Lena Martell

Lena Martell was born Helen Thomson on 15 May 1940 in Glasgow and was raised in Possilpark, in the north of the city. Her father nicknamed her Lena, and that became her first name on stage. Her mother, also Helen, ran a handbag stall at the Barras market, and Lena kept visiting her mother's old friends there for the rest of her life.

She began singing at the age of 11 with her elder brother Allan's Dixie band. As a teenager she sang with the Jimmie McGregor Band at the Barrowland Ballroom. At 15 she won the ITV talent show Find the Singer, which newspapers later compared to an early Pop Idol, and at 16 she was given her first recording contract. She chose the surname Martell after the brandy, joking that someone had already spent a small fortune publicising it.

Details of her schooling have not been published in the sources used for this page. Her musical training came from performing: singing in her brother's band from the age of 11, working dance halls such as the Barrowland, and later doing impressions of singers including Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt in cabaret at Mayfair's Bagatelle Club in London. She had a contralto voice and said she kept more than 700 lyrics in her memory.

Her early television work included the BBC series The Friday Show in September 1961 and appearances on The Charlie Chester Music Hall. In May 1962 she appeared in the Five Past Eight Show at the Alhambra Theatre in Glasgow. She released singles from 1961 and her first album, Some New Someone Blue, in 1964.

She then worked in the United States, singing in New York and Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., working alongside Liza Minnelli and understudying Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl on Broadway. In London's West End she played Nancy in Oliver!.

Back in Scotland she became a BBC television star. Lena's Show aired on BBC One Scotland in April 1967, Presenting Lena Martell ran on the network in 1971 and 1973, and Make the Music Speak followed in 1977. Her Saturday night programmes ran for about ten years with reported audiences of 11 to 13 million, and the Daily Record reported that she was voted British TV personality of the year four times in a row.

With Pye Records she released albums such as That Wonderful Sound of Lena Martell (1974) and The Best of Lena Martell (1976, gold). Her 1979 re-release of "One Day at a Time" by Marijohn Wilkin and Kris Kristofferson reached number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks, and Lena's Music Album reached number four and went platinum. By Request (number 9) and Beautiful Sunday (number 23) followed on Ronco in 1980. She also had great success at the London Palladium and on luxury cruise ships.

After years away caring for her mother, she returned with Scotdisc. My Homeland (2004) went gold in Scotland, followed by Songs from a Woman's Heart (2005), Stand by Me (2006) and The Rose (2007). She toured Scotland after her heart surgery, including a 2009 run that opened at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Martell described herself as a very private person and disliked giving interviews. She did not marry and had no children. In 2009 she said she had been with the same man for 40 years, and in her later years she lived in Bishopbriggs with her long-term partner David.

She faced a long run of loss and illness. Her brother Allan was killed by a drunk driver, and her first love, the musician Gordon Cameron, died of a brain haemorrhage. In 1979 she was treated for cancerous nodules on her vocal cords. She had two breakdowns in the early 1980s. In the 1990s she nursed her mother through Alzheimer's disease, was declared bankrupt when a property company she owned went bust, and had a double mastectomy after breast cancer. Her mother died in July 2001. In March 2008 she had a triple heart bypass at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

She saw performing as a duty to the audience. In a 1979 Evening Times interview she said that when she sang she always smiled, because it relaxed the throat and made it pleasant for people watching. She called herself a loner who was always in transit.

After caring for her mother she spoke openly about dementia, calling Alzheimer's "a terrible, terrible thing" but also a journey she would not have missed. After her heart surgery she said she was living by her song, one day at a time.

Martell was the first Scottish woman to top the UK Singles Chart as a solo artist, and "One Day at a Time" remains her signature song. Iain Gordon of Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre called her "the last of Scotland's music hall greats" and compared her journey to that of Susan Boyle. Friends described her as Scotland's answer to Shirley Bassey. Scotdisc's Dougie Stevenson called her a unique talent, and Janey Kirk suggested releasing their late duet so that fans could hear her once more.

BPI certifications listed for her include platinum for Lena's Music Album (1979), gold for the single "One Day at a Time" (1979), gold for The Best of Lena Martell, By Request and Beautiful Sunday, and silver for The Lena Martell Collection. Newspapers reported an entry in the 1979 Guinness Book of Records for the song's 36 weeks on the chart, and that she was voted British TV personality of the year four times in a row. Her 2004 album My Homeland was reported to have gone gold in Scotland.

Selected albums: Some New Someone Blue (1964), Presenting Lena Martell (1972), That Wonderful Sound of Lena Martell (1974), The Best of Lena Martell (1976), The Lena Martell Collection (1978), Lena's Music Album (1979), By Request (1980), Beautiful Sunday (1980), Songs of Love (1982), My Homeland (2004), The Rose (2007) and One Day at a Time: The Ultimate Collection (2008).

Television: The Friday Show (1961), Juke Box Jury (1966), Dee Time (1967), Lena's Show (1967), Presenting Lena Martell (1971 and 1973), Make the Music Speak (1977) and a further BBC Scotland series in 1979, her ninth for the BBC.

Lena Martell died peacefully in a nursing home near Glasgow after a short illness, in the week before her death was announced on 5 October 2026. She was 86. The Daily Record reported that she had suffered a chest infection in the days before her death and was still receiving fan mail at the home. The exact date of death has not been made public. She is due to be laid to rest in Bishopbriggs on 19 October 2026.