Des O'Connor net worth: How much money did the 'Ultimate Entertainer' make in his career?

Des O’Connor died aged 88 on November 14 after a fall at home. Tonight, ITV celebrates him in a one-hour special entitled Des O’Connor: The Ultimate Entertainer. Des’s television career spanned six decades.

Des hosted some of the country’s most popular TV programmes, rising up through Britain’s variety show tradition.

He became a star of the screen almost every year from 1963 until the 2000s.

The star began his television career by hosting The Des O’Connor Show, a British variety show which ran for eight series on ITV.

He later hosted Des O’Connor Entertains which featured singing dancing and comedy.

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Des O’Connor Tonight soon followed, running for seven series on BBC Two, and then a further seventeen series once it switched to ITV.

He was also a huge game show host, taking over from Des Lynham as the host of Countdown with Carol Vorderman, and Take Your pick – where he met his fourth wife Jodie Wilson.

Des also hosted the compèred the Royal Variety Performance in both 1995 and 1997.

In 2002, Des landed an afternoon slot alongside Melanie Sykes, for their show Today with Des and Mel.

He also had his own one-off show in 2012, The One and Only Des O’Connor, to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Des was also a singer. He achieved four top 10 singles, including the number one “I pretend” and has sold over 10 million records.

The entertainer was also no stranger to the stage, having performed at venues around the world including London, Las Vegas, Sydney and Toronto.

Des was known to happy as the butt of jokes.

He appeared on Morecambe and Wise throughout the 1970s as Eric Morecambe regularly insulted his comedic and vocal abilities.

Of the many jokes at his expense, was that ‘Des’ was “short for desperate” and their poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue, Des can’t sing, we know that’s true!”

However, Des and the duo were actually good friends and he actually wrote some of the barbs himself.

He recalled: “I used to send Eric and Ernie jokes to insult me with and people would come up to me and say: ‘Did you hear what he said?’ And I’d say under my breath, ‘Yes I know, I wrote that one.’”

source: express.co.uk