Ronnie Carroll with his first wife, Millicent Martin. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock
Ronnie Carroll (1934-2015)
Lived at: Hampstead Garden Suburb
Profession: Singer
Other links: Politician maybe, but his candidacies were meant as a joke
Ronald Cleghorn was born in Belfast; in the evenings he sang in local clubs, using Carroll as his stage name. He moved to London in 1953 and enlivened show business pages in the tabloid press during the 1950s and 1960s. He had his first hit record in 1956; his 1962 Roses Are Red (My Love) hit the top 10 in the charts. He represented the UK in the 1962 and 1963 Eurovision song contests, achieving fourth place in both. His 1959 marriage to Millicent Martin was the highlight of the show business calendar for that year; they divorced in 1965 partly due to Carroll’s compulsive gambling. He declared bankruptcy in 1974 and opened a food stall in Camden market. In later life Carroll was renowned as a spectacularly unsuccessful parliamentary candidate. Carroll stated that his electoral ambition was to gain the fewest ever votes of any parliamentary candidate. He stood in 1997 and 2008.
