Clodagh Rodgers (5 March 1947 – 18 April 2025) was a Northern Irish[a] singer, best known for her hit singles including "Come Back and Shake Me", "Goodnight Midnight" and "Jack in the Box" and albums including You Are My Music, It's Different Now and Save Me.
Rodgers was born in County Down in 1947 and started singing at the age of 13. She made her television debut in September 1962. She represented the United Kingdom at the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest with "Jack in the Box",[6] and finished in fourth place. After the contest, the single reached #4 on the UK singles chart.
After her divorce in 1979, Rodgers stopped making new music and reduced her live appearances. She released two final singles in 1980 and her last overall release was a 2012 CD. Rodgers lived the last years of her life in Surrey in relative obscurity until her death in 2025.
Early life
Rodgers was born in Warrenpoint[7] and began her professional singing career at the age of 13, when she opened for Michael Holliday.[7]
Career
Her father, a dancehall tour promoter, helped her sign with Decca in 1962, where her earliest singles were produced by Shel Talmy.[7] Her UK TV debut came on 26 September 1962, appearing as a guest on BBC TV's Adam Faith Show performing Let's Jump the Broomstick. She made four singles with Decca, before moving to EMI's Columbia label in 1965, where 'Cloda Rogers' made the 1966 single "Stormy Weather"/"Lonely Room".[8] Although none of her Decca or Columbia singles made the UK Singles Chart, Rodgers became a regular face on British television and appeared in the musical films Just for Fun (1963) and It's All Over Town (1964).[7] She also appeared in various song festivals, finishing third in the European Song Cup competition in Greece with "Powder Your Face With Sunshine".[7] In November 1963, she flew to Nashville, Tennessee at the invitation of the American singer Jim Reeves, to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. On his Irish tour earlier that year, he had recognised that Rodgers was a promising artist with a bright future.[9][10]
Rodgers appeared with Honeybus on BBC2's music programme Colour Me Pop on 12 October 1968.[citation needed] Her career changed dramatically when she married John Morris, who became her manager. She signed a three-single deal with RCA in 1968, but the first two failed to chart. When producer and songwriter Kenny Young saw her on Colour Me Pop he telephoned the BBC to find out who she was. Rodgers had chart success in 1969 under his creative wing and with Morris' management (Morris also later managed The Rubettes, Kenny and Fox),[11] – "Come Back and Shake Me" was the first hit, reaching #3 (the song reached #2 in Ireland) and "Goodnight Midnight" followed later in the year reaching #4 – the two songs made her the best-selling female singles artist of 1969.[12]
The same year, she won 'The Best Legs' in British showbusiness and insured her voice for one million pounds. Her next two single releases "Biljo" and "Everybody Go Home, The Party's Over" were both hits, "Biljo" being Rodgers third Top 20 hit.[citation needed]
She also recorded "Scrapbook", penned by Billy Ritchie, which appeared on her 1969 album Midnight Clodagh. In 1970, she recorded the Labi Siffre song "Give Me Just a Little More Line" with Young under the name Moonshine; though it achieved airplay and critical notice, it failed to chart. Rodgers picked this track as one of her eight favourite discs when she appeared as the featured castaway on the BBC's Desert Island Discs in March 1971.[13]
In May 1970, Rodgers appeared on the bill at the NME poll-winner's concert, hosted by presenters, Tony Blackburn and Jimmy Savile.[14] She was voted favourite female singer for 1969.[citation needed]
Eurovision
Rodgers became a television star and a household name and in 1970, she was asked to represent the UK in the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin. The BBC were concerned over the reaction the UK entrant would get on the stage from the Irish public. As a Roman Catholic female from Northern Ireland, she received death threats from the IRA who regarded her as a traitor, as a result of her appearing for the UK.[15]
Heralded by two separate front-cover features on the BBC listing's magazine, the Radio Times, Rodgers appeared as the resident guest on It's Cliff Richard, a prime-time variety show hosted by Cliff Richard on BBC1 from January 1971, performing one shortlisted song a week for six weeks, followed by a performance of all six on week seven and with a repeat of the six songs immediately after. Viewers would normally have been asked to send in postcard votes for their favourites, but because of a postal strike, regional juries decided the winner, with "Jack in the Box", written by John Worsley and David Myers, being named the winner the following week.[citation needed]
For the first time in the Eurovision Song Contest, broadcasters were required to prepare a 'preview' video of the song for broadcast in all the participating Eurovision countries to help promote the songs before the contest. For the performance in Dublin, Rodgers wore a pink frilly top and spangled hot pants.[16] She finished in fourth place, behind Monaco, Spain and Germany.[citation needed]
After Eurovision, the single reached #4 on the UK Singles Chart, her third UK Top 10 success.[17] It remains her most famous hit.[10] The record was also successful all over Europe.[citation needed]
