Desmond Bernard O'Connor (12 January 1932 – 14 November 2020) was an English comedian, singer and television presenter.
He was a long-time TV chat-show host, beginning with The Des O'Connor Show in 1963, which ran for ten years. He also presented several UK television game shows, including Take Your Pick! from 1992 to 1999, and the long-running Channel 4 game show Countdown for two years between 2007 and 2008.
O'Connor recorded 36 albums and had four top-ten UK singles, including a number-one hit with "I Pretend", with global sales of more than sixteen million records. Well known for his friendship with comedians Morecambe and Wise, his singing ability was often light-heartedly mocked on their show, with O'Connor taking part in the sketches.
Early life
Desmond Bernard O'Connor was born on 12 January 1932 in Stepney, East London, to Maude (née Bassett), a cleaner, and Harry O'Connor, a dustman. His father was of Irish Catholic descent and his mother was Jewish, and he joked that he was the first O’Connor to have a bar mitzvah.
In his childhood, he had rickets and was later badly injured in a hit-and-run car accident which meant he had to be in an iron lung for six months. He had a brother, William, and a sister, Patricia, one year his junior. He was evacuated to Northampton during the Second World War, where he worked in a shoe factory and was a schoolboy and reserves player with Northampton Town.
After completing his national service in the Royal Air Force, he worked as a Redcoat at Butlin's holiday camp in Filey, where he met his first wife Phyllis, and as a shoe salesman at Church's in Northampton, and for United Counties, both on the road and in the office, before entering show business. Prior to his break on television, his first fully professional stage appearance in variety, was in a Newcastle theatre. Later, while he was in Leeds, he invited the Welsh singer Shirley Bassey out on two dates. In 1958, when Buddy Holly toured the UK, O'Connor was the show's compère for which he was paid £100 per week.
In 1950 and 1952, he collaborated in songwriting with British singer Sam Browne and Australian pianist and composer Ray Hartley. The team produced hit songs "Let's Do It Again", "Start Singing A Song", "Yes! Yes! Yes! (I Like Good Old Melody)" and "Why Do I Love You?". O'Connor and Hartley also created the hit song "My Baby Told Me She Loves Me".
Career
Stage
O'Connor appeared at the Glasgow Empire, MGM Grand, Las Vegas, the Opera House, Sydney, and the O'Keefe Centre, Toronto, and made more than one thousand solo appearances at the London Palladium.
In late 2011, O'Connor starred in Dreamboats and Petticoats at the Playhouse Theatre.
In May 2012, O'Connor replaced Russell Grant in the West End musical, The Wizard of Oz, at the London Palladium, as Professor Marvel, Doorman at the Emerald City, Tour Guide, and The Wizard.
In October 2015, O'Connor and Jimmy Tarbuck starred in their own one-off show at the London Palladium to raise money for the new Royal Variety Charity. Due to the success of this show, they toured the country in 2016 from April to October. The venues they visited were (in chronological order), the Southampton Mayflower Theatre, Leeds Grand Theatre, Southend Cliffs Pavilion, Bristol Hippodrome, Bournemouth International Centre, and Milton Keynes Theatre.
In 2017, O'Connor and Tarbuck toured the UK again from May to December. The venues they visited included Theatre Royal, Norwich, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Blackpool Opera House, Princess Theatre, Torquay, The Hexagon, Reading, Theatre Royal, Newcastle and Grand Theatre, Swansea.
Until 2019, O'Connor toured theatres around the UK with his one-man show.