Jimmy Young obituary: Chart-topping singer and Margaret Thatcher’s favourite broadcaster

Jimmy Young had two separate showbusiness careers: one as a chart-topping vocalist in the early 1950s and the other as a consummately professional presenter of a highly rated weekday show on BBC Radio 2 which combined current affairs, consumer news and popular music in a seemingly effortless mix.

In 1973 Young had told the managing director, Ian Trethowan, “I would like to be free to talk to anyone anywhere about anything, as long as my gut feeling tells me that it will interest my listeners.”

Born in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean on 21 September 1921, Leslie Ronald Young was the son of a miner, who became a baker, and a music teacher, who played the church organ from the age of seven until her death at age of 80 in 1970.

He was only four pounds when he was born and his childhood was marred by ill health including bouts of rheumatic fever and double pneumonia. He left East Dean Grammar School when he was 15 and lied about his age to obtain a driving licence. He drove a delivery van for his father and both he and his father had their licences revoked when their deceit was discovered.

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He excelled at sports, playing rugby for Cinderford and later, following an offer from an RAF acquaintance, he turned down a place with Wigan’s rugby league team. He never lost his love for Cinderford or of his Gloucestershire accent, saying, “I never lost my accent and nor do I wish to. I think it is warm and friendly – a nice soft burr that falls easy on the ear.”

The family split up in 1939 when Young’s parents divorced and Young himself joined the Royal Air Force. He became a physical training instructor and when posted to India, he played in a concert band and had an affair with the 35-year-old wife of an officer.

He returned to the UK, writing in his 1972 autobiography, “Lucky Jim, you might say. The war had but a few months to run and I hadn’t seen a shot fired in anger. But that was the luck of the draw.”

In 1946 Young was hospitalised with a bowel complaint but he was to marry Wendy, the nurse who cared for him. He worked on the accounts for his brother-in-law’s hairdressing salons in London, and their daughter, Lesley Anne, was born in 1947. Young wanted to be an entertainer and he was spotted singing and playing the piano by a BBC producer, George Innes, at the Nordic social club in Hampton Court. He made his first broadcast a fortnight later on Songs At The Piano and as a result, he appeared on variety bills around the UK. He worked with Ronnie Playdell and his Orchestra and although he replaced their singer Sally Douglas, she became his second wife in 1950. He conducted the orchestra when Playdell took an extended break in America.

In 1951 Young recorded for the small Polygon label, his first single being “Life’s Desire”, written by Tolchard Evans. He also recorded “My Love And Devotion”, “Because Of You”, and a duet with Petula Clark, “Broken Heart”. He heard a new song, “Too Young”, which had been recorded by Nat King Cole, and liked both the tune and the link with his own name.

“I always enjoyed working with Jimmy Young,” said the arranger Ron Goodwin, “Because he was always so enthusiastic. He thought everything we did was going to be a hit.”

With “Too Young”, he was right as his version sold 4,000 copies in the first week of release. Unfortunately, Polygon relied on others to press their records and as there were several rival versions of the song, so the major companies were not as obliging as they could have been. The song itself topped the sheet music charts but as comparative lists of record sales had not reached the UK, it is not known how his single fared against Nat King Cole , Steve Conway and the Deep River Boys. Certainly, the audiences at variety theatres wanted to hear the song, but then again, they might not have been able to buy his version.

In 1953 Young moved to Decca Records and again found himself in opposition with Nat King Cole, this time with “Faith Can Move Mountains”, and Young appeared one place below Cole, at No 11, on the newly established record charts. He made the Top Ten with a vocal version of Charlie Chaplin’s theme for the film, Limelight, “Eternally”.

Todd Duncan sang “Unchained Melody” in the prison drama, Unchained, which starred Elroy Hirsch and Barbara Hale. The US hit versions were by Al Hibbler and Les Baxter. Jimmy Young covered it for the home market, but he suffered stomach pains while recording the song and was rushed to hospital with peritonitis. His version, which was produced by Dick Rowe, started to sell well but a “go slow” at the pressing plant meant that his record could not always be despatched. After a few anxious weeks, the stocks were available and Young’s version topped the UK charts, while Al Hibbler reached No 2.

Young became the first British artist to have consecutive No 1 records, the second being a jaunty cover of Al Martino’s western theme, “The Man From Laramie”. Young ended 1955 by performing in a pantomime of Robinson Crusoe with Hylda Baker in Wolverhampton: “The Man From Laramie” (which had no relevance to a desert island) was sung by Young and a chorus of children with cap guns. Young made many variety appearances but he found performing “hell on earth” and later said that he was not “put on this earth to strut my stuff in front of hysterical, screaming women.”