At Eurovision, Rodgers' sister Lavinia joined The Breakaways as her four backing vocalists. Lavinia was almost part of a backing group called Three’s a Crowd.[citation needed] In 1982, Lavinia and brother Louis attempted to represent the UK in the contest with "Every Day of My Life" as part of the group Good Looks, but finished second to Bardo in the A Song For Europe contest.[citation needed]
Post-Eurovision career
Rodgers admitted to Ken Bruce during his eponymous BBC Radio 2 show in an interview broadcast on Friday, 25 May 2012, that the intention had been to release "Another Time, Another Place", which had placed fourth of the six entries in the Song for Europe contest as the follow-up single to "Jack in the Box" and she began promoting it whilst in Dublin for the Eurovision final.[18] However, Engelbert Humperdinck released a cover version before her track was available, denying her the opportunity to release it, but gaining himself a #13 hit single.[19] Despite only one more Top 30 chart single, "Lady Love Bug" in autumn 1971, Rodgers continued to be a major TV star in the UK, guesting on many shows (including playing herself in the BBC sitcom Whack-O![20]), and appearing successfully in the biggest cabaret clubs throughout the country.[citation needed]
Rodgers also became the face of Bisto gravy, in a series of television advertisements.[citation needed]
This success was mirrored on stage, where she starred in London's West End in her own show at the Talk of the Town (breaking Sammy Davis Jr.'s box office record), and in Cinderella at the London Palladium in 1971, which was also a success and ran for months. The Cinderella show (co starring Ronnie Corbett) then ran at the Manchester Palace in 1972 and at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1973.[citation needed]
As part of BBC1's celebration of the UK and Republic of Ireland both joining the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973, Rodgers appeared on Top Of The Year on 31 December 1972, alongside Bruce Forsyth[24] and with Jimmy Tarbuck in The Tarbuck Follies on 1 January 1973[25] to see in the new year.[citation needed]
Having left RCA in early 1974 (after two well received albums It's Different Now and You are my Music, Rodgers then released a single for the Pye label, "Saturday Sunday" later that year. Numerous TV work supported all these three releases, including Top of the Pops and Pebble Mill At One.[citation needed]
In 1978, Rodgers hosted UK ITV's St. Patrick's Day variety show for the first time, appearing on the cover of the TVTimes to promote the show and at the same time was confirmed as the host for the 1979 show. Later in 1978, Rodgers teamed with Terry Wogan on the ITV game show 3-2-1 in the programme's first Christmas Special Celebrity edition.[citation needed]
She split from her manager/husband not long after their son's birth and opted for motherhood over a musical career; although she released two singles on the Precision label in 1980.[7] One of these tracks was "My Simple Heart", which was placed on a B-side. Shortly after its release, The Three Degrees released their version of it, which reached the UK Top 10. Similarly, Rodgers had released "Stand by Your Man" as the B-side of her 1971 single "Lady Love Bug." "Stand by Your Man" (co-written by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill) had previously been a hit for Tammy Wynette in the United States.[citation needed]
Later years
Rodgers appeared in two hit musicals in the West End, Pump Boys and Dinettes at the Piccadilly and Albery Theatres (co starring with Joe Brown) and in the lead role of Mrs Johnstone in the long-running hit Blood Brothers at the Phoenix Theatre.[7] She appeared in the UK tour of Blood Brothers between 1995 and 1998. This included shows in York, Liverpool, Bromley and Bristol. Rodgers co-starred with David Cassidy in the Bristol production.[citation needed]
In 1996, the first of two CD retrospectives was issued, bringing Rodgers back into the limelight. In 1998, she made a TV appearance with other former Eurovision artists such as Johnny Logan and Lynsey de Paul, (one of her co stars in Pump Boys and Dinettes) performing on comedian John Shuttleworth's Eurovision parodyEuropigeon on BBC Two, just before the 1998 contest in Birmingham.[citation needed]
In 1999, Mint Royale issued the track "Shake Me," which sampled Rodgers' original recording of "Come Back And Shake Me"; it was featured on the British television programme Queer As Folk.[citation needed]
In 2001, Rodgers played a recurring character in the ITV police drama series The Bill.[citation needed]
In 2012, Rodgers released a CD The Kenny Young Years. It features all Rodgers' recorded highs with Young.[citation needed]
Personal life, illness and death
Rodgers was married twice. Firstly she married John Morris in 1968, in London; he later became her manager. The marriage, which produced one son, ended in divorce in 1979.[26] Her second husband, guitarist Ian Sorbie, whom she married in 1987 and with whom she had had a son in 1984, died of a brain tumour in 1995, not long after their Paignton-based restaurant business collapsed, leaving them bankrupt.[26] Rodgers' sister Lavinia was also a singer.[citation needed]
Rodgers, who had been ill for around three years, died at her home in Cobham, Surrey, where she had lived for many years, on 18 April 2025, at the age of 78.[27][28]
Discography
Albums
1969 Clodagh Rodgers – (RCA SF8033) – UK Number 27
