Lynsey De Paul born 11 June 1948

Lynsey de Paul (11 June 1948 – 1 October 2014) was an English singer-songwriter. She was the first woman to ever receive an Ivor Novello Award for Best Ballad or Romantic Song for her composition "Won't Somebody Dance With Me" in 1973.

She was born Lynsey Monckton Rubin into a north London Jewish household, the daughter of Meta and Herbert Rubin. Her father was a property developer. As a child, Lynsey learned classical piano and, on leaving South Hampstead high school, studied art and design at Hornsey College. After graduation, she worked as a commercial artist and designer of album sleeves while honing her skills as a songwriter.

In 1971, De Paul signed a contract with the music publisher ATV Kirshner. There she became a prolific composer, often writing in partnership with other ATV staff such as Blue and Ron Roker. Her earliest songs to be recorded were sung by the child actor Jack Wild, but the first to be a hit was the Roker-
Rubin number Storm in a Teacup by the Fortunes in 1972.

 She was soon signed by the MAM label. Her debut single, Sugar Me, released under the name Lynsey de Paul, featured her piano playing as well as high-pitched vocals, and reached No 5. In the US, Nancy Sinatra recorded the song.

Over the next five years, De Paul's telegenic looks and catchy songs made her a ubiquitous figure in British popular culture. After her second single, Getting a Drag, became a top 20 hit, she recorded the plaintive Won't Somebody Dance With Me, which climbed to No 14 in 1973. The number was chosen by De Paul's peers as the best contemporary pop song at the annual Ivor Novello awards ceremony.

                             

By now, De Paul was in demand as a composer for television, and her theme for the comedy series No, Honestly was both a top 10 hit and the winner of her second Novello award in 1974. The record was issued on Jet, a label owned by De Paul's new manager, Don Arden, a tough figure in the music business. 

De Paul soon realised she had made a bad choice in asking him to represent her. In 1976 she received the Woman of the Year Award For Music from the Variety Club of Great Britain. As she tried to extricate herself from the arrangement with Don Arden, she was offered the opportunity to represent the UK in the 1977 Eurovision song contest. She sang Rock Bottom, which she had written with Mike Moran, and came second. Rock Bottom was a hit not only in Britain but in several continental European countries, including Germany and France.

A petite 4ft 11in but glamorous, with a mane of blonde curls and a beauty spot above her lip, Lynsey de Paul dated a succession of high-profile men, including George Best, Ringo Starr, Dodi Fayed and the film stars James Coburn and Sean Connery – who, according to one report, pursued her with “a vigour of which James Bond would have been proud, and a line in flattery which even 007 couldn’t match”. While in Moscow filming The Russia House (1990) he reportedly called her to say: “I can only kiss Michelle Pfeiffer if I think of you.”

The Eurovision song contest proved the end of De Paul's career as a pop star, but she continued composing and broadened her activities during the 1980s and beyond. Her songs were recorded by performers including Shirley Bassey, Ricky Martin, Heatwave and the Real Thing. There were further theme songs for light entertainment series such as The Rag Trade and Hi! Summer. De Paul also wrote and recorded songs for children, and returned to her first love, classical music, by orchestrating and performing works by Bach and Handel.

She spent several years in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the actor James Coburn, who co-wrote two tracks on her fifth album, Tigers and Fireflies (1979), and encouraged her to diversify into acting. Returning to Britain in 1982, she appeared in the British version of the US musical Pump Boys and Dinettes and films including The Starlight Ballroom (1983) and Gabrielle and the Doodleman (1984) for which she also wrote the score. The British jeans industry named her Rear of the Year in 1985, an award she accepted by thanking the organisers “from the heart of my bottom”.

In the 1990s she bought a Victorian mansion in north London which she called Moot Grange, an anagram of No Mortgage. “I also considered Gnome Groat,” she explained, “and, because I’m a vegetarian and don’t drink, No Meat/Grog.” A long-time campaigner for animal rights, she shared the house with a three-legged cat called Tripod and enjoyed her comparative anonymity. She was seen frequently on television, on a range of shows from the talent contest New Faces, on which she was a judge, to consumer programmes such as Club Vegetarian and Shopper's Heaven.

De Paul suffered a brain haemorrhage on the morning of 1 October 2014 and died in a London hospital. Her niece, Olivia Rubin, told The Times that her death was "completely unexpected", adding: "She was a vegetarian, she didn't smoke, she didn't drink – she was amazing, in fact."  (Edited from The Guardian & Telegraph)