In 1971, when the BBC chat show Parkinson began, its host, Michael Parkinson, asked his friend Laurie Holloway to be the musical director. “I unfortunately had to refuse because I was engaged to be the musical director for Engelbert Humperdinck,” said Holloway, who has died aged 86. “We stayed good friends although I had to turn the offer down.”
Holloway, a renowned jazz pianist who had accompanied Cleo Laine on stage and was at one time a member of her husband John Dankworth’s band, worked with Humperdinck between 1970 and 1975 on tours of the US and TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic – as well as studio recordings – while Harry Stoneham became the Parkinson show’s musical director and composer of its theme tune, one of the most recognisable on TV.
The show originally ran until 1982. On its relaunch in 1998, Holloway, along with his big band, finally had the chance to play the “dat-diddly-da-da-da, dat-diddly-da-da-da” jazzy tune and continued with Parkinson when the programme switched to ITV (2004-07). As well as performing the opening and closing theme, Holloway – distinctive for his silver hair and goatee beard – came up with appropriate arrangements to herald guests. “The play-on that I wasn’t allowed to do was Two Little Boys for Ant and Dec,” he said. “The show producers thought the idea was too cheeky.”
Another star who valued Holloway’s talents, on stage and screen over three decades from the 1980s, was Barry Humphries, usually in the guise of Dame Edna Everage. Humphries described Holloway and his other accompanists as his “closest companions”, adding: “Very often the show is just me on stage with a pianist accompanying the songs and filling in during quick changes before the rousing gladioli chorus at the end … A good pianist will often know the show better than the artiste himself.”
To Holloway’s surprise, he was also approached to become musical director on the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. “I told the BBC I didn’t do dance numbers,” he explained. “But they liked the Parkinson band and asked if I could do the same thing for the show.”
Holloway, leading the live band and composing the arrangements, left after the first three series (2004-05). “It was an awful lot of work and an awful lot of writing, involving 14 musical arrangements a week,” he said. “My daughters said they never saw me. Politicians often say they are leaving to spend more time with their families and that’s what I actually did.”
Showing his talent for composing original music, Holloway wrote the theme tunes for popular ITV series such as Punchlines (1981-84), Game for a Laugh (1981-85) and Beadle’s About (1986-96).
When commissioned to do the same for Blind Date (1985-2019), he decided on a song, in the vein of the American series on which it was based, The Dating Game, and took it to Alan Boyd, the head of entertainment at the ITV company LWT. “He hated the thought of a full song,” Holloway said. “So I said, ‘What about, “Blind date, blind date – da da da da da da!’ And he said, ‘That’s it!’ It was just two [different] notes, but they were so strong.”
Holloway was born in Oldham, Lancashire, to Annie (nee Gillespie), and Marcus Holloway, a French polisher and self-taught pianist. Laurie started playing by ear aged four, began lessons three years later and became a church organist and choirmaster at 12. He then played Saturday-night gigs at a local ballroom and, aged 14, had a phone call from the bandleader Eddie Mendoza, who needed a pianist for a week-long booking at the Theatre Royal, Oldham.
On leaving Greenhill grammar school in the town, Holloway spent six months as an apprentice draughtsman before turning professional as a musician aged 16, spending two years with Syd Willmott and his Band. Stints followed with bands run by Arthur Plant in Dundee and others on transatlantic liners booked by the bandleader Geraldo’s agency.
Back in Britain, Holloway spent two years playing piano in Ronnie Rand’s dance orchestra at the Astoria, Charing Cross Road, in London, often rushing off at the end of the evening to play at the Gargoyle strip club, before performing with bands led by Johnny Gray and Cyril Stapleton.
He began to get session work on records such as the 1964 Petula Clark hit Downtown and was pianist and musical director for two sellout London Palladium shows the same year by Judy Garland and her daughter, Liza Minnelli. He said Garland “wasn’t the greatest singer, but she was so emotional – a bit like Shirley Bassey or Dorothy Squires”, adding: “They lived their songs.”
Holloway was soon able to pick and choose his assignments and once turned down the chance to work with Barbra Streisand. “I found the voice a bit thin,” he said.
Among many radio programmes with his quartet during the 60s, Holloway played on Rolf Harris’s shows (1964-67). On radio and television, they also backed Marion Montgomery (Marian Maud Runnells), the American jazz singer who moved to Britain and became Holloway’s second wife in 1965 after they met at a gig when he was accompanying Mel Tormé.
In the West End, he was in the pit band for Lionel Bart’s Blitz (Adelphi, 1962-63), composed the score for the farce Instant Marriage (Piccadilly, 1964-65), with the book and lyrics by Bob Grant, and was musical director of Piaf (Piccadilly, 1993-94).
His admirers included royalty. Princess Margaret, a regular visitor to Holloway and Montgomery’s home, asked him in 1990 to record a cassette of Scottish childhood songs that she and her sister, Queen Elizabeth II, would sing at Buckingham Palace – with Holloway accompanying them – as a 90th-birthday present for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
He was appointed MBE in 2013.
Montgomery died in 2002. Holloway is survived by his third wife, Maryann Lallyette, whom he married in 2014, and by two daughters, Abigail, from his marriage to Montgomery, and Karon, from his first marriage, to Julia (nee Macdonald), which ended in divorce.
• Laurie (Laurence) Holloway, pianist, musical director and composer, born 31 March 1938; died 9 January 2025
