Shirley Abicair is an Australian-born singer, musician, TV personality, actress and author.
Early life
Shirley Abicair was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Some sources show her year of birth as 1935, but a contemporary account shows she was 23 or 24 on arrival in Britain and, as she had completed tertiary studies in Australia, the earlier date seems more likely. She was the only daughter of a Wing Commander in the RAAF.
While studying in Sydney she began singing at parties and private functions to support her studies, accompanying herself on the zither. Self-taught, she is said to have found the zither whilst rummaging in a cupboard as a small child. She then entered and won a Sydney radio talent quest. This led to offers of engagements on radio and in theatre and cabaret. Abicair, a typist, became popular in Sydney in the late 1940s. Around 1952, she left Sydney for London. She was photographed by a newspaper photographer looking for pretty faces while disembarking at London Airport. Her photo was spotted by a radio producer in the newspaper and within weeks this led to her appearing on BBC Television. Not much later that year she had her own programme in which she sang and played the zither. In December, she also appeared in the title role of the pantomime Cinderella with George Martin, the Casual Comedian, at the Brixton Empress Theatre. The zither was, along with her Australian-ness, to become her trademark. She released her first record "Careless Love" that year. In 1953 the Empire theater in Nottingham billed her as "TV's zither girl". During 1954 she co-starred with comedian Norman Wisdom in the film One Good Turn. In 1956, she recorded the title song for the soundtrack of the classic Australian film Smiley. On 26 March 1956, Abicair appeared on BBC TVOff The Record. Through the middle/late 1950s she hosted, a series called Children's Hour, a children's TV show. In the process she became an unofficial ambassador and promoter of Australia to a generation of British children. This Australian image was reinforced by her release of records with titles such as " Fair Dinkum" and "Botany Bay". Her rendering of the Australian folk songLittle Boy Fishing off a Wooden Pier, released in 1956, become a regular on the BBCs Children's Favourites request program. During 1959 she returned to Australia briefly to record a series of television documentary films she had conceived, based on Australian folk songs, entitled Shirley Abicair in Australia, for the Australian ABC TV network. In 1961, Abicair accepted a request to perform at The Variety Club of Great Britain eighth annual Star Gala at the Festival Gardens, Battersea Park, London, Saturday 13 May 1961. In 1962, she toured the Soviet Union, and in the same year she gave a recital at the Festival Hall in London. Later that year in October she visited the United States for performances. It was in 1962 as well that her children's book, Tales of Tumbarumba was published. In June 1963, in the US, she appeared with the Smothers Brothers on Hootenanny and the panel game showTo Tell the Truth, with Cicely Tyson25 March 1963. In December, for ABC Australia, she appeared on Comedy Bandbox,. 1965 saw her put out an EP, "On the Nursery Beat", which was a number of nursery rhymes put to a Mersey beat. During 1965 she did a tour with British comedian Frankie Howerd to entertain the personnel of and 848 Naval Air Squadron, at Sibu airfield, Malaysia, and other British forces stationed on the Malay Peninsula and in Sarawak, Borneo, during the unrest there. This tour was filmed and later released as a TV special "East of Howerd". During 1966–67 she released a number of more mature songs on record including her version of the Gerry Goffin–Carole King song "So Goes Love'" and Paul Simon's "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall". She had previously, in the early 1960s, released three albums of folk songs. She joined up with harmonica player Larry Adler in 1968 to do a children's theatre show. She began her own one-woman theatre show in 1969 at the ArtsTheatre in London. In 1971, she moved to Oregon in the United States, where she appeared in a series of college concerts with the American writerKen Kesey. Abicair currently lived in London and divides her time between Britain, the USA and Australia.
