Cockney Rebel frontman Steve Harley left a large amount of his hard-earned cash to charity when he died in March last year from cancer at the age of 73. The London-born singer and songwriter who had a No.1 hit in 1975 with Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) had a successful 50-year career as a performer. His will, in which he left a total of £469,213, stated that his estate should be in trust for his wife Dorothy and children Kerr and Greta.

He also stipulated that £25,000 should be donated from his estate to The British Polio Fellowship, after suffering from the debilitating illness in 1953. He shared: “I was two and copped a packet in the right leg. But that’s all. All I do is limp… and it does not affect my life.”

Despite speaking about his condition in a jovial fashion, the singer spent much of his youth in and out of the hospital, undergoing major surgeries in 1963 and 1966, and ended up walking on crutches, which made the rest of his class laugh at him.

He recalled the Rolling Stones paying a goodwill visit when he was a patient at Queen Mary’s hospital for children in Carshalton in 1964. Harley also made a sizeable donation of £25,000 to The Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

The charitable front man was originally born Stephen Nice in Deptford, south London, the second of the five children of Ronald Nice and his wife, Joyce (nee Forgham). She had been a singer with swing bands, while Ronald was a milkman who sometimes turned out for Brighton & Hove Albion FC.

He attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham Grammar School in New Cross, but left without taking his A-levels. Having long felt an urge to become a journalist, he found a job as a trainee accountant at the Daily Express on Fleet Street and manoeuvred his way into a trainee reporter’s job; he then became a reporter at various titles in the Essex County Newspapers group, before moving to the East London Advertiser.

In 1972, he formed Cockney Rebel. Mickie Most’s RAK Music Publishing offered them a deal, which turned into EMI offering a three-album deal.

In 1986, he and Sarah Brightman recorded the title song of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera and reached No. 7 on the UK chart. Harley was then offered the lead role in the show’s West End production, but after working on it for five months, he was unexpectedly replaced by Michael Crawford.