US singer who achieved top three hit left penniless on benefits after spate of wild crimes

A US singer who scored a UK top three hit was left penniless and relying on benefits after a spate of crimes. PJ Proby - real name James Marcus Smith - shot to fame with his hit song Hold Me in 1964, which soared to number three in the UK charts and number five in Canada. He continued his winning streak with Together that same year, which reached number eight in the UK charts, then Somewhere, which got to number six, and Maria a year later which also reached the top 10.

At the height of his fame, he owned three Rolls-Royces, a Learjet and a luxury yacht. But despite still performing today - and releasing a greatest hits album in 2008 - Proby was already struggling financially by 1968. He declared himself bankrupt after running into tax problems. His financial trouble didn't end there. Instead, his life descended into a spate of wild crimes and prison stints.

By 1965 he had been banned from every major theatre in the UK and by BBC and ITV after his trousers split on-stage. Later, he was arrested in Texas for vagrancy, he was later jailed for shooting an illegal weapon in 1973, after threatening his partner Claudia with a gun and firing "several shots".

In the early nineties he was behind bars in prison instead for beating his partner Elizabeth Conway. He claimed the pair had "argued" but that later she was there to collect him from the penitentiary when he was released in 1992.

Shortly after his release, Proby suffered a heart attack and clinically died, with his heart stopping twice as he was rushed to hospital. He survived, but after becoming addicted to both alcohol and Ativan, he decided to go sober and said that was "the last day [he] took a drink".

Things didn't get easier for him after that. In 2011 he was charged with benefit fraud at the age of 73, with the Department for Work and Pensions alleging he had cheated the system out of more than £47,000 after claiming to authorities he had just £5 in his bank account.

He denied all charges against him and was eventually cleared at Worcester Crown Court in 2012. He said he needed the benefits to live, saying at the time: "For the last four years I have lived in fear of becoming homeless - because my housing benefit was cut off - and of being wrongly sent to prison for a crime I never committed."

He added: "I was not dishonest when I claimed benefits, which I needed in order to live. I only performed to give pleasure and not to make money."

Though it appeared things were looking up for the star by 2019, with a farewell UK tour scheduled, the string of gigs was subsequently axed when Proby admitted to being attracted to young girls - and advocated for marriage to girls as young as 12.

He told The Mirror: "I won't marry a girl I can't raise from the age of 12, 13 or 14. I like that they're young and fresh-looking and don't come with baggage - nobody's messed with their heart and broken it.

"They're still in school so I can have a hand in their education and make sure their grades are all right, make sure the way they think about religion is all right, and what is and isn't proper."

He said at the time he had been single for 22 years because "an agency would get in trouble if they looked for a girl of the kind I'm looking for, they'd go to prison". He tried to claim that his views stemmed from being "raised in Texas", where "usually girls did marry by 12".

He said in the same interview: "I never dated young girls; I married every one I went out with. My first wife, Marianne Adams, was 16. My second, Judy Howard, was 17. Then I married a 21-year old girl from Blackpool named Dulcie Taylor. My marriages lasted no longer than three years."