Cockney Rebel frontman Steve Harley, who died in March last year at the age of 73, left an estate valued at almost £500,000.
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 in the music business.
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His will, in which he left a total of £469,213, stated that his estate should be left 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, an illness which hit him as a child in 1953.
He previously said: “I was two and I copped a packet in the right leg. But that’s all. All I do is limp … and it does not affect my life.”
However, he spent much of his youth in and out of hospital, undergoing major surgeries in 1963 and 1966, and having to walk on crutches made him the butt of his schoolmates’ jokes.
Harley, whose real name was Stephen Nice, and who lived in Essex, also made a donation of £25,000 to The Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
As a child he had been playing guitar since he was 10, and quickly started writing songs and performing at local folk venues.
By the age of 21 he decided to try his luck in the music business, surviving on the dole while honing his craft on the London folk circuit and busking on the underground. In 1972 he formed Cockney Rebel.
His will, which was drawn up in 2023, asked that his body be cremated and his ashes spread around the poplar tree known as “Ron’s Tree”.
