David Essex

Few English performers have moved between pop, film and the stage as comfortably as David Essex. Born David Albert Cook in Plaistow in 1947, he grew up in Canning Town, the son of an East End docker and a self-taught pianist with Irish Traveller roots. Essex is both a singer-songwriter and an actor, and the pop-idol looks that drew hysterical crowds sit alongside a substantial stage career.

The year 1973 brought him both the film That'll Be the Day and "Rock On", a self-penned single that sold over a million copies, reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy nomination. Through the 1970s he delivered two UK number ones, "Gonna Make You a Star" and "Hold Me Close", and took the role of Che in the original production of Evita in 1978, where his recording of "Oh What a Circus" reached number three. Later work included the stage musical Mutiny! in 1985, and in 2016 he played the Voice of Humanity in the West End production of Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds. An OBE followed in 1999.