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Marcel Stellman obituary

“I’d like to be remembered as the Dreaded Marcel Stellman,” Marcel Stellman once told me. “That’s what Spike Milligan called me. I produced I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas with the Goons in 1956 and I thought it would be a Christmas release. Spike insisted that it came out in the summer. It was a Top 10 hit and we followed it with The Ying Tong Song.”

Stellman, who has died aged 96, had a long career in the music industry, both as a record executive and producer with Decca, and as a song lyricist whose hits included Tulips from Amsterdam. He was also, unexpectedly, the man who brought the popular television show Countdown to the UK.

In 1982, while visiting a music festival in Cannes, Stellman saw in his hotel room the French TV quiz show Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, and realised its potential. He licensed it from the show’s creator, Armand Jammot, and initiated some changes. As Countdown it became the first programme on Channel 4 and is still running more than 7,000 editions later, with Stellman’s name always in the credits.

As well as Tulips he wrote the English lyrics for several continental successes, such as the French hit Maladie D’amour by Henri Salvador – “It was about lovesickness and I liked the idea of a little bird who flew away, found love and brought it back” – which with Stellman’s words was finally a success for Dean Martin as Cha Cha Cha D’amour (1961).

As Stellman modestly reflected, “I know I’m not Cole Porter – I’m just a lucky guy who has had a few hits,” but he was acutely perceptive. In 1962 he told Decca that Charles Aznavour would be a major star in the UK if he would record in English.

Aznavour invited him to Paris: “I had a lovely lunch with his wife and mother and then he said, ‘Let’s go to work.’ We went into the courtyard, where there was a treehouse with a piano, table and chairs. I was scared stiff to climb up there but I had to do it.”

Stellman wrote 10 lyrics for Aznavour, including You’ve Let Yourself Go, with its brilliant serio-comic couplet, “I look at you in sheer despair / And see your mother standing there.”

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, Marcel was the son of a Scottish mother, Lily, and a Belgian father, Willy Stellman, who was an adventurer of sorts, going from one job to another. Marcel went to a French lycée in the city, where he learned the piano and, he said, introduced swimming to music at a school sports day. In 1938 his father took him to see Louis Armstrong at his Uncle Leopold’s jazz club, the performance making a lasting impression on him.

The German occupation changed everything. Several Jewish relations were killed and Stellman was sent to Drancy, an internment camp for those destined for Auschwitz or Dachau. The camp was liberated in 1944 and Stellman went to Glasgow to join other family members, where he used his fluency in French to gain work on the BBC’s schools radio programmes. The children’s element was always there; in 1957, he selected the repertoire for Pinky and Perky, and, 20 years later, did the same for the Smurfs.

The BBC work eventually took him to London, where he settled with his wife, Jean (nee Myers), whom he married in 1951. They had two children, Rosie and Victor, who both died in infancy from a genetic disorder, Tay-Sachs disease. Despite the ordeals in his life, Stellman always had a positive, confident personality.

In 1952, the American music paper Cash Box hired Stellman as their UK correspondent. When he interviewed the head of Decca records, Edward Lewis, he suggested improvements for the label’s standing in Europe. Lewis offered him a job and he worked there for 30 years, initially as European sales manager, then as a producer/jack of all trades.

When Decca acquired the rights to Elvis Presley’s new recordings in 1957, Stellman had to ensure the first release was a major hit. The track was Teddy Bear and so he sent out cuddly bears with promotional copies.

His breakthrough into production came with Edmundo Ros, whose Caribbean sound he enjoyed, and he produced his album Rhythms of the South (R-O-S) in 1959. They went on to make 20 more together. Then he produced the pianist and arranger Stanley Black, whose Phase 4 records were used to test stereo systems in hi-fi shops.

Stellman had an offday with This Pullover for Jess Conrad (1961), for which he wrote the English words and which was regularly voted as one of the worst records ever made. He produced Kinky Boots, by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman (1964), a spin-off from The Avengers TV series written by his friend Herbert Kretzmer; it was not initially a hit, but a 1990 re-release reached the UK top 10.

At Jean’s suggestion he wrote a lyric for the Shadows’ Dance On! which became a hit for Kathy Kirby (1963) and for which he won an Ivor Novello award. He wrote Vikki Carr’s There I Go (1967) and A Little Love and Understanding (1975) for Gilbert Bécaud, a performer as urbane as himself.

Other translation successes include Be Mine, by Lance Fortune (1960), and I Will Live My Life for You, recorded by Tony Bennett after Salvador’s Un Garçon des Îles. Originally a Flemish hit, Stellman’s Tulips from Amsterdam was a UK No 3 for Max Bygraves in 1958. He sang it twice at Royal Variety performances and met Stellman when he was to appear again. “I hope you’re singing Tulips,” said Stellman. “Not this time,” said Bygraves, “She’ll think I don’t know anything else.”

After retirement in 1989, Stellman embraced his social life, but also took his magistrate responsibilities seriously. He was made freeman of the City of London and chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and was a lifetime honorary member of the Goons Society.

Jean survives him.

Marcel Leopold Stellman, songwriter and record producer, born 15 February 1925; died 2 May 2021