Jeremy Taylor (singer)

However, it remained popular with children in South Africa, selling more than any Elvis Presley single in South Africa. Also in the early sixties he contributed to the successful musical revue Wait a Minim!, performing several of his own compositions. His archival material was donated to the Hidden Years Music Archive preserved by the Documentation Centre for Music, Stellenbosch University, in 2017.

He continued to write songs and perform into the 21st century, in the United Kingdom, France and in the United States. In 2005 he recorded an album in Chicago, Live in Chicago.

Taylor had his own series of six folk-style shows entitled "Jeremy Taylor", supported by the house band Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators, broadcast between 15 May and 19 June 1980 from the BBC Television Theatre, London. The guests included Barbara Dickson, Alan Price, Spike Milligan, Kenny Baker, Pam Ayres, Peter Skellern and Isla St Clair. After befriending folk-rock singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, and his friend and guitarist, Alun Davies, Taylor helped Stevens translate one of his songs, "O Caritas", into Latin for an album, Catch Bull at Four. One of Taylor's albums was produced by Davies. Davies guested on a couple of the songs, but was uncomfortable with playing two roles on another person's album, saying to Melody Maker, "You can't put yourself in two places at once and get the best results."

He was a long-term collaborator and performer with Spike Milligan, and recorded a live album with him entitled Spike Milligan and Jeremy Taylor: An Adult Entertainment. This was recorded at Cambridge University on 2 December 1973 and released as a double LP entitled Spike Milligan with Jeremy Taylor Live at Cambridge University. It was later re-issued as a two-CD set.

After returning to Britain in 1964 to perform in Wait a Minim! in the West End, he joined the British folk music circuit and appeared on television. Later in the 1960s, he taught at Eton College while a political exile.

Taylor began performing in clubs and coffee-bars such as the Cul de Sac in Hillbrow, Johannesburg in the 1960s, and succeeded with the comedic song "The Ballad of the Southern Suburbs" [of Johannesburg], also known as "Ag Pleez Deddy", in 1961. The song, written for the stage show Wait a Minim!, was a surprise hit. In performance in Chicago, he explained that while teaching South African children English, he was "enchanted" by their patois and their lust for American and European consumer products like Pepsi Cola, Canada Dry, Eskimo Pie, popcorn and chewing gum, and films like Tarzan.

Jeremy Taylor (born 24 November 1937 in Newbury, Berkshire) is a retired English folk singer and songwriter who has spent much of his life in South Africa, originally as a teacher of English at St. Martin's School, Rosettenville in southern Johannesburg. Since 1994, he has lived in Wales and France. After attending the University of Oxford, Taylor became a folk singer in South Africa, remembered for his single "Ag Pleez Deddy".