf Nelhams, was a coach driver; his mother was Alf's strong-willed partner, Ellen Wright. As a teenager Terry Nelhams supplemented the family income with a paper round and helped his mother clean factories in the evening instead of homework. As long as he could go to the cinema once a week, he was happy.

In 1955 he saw James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Nelhams started copying Dean's clothes and mannerisms, and he determined to work in cinema. He found employment as a messenger boy for the Rank Organisation and then moved into the cutting rooms. Following the popularity of Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line", some of his workmates formed a skiffle group, the Worried Men. Nelhams was the ideal lead singer and within weeks, they were resident at the Two I's coffee bar in Old Compton Street, Soho.

The Worried Men were featured when the BBC broadcast an edition of the teenage programme Six-Five Special from the Two I's and the show's producer, Jack Good, spotted Nelhams' potential. He suggested that he change his name:

Jack Good's wife had just had a baby. He had a book of kids' names and he thought I ought to change mine because Terry Nelhams didn't sound right and, besides, there already was Terry Dene. He tossed me the book and I flicked through it and came to "Faith" in the girls' names and "Adam" at the start of the boys.

Faith prepared for his first solo TV appearance by lying in the bath in his jeans so they would be skin-tight. He went down well, but his cover version of Jerry Lee Lewis's "High School Confidential" for HMV demonstrated that he was unsuited to wild rock'n'roll. When the format of Six-Five Special changed, Faith became a resident on the revamped programme, Drumbeat!, performing rock'n'roll with the sullen look of the day. Johnny Worth, a member of the Raindrops, remembers:

Adam had a face that could launch a million records, an amazing face, a most endearing face, and something within me said, "This kid is going to be a star. It doesn't matter that he doesn't sing very well."

The show's producer Stewart Morris liked to present Faith with a stern, rocker image, but Worth told Faith to smile at the camera. Worth said:

In those days you couldn't edit a television show and Stewart Morris was furious when he was stuck with a smiling Adam Faith singing "Love Is Strange". When Adam did "What Do You Want" on Cool for Cats, he sat on a stool, smiled that wistful smile and went zonk! into the hearts of millions.

"What Do You Want", written by Worth and arranged by John Barry, was released by EMI's Parlophone label in November 1959. Pop encyclopedias liken the record to Buddy Holly's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" but Faith disagreed.

My biggest influence was the British singer Roy Young. Roy and I were going to Oxford before I recorded "What Do You Want". I sang "What Do You Want" to him and he didn't like the way I sang it. He coached me all the way to Oxford and by the time we got there, "baby" had turned into "bay-beh".

"What Do You Want (If You Don't Want Money)" was selling 50,000 copies a day and topped the UK charts for three weeks. The team quickly followed it with another No 1, "Poor Me", and a No 2, "Someone Else's Baby".

His big-selling first album, Adam, found him struggling to be an all-round entertainer with ill-advised versions of "Summertime" and "Singin' in the Rain". He appeared in a film set in Soho, Beat Girl (1960) although he subsequently called it "a disastrous teenage exploitation movie which bore little or no relation to Soho or the youth it was supposed to represent". The score included an atmospheric Top Ten single, "Made You", with Joe Brown on guitar which was banned by the BBC for its sexual connotations. Faith showed his dramatic skills as Tommy Towers in Never Let Go (1960) and fans squirmed when a villainous Peter Sellers shut Faith's hand in a car door.

In December 1960 and against the advice of his management, Faith appeared on the BBC's interrogative television programme, Face to Face. Faith brilliantly held his own against John Freeman, the show's host, and, in an astonishing revelation for its time, not only admitted to pre-marital sex but said that he enjoyed it. Faith said,

Everything got quoted out of context and it prompted the BBC to get Ludovic Kennedy to chair a discussion between myself and the Archbishop of York. The public was surprised that a working-class pop star could talk. Whether I said anything intelligible or not, I don't know.

Another reaction was even more surprising: Faith's parents got married so that they would not be an embarrassment to him.

Although he was having regular hits, the quality of Faith's records was erratic. His nadir was his 1960 Christmas record, "Lonely Pup (In a Christmas Shop)". Why didn't he just say no?

I could have done and if I had had more confidence in myself as a singer, I would have done. At the time I thought, "Why not, it's going to be a hit." I didn't appreciate the damage a hit can do for you if it is not the right sort of hit.

In 1962 Faith copied Eden Kane's hully gully rhythm for the Top Ten single "Don't That Beat All", but he was losing ground. He changed his style, working with a beat group, the Roulettes, and a new songwriter, Chris Andrews, in an attempt to forestall the inevitable decline. "The First Time" and "We Are In Love" are good British beat records and Andrews wrote an entire album for Faith, On The Move (1964). Faith made his best record by covering Burt Bacharach's "Message to Martha" (1964), which became his last Top Twenty hit.

Although Faith was a long way from being the best of Britain's rock'n'roll singers, he was easily the best actor amongst them. His performance alongside Donald Sinden in Mix Me a Person (1961) showed his potential and he had good comic timing supporting Sid James in What a Whopper (1961), although the film is dire. So he went into repertory and learnt his craft. He was supported by the dancer Jackie Irving, whom he married in 1967.

In 1968 Faith did well in a touring version of Night Must Fall with Dame Sybil Thorndike. Then his performance on stage in Billy Liar prompted its authors, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, to create a television series for him, Budgie. He played a small-time London crook who lived on his wits but was always outmanoeuvred. Budgie's phrase "Leave it out, Hazel" entered the language, but only 26 episodes were made.

In 1973 Faith suffered serious injuries in a car crash. He was told he would be left with a limp but, with typical resolve and much exercise, he regained his normal stance. The psychological effect was more damaging – despite an appearance in the David Essex film Stardust in 1974, he was reluctant to act for some years.

Dave Courtney, who had played drums for Faith, asked him as a favour to look over a contract for a friend, a new artist called Leo Sayer. When Faith heard Sayer's songs, he tore up the contract and said, "Dave, you and I are going to manage this boy. He's too good to give to anybody else." To finance the venture, Faith negotiated a record deal for a comeback album with Warner Brothers. He made I Survive (1974) with just half of his allocated budget and used the remainder to finance Sayer.

Courtney and Faith produced Sayer's first hits – "The Show Must Go On" and "One Man Band" – at Roger Daltrey's studio and Daltrey was so impressed that he recorded one of Sayer's songs, "Giving It All Away", which became a Top Ten record, also produced by Faith. Daltrey and Faith were later to act together in McVicar (1980).

In 1983 Faith appeared in a revival in Liverpool of Alfie, directed by Alan Parker. He did extremely well, although his character came across as a mixture of Alfie, Budgie and Adam Faith. When I interviewed him at the time, he was dismissive of his records. Asked to sign a compilation of his hits, he shook his head and said, "Who buys this crap?" He added, "The best British rock'n'roll record was 'Move It!' Do you think I even came close to that?"

Faith's life was busy in the early Eighties, as he was presenting the first video review progamme, Video Video, for Channel 4 and also conducting an affair with the tennis star Chrissie Evert which almost wrecked his marriage. In 1986 he had heart surgery for blocked arteries, but recovered quickly and the following year went into a West End musical, Budgie, which had been created for him. Its lyricist Don Black commented,

He wasn't really a singer, but then neither was Rex Harrison. Richard Harris speaks his way through Camelot, so you don't have to be a singer to be in a musical. When a musical doesn't work, it doesn't work, and we never got the book right.

Faith had always been interested in shares and property, and he started writing financial columns for the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. In one infamous column, he claimed he could make anyone a millionaire in six months. With a financial adviser, Roger Levitt, he formed a company to look after the money of his celebrity friends. Much to Faith's embarrassment, in 1990 Levitt was arrested for fraud. In addition, Faith was hit with debts when the recession hit Lloyd's of London.

Ever resilient, from 1991 Faith starred alongside Zoë Wanamaker in the BBC's Love Hurts, which ran for three series. He said,

Frank Carver was so romantic that every woman in the country wanted a husband or a boyfriend like him. He was so lovely and I got all the knock-on benefits to that.

In the Nineties, he appeared in touring versions of Alfie and A Chorus Line, and, he said

I did Alfie for a year on the road and it broke records everywhere. It also changed my relationship with the public. For the first time, they were looking at me as a man instead of a young pop kid who was growing old. I could be 50 and people were still associating me with "What Do You Want".

In 1999 Faith started a digital television station, the Money Channel, but it attracted few viewers. The station closed with debts of £32m and Faith himself was declared bankrupt in 2002. Last year, he appeared in a BBC comedy series, The House That Jack Built, with Gillian Taylforth and at the time of his death was in a touring production of Love and Marriage.

Spencer Leigh