Obituary: Jimmy Young

Radio broadcaster whose show won the hearts of listeners

From the late 1960s until the new century, Sir Jimmy Young, who has died aged 95, presented a daily radio programme on the BBC with an enormous following. For The Jimmy Young Show – or as he referred to it, the JY prog – he was not just a disc jockey purveying recipes at the behest of the cartoon-voiced Raymondo ("What's the recipe today, Jim?"), along with consumer advice, but an interviewer who personified the corporation's flair for mixing entertainment and enlightenment.

Broadcasting had taken over from an earlier singing career that was only intermittently successful.

In 1951 the song Too Young encapsulated what was in the hearts and minds of a new postwar generation – a desire to have the world on their own terms though that world considered them too young – and was an instant hit. Even so, when Young sought variety work, he found that the public's memory was short, and that the jobs fizzled out.

Unchained Melody (1955), the theme song of an American B movie prison drama, made the top of the pop charts, and Young became the first British singer to have consecutive No 1 hits when he took up another theme song, The Man from Laramie. However, again his engagements tailed off, and Young recognised that his heartfelt balladeering was not going to flourish in the age of Elvis Presley.

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Young made his first appearance presenting the BBC's radio record request programme Housewives' Choice in 1955, though it still took some time before he committed himself fully to broadcasting. However, by 1961, he was, as he said himself, "popping up everywhere", including the show which rated the week's pop tunes, Juke Box Jury. Two years later, he was doing five DJ programmes for Radio Luxembourg, one for the BBC and, for TV, the 625 Show for new talent. Later he introduced Saturday Special, a radio medley of offbeat facts from the BBC regions, plus music.

In 1967, he sealed his new success by beginning The Jimmy Young Show in the mid-morning slot on Radios 1 and 2. The first show drew an audience of five million.

A reshaping of programmes in 1973 left him solely on Radio 2 with the mix of music and current affairs that he made his own, comfortably able to attract heavyweight guests who recognised the programme’s pulling power. He hosted the BBC’s first live direct broadcasts from the Soviet Union in 1977, live programmes from Egypt and Israel in 1978, and what was then Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979.

On television he was the host for Thames TV of the first British Telethon (1980), and for ITV he presented The Jimmy Young Television Programme (1984-87).

Variety Club of Great Britain and Sony awards followed. In 1979 he was appointed OBE and in 1993 CBE. He received a knighthood in 2002, which otherwise was not a good year, since his “retirement” disappointed him and enraged his admirers.

A hip operation and a dislocation of his repaired hip early that year led to several months' absence from his radio show, but though he made it back to air, his contract was not renewed. A Manchester Evening News poll on whether the BBC had been right to let him go produced 7 per cent in favour of the BBC decision, 93 per cent against. Nonetheless, with something of his old ebullience returning, he produced an autobiography, Forever Young (2003), and took An Audience With Jimmy Young to theatres. For 12 years until 2014 he wrote a column for the Sunday Express, and in 2011 he returned to Radio 2 for a programme to mark his 90th birthday, and t present a series, Icons of the 50s, with Desmond Carrington.

Margaret Thatcher appeared on his show 14 times, always giving as good as or better than she got. John Major was less enamoured after Young tackled him about recent cartoons. After suggesting that even his own voters saw him as “wet and boring,” Young asked the then prime minister: “Once people laugh at you and make fun of you and draw silly cartoons of you with your shirt tucked into your underpants, is it almost impossible to regain your credibility?”

Born in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, Jimmy, born Leslie Ronald, was the son of Frederick Young, a miner who became a baker, and his wife, Gertrude (nee Woolford). At the age of 15 he left East Dean grammar school and drove the bakery van for his father full time.

His parents’ marriage was breaking up, and when the second World War broke out in 1939, he took the opportunity to try to join the army. He truthfully told them he was 17 and was turned down as a year too young. He then lied to the RAF and was accepted.

He was sought out by the variety performer Pip Norman for his army concert party. Young joined the army’s entertainment section in northern India, where he honed his skills as a singer at the piano and with a danceband. He ended the war after four years in India as a sergeant, not having heard a shot fired, and managed to get his first professional job in variety in Deal, in Kent.

To his wife, Wendy Wilkinson, whom he had married in 1946, this was the last straw – she had begged him to drop his showbiz ambitions and settle into his job as a clerk for the ministry of education. Their marriage ended in divorce.

Persisting as usual, Young deputised for the pianist Bill Williams and then became a regular at the smart Nordic Club in Hampton Court.

George Inns, the BBC producer who had created The Black and White Minstrel Show, got another BBC producer, John Hooper, to listen to his act; the result was a contract to sing four songs with the Ronnie Pleydell Orchestra. Sally Douglas, a singer with the band, became his second wife, in 1950.

That marriage, too, ended in divorce, and in 1996 he married Alicia Padstow.

She survives him, along with his daughter, Lesley, from his first marriage.

– Guardian News and Media 2016