Shirley Abicair, who has died aged 96, introduced British audiences in the 1950s to new sounds and songs from around the world. She played the zither, a stringed instrument with its origins in Austria and Bavaria, and her repertoire included folk songs not only from her native Australia but also from France, Italy, Ireland, the US and Asia. A great storyteller, she became a regular fixture on British TV variety shows and children’s programmes.
She arrived almost penniless in London from Australia in 1952 – after stops in Singapore and Karachi to play at nightclubs to pay for her onward journey – and her career took off almost instantly. A newspaper photo of Abicair arriving at Heathrow was seen by a BBC radio producer looking for Commonwealth artists to appear in a radio programme. The band leader Geraldo heard her and booked her for a concert and a further audition, after which she appeared for the first time on the BBC TV programme The Centre Show, on 20 January 1953. Within a few weeks she had her own series with her zither and “a rhythm quartet”, and later that year released her first 78rpm single, an orchestra-and-zither treatment of Careless Love, once recorded by Bessie Smith.
She went on to appear alongside Norman Wisdom in the film One Good Turn (1955) and in the same year made the first of her appearances on the children’s TV show Crackerjack. Her skills as a children’s entertainer were further demonstrated by her appearances on the TV programmes Studio E and Children’s Hour, which she hosted with her puppet “friends”, Tea Cup and Clothespeg. The BBC request programme Children’s Favourites regularly featured her recording of Little Boy Fishin’ (1956), written by the Australian Bill Lovelock.
Abicair was Roy Plomley’s castaway on Desert Island Discs in 1956, and chose music by Bach, Fats Waller and Burl Ives, and, for her luxury item, a “case of avocado pears”.
She was an established light entertainment star, but complained that scripts for some programmes were “as monotonous as if tape-recorded by a parrot”. Arguing that “to be a good performer you must have good material to perform”, she worked with the producer George Martin, of Beatles fame, on the theme song for the 1956 film Smiley, set in a small country town in Australia, and praised Martin’s “warm, silent understanding and musicianship”.
She also worked with Lovelock to collect what she called “some of the most beautiful folk songs in the world” for her solo albums. It’s Shirley! (1958) included the English traditional Green Willow, which Steeleye Span later recorded as their hit All Around My Hat. The follow-up album Look! It’s Shirley (1959) included Willie the Weeper, a song recorded by Louis Armstrong and now arranged by Humphrey Lyttelton. A Delicate Air (1960) included Walzing Matilda and Spanish Is a Loving Tongue, a song written in the 1920s that became a Bob Dylan favourite.
Abicair’s albums pointed to eclectic musical taste, and in 1957 she appeared on the BBC’s first rock-era programme Six-Five Special, alongside Lyttelton and the Vipers skiffle group.
In the 60s she travelled extensively, touring Russia and the US, and entertaining British troops in the far east with the comedian Frankie Howerd. But she continued to work in children’s entertainment, and published a collection of children’s stories about an Indigenous Australian boy, The Tales of Tumbarumba, in 1962. Her final singles included covers of Paul Simon’s Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall (1966) and the Beatles’ This Girl (1967).
In the 70s, in a move that would have surprised those who remembered her as a family entertainer, she toured the US college circuit with the counterculture writer Ken Kesey (the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, known for his drug-induced adventures with the Merry Pranksters), and lived on his farm in Oregon.
In the punk era, she was name-checked by Ian Dury in his 1981 song Common As Muck, as one of those – along with Brigitte Bardot, Lionel Blair and Victor Hugo – who don’t come into this category.
Born in Melbourne, Shirley grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, the daughter of an RAAF wing commander and a music-loving mother. Her musical career started when she discovered a zither while looking through the attic of her parent’s home, and taught herself to play. At Sydney University, where she studied philosophy, she supported herself by working as a typist. At night she would sing to friends, and after winning a radio contest she began to sing professionally.
She was followed to Britain in 1952 by her then boyfriend, Murray Sayle, whom she had known since her university days. Both of their careers flourished in the UK – Sayle became a celebrated war reporter and adventurer – but their relationship was less successful.
She spent her final years living in London.
• Shirley Abicair, musician, writer and entertainer, born 25 October 1928; died 27 September 2025
