Cavan O'Connor (1899-1997) was an Irish tenor who was as big a star as Dan Leno, Marie Lloyd and Little Titch in the 1920s and 30s and whose career spanned more than 40 years. When the Hackney Empire re-opened in 1989 he topped the bill at the age of 90. On the radio he regularly drew an audience of more than 14 million listeners. When the head of BBC Variety described Cavan O'Connor as' The Vagabond Lover' in the 1930s, his career rocketed and he recorded hundreds of songs. His son Garry reveals without hiding anything a far more complex and fascinating hinterland to this life than anyone could have imagined. He chronicles unsparingly the deprived Nottingham background, the desertion of his mother by Cavan's Irish father; the pre-World War One youth, the silver voice, the immense celebrity, the enchanting wife who was the niece and ward of the soprano Dame Maggie Teyte; and then the turbulence of rejection, which left him high and dry, confused and angry, and had a traumatic effect on his wife and three sons. The memoir is a poignant human document of the age-old battle of fathers and sons.
It is written by the only person who could write it - and who just happens to be a world-renowned biographer.