There were further hits in 1956 with “Chain Gang”, “The Wayward Wind”, “Rich Man, Poor Man” and his personal favourite, “More”. A record of a song he wrote, “My Faith, My Hope, My Love”, had some limited success in America. Young became more and more fastidious when he recorded. After scores of takes of one song, the bass player, Jack Collier, asked, “Do they press your records or do you make them individually?” By 1958 not many copies would be required as his record sales had slumped in the rock n roll era.

Fortunately for Young, the BBC Light Programme invited him to be a guest presenter on the early morning record programme, Housewives’ Choice. His pleasant personality was well-suited to broadcasting and he was given regular programmes on Radio Luxembourg, sponsored by EMI. He fronted several short series for the BBC including The Night Is Young, Younger Than Springtime and Keep Young and he returned to Housewives’ Choice from time to time.

In 1960 Young joined EMI’s Columbia Records and had chart success with “Miss You” (1963) and a re-recording of “Unchained Melody” (1964). However, he preferred broadcasting and enjoyed presenting the popular four-hour nightly programme, TTT – Through Till Two on the BBC Light Programme with Steve Race.

The BBC was undergoing stiff competition from the pirate radio stations and in 1967 it reconstituted itself with a new network of Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4. Jimmy Young was the host of the new mid-morning programme, The JY Show, which was produced by Doreen Davies and broadcast by both Radios 1 and 2. He played records suitable for both stations and featured Raymondo’s daily recipe. His consumer items included legal advice, which he insisted should be free of jargon. The programme was very successful and, in 1968, he was named the Radio Personality of the Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain. The Jimmy Young Cook Book was the first of the big-selling celebrity cook books.

In 1970 Radio 1 and Radio 2 became separate entities and Young stayed with Radio 1 as the programme would have more “needletime”. In 1972 he was given a TV series on consumer issues, Jimmy Young Asks, and briefly returned to variety with a four-week show in Oxford with Tommy Cooper and appearances around the country. Although his new records failed to sell in the UK, “Mr Sunshine” was a No 1 record in Thailand.

Jimmy Young moved to Radio 2 in 1973 and immediately had a stroke of luck by promoting the spoon-bending techniques of Uri Geller. He had regular legal and medical contributors but the real difference was in adding high profile political interviews, the first time this had been done on a light entertainment show. Two of his first guests were Sir Geoffrey Howe, then Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, and Margaret Thatcher, who was Secretary of State for Education at the time. In 1977 he became the first person to broadcast a BBC programme live from the Soviet Union.

By not keeping to pre-arranged questions when interviewing royalty, Young broke with protocol, although the Duke of Edinburgh commended him on his approach. “His technique is courtesy with a cutting edge,” said Lord Hattersley. “He rarely interrupts, is never rude and hardly ever raises his voice. He simply asks questions which are all the more difficult to answer because the listeners know that they are being posed by an eminently reasonable man.” Young commented, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Young interviewed all the Prime Ministers of his day with Margaret Thatcher making 14 appearances. She described Young as her favourite broadcaster although it is hard to imagine the former Prime Minister becoming engrossed with his more trivial items. Young was relentlessly cheerful and many listeners were hooked on his daily banter with Terry Wogan at the changeover. Many of his phrases became common parlance – “The JY Prog”, “Orfft we jolly well go” and “TTFN (Ta-ta for now)”. His autobiography was called JY (1972) and a second volume, Jimmy Young, followed in 1982.

Many of Young’s interviews made the national news and were often discussed in the House. The MP Tony Banks asked in 1990, “Did my Honorable Friend hear the in-depth and searching questions that the Prime Minister endured on the Jimmy Young programme when she castigated overspending by local authorities?”

Jimmy Young was awarded the OBE in 1979 and the following year he presented the first-ever UK Telethon for Thames Television, which raised nearly £1m for children’s welfare. Following a shakeup at Radio 2 in 1980, only Wogan and Young remained from the regular 1973 presenters. In 1992, a Radio 2 celebration of his work, The Jimmy Young Story, was hosted by Sir David Frost. Since his second divorce in 1958, Young had been reluctant to remarry despite a succession of girlfriends. In 1995 he married his long-standing partner, Alicia, in Florida.

Despite being over 70 and nursing a replacement hip, Young retained his demanding schedule. In 2001, Radio 5’s Nicky Campbell, claimed he had been approached to replace Young, but Young, who was still drawing five million listeners a day, dismissed the BBC’s invitation to Campbell as “ageism”. When Young was knighted in 2002, he dedicated his programme to his listeners. Days after this recognition, he announced that he would be leaving his daily programme and moving to the weekend, but he followed it with a probing interview with Tony Blair which made news headlines.

Leslie Ronald Young (Jimmy Young): born Cinderford, Gloucestershire, 21 September 1921; died 7 November 2016; married three times, one daughter