Lena Zavaroni: fame, anorexia and the tragedy of a 1970s child star
One with Russell Harty where he comments that her eating disorder must save on restaurant bills and another when Terry Wogan tells her to eat up so she can get back to “your chunky self”. The little girl with the big voice was 10 when she appeared on Opportunity Knocks – television’s predecessor to Britain’s Got Talent and Pop Idol – singing Ma! He’s Making Eyes at Me, 11 when it was a hit and 13 when she was diagnosed with anorexia, a barely known illness then called the “slimmer’s disease”. Before she died in 1999 the girl from Rothesay on the Scottish island of Bute had hosted her own TV shows, performed at the White House and shared a stage with Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball.