ETHNA CAMPBELL, a shining, singing star of Tyne Tees Television’s affectionately remembered One O’Clock Show, died on Saturday at a Darlington care home. She was 73.

“She was a lovely girl, a great singer and one of the most enchanting people you could meet,” recalled former co-star George Romaines yesterday.

The live, 30-minute programme ticked over very nicely, five days a week, for 1,200 shows between 1959 and 1964 – “£15 a time,” Ethna would recall.

“I was never going to make my fortune.”

She was 20, a tobacco factory worker in Belfast, when workmates secretly entered her for a talent show in which a prize was an audition with the North-East’s embryonic independent television station.

George Romaines, who had been an electrician at Shildon Works, recalled first seeing her at the Blue Parrot club, in Sunniside, near Gateshead.

“From the first note she sang, she blew the room away,” he said.

The One O’Clock Show also made North-East household names of entertainers such as Austin Steele, Jack Haig, Terry O’Neill, Shirley Wilson and Chris Langford.

“It was like painting the Forth Bridge. They’d never dream of it today,” said George Romaines. “The moment you finished one show, you’d go somewhere and start running through the next.”

When the One O’Clock Show ended, Ethna became a regular on Stars on Sunday, appeared on the Two Ronnies and in cabaret with the likes of Max Bygraves, David Frost, Dickie Henderson and Val Doonican.

She met her long-term partner, Joe, in the Flamingo nightclub, in Darlington, in 1963. He died five years ago.

Ethna had had mental health problems, believed to have been caused by alcohol addiction.

“She was a lovely person, but it was sad to see what the drink did to her,” said friend Peter Ratcliffe.

She and George shared a stage for the first time since 1964 when they met in a Darlington bar for a John North column interview nine years ago.

Ethna was 64, broke briefly into Will You Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, but had clearly lost her voice. She blamed cigarettes.

Her best known song, and the title of one of her albums, was The Old Rugged Cross.

Ethna had asked for it to be played at her funeral. A date has to be announced.