THE singer Noel Harrison, who died recently at the age of 79, built up a strong following in Bournemouth before he recorded the Oscar-winning hit The Windmills of Your Mind.

Harrison was the son of the screen legend Rex Harrison and Collette Thomas, the first of Harrison’s six wives.

He lived in Bude, Cornwall, during the war and went to private schools until he was 15. His mother then took him to live in the Swiss Alps and he never went to school again – taking up ski-racing instead and becoming British champion in 1953.

He began making a living as a singer and guitarist in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, he became a regular at The Bistro in Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, according to retired entertainer David Medina, who remembers his performances there.

“He had quite a following and people knew Rex Harrison was his father,” Mr Medina said.

From 1965, he was based in the US, where he had a hit single, A Young Girl, and made an appearance on The Man from UNCLE.

In 1968, he recorded The Windmills of Your Mind for the film The Thomas Crown Affair.

He remembered: “It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I went to the studio one afternoon and sang it and pretty much forgot about it.”

He said he only realised later “what a timeless, beautiful piece” the song was. “It won best song at the 1968 Oscars and turned out to be my most notable piece of work. But all this was happening on the fringes of real life,” he said.

The song’s Academy Award success came the year after Harrison’s father Rex also sang the year’s Oscar winner, Talk to the Animals.

Harrison later moved to Canada, toured the US in productions of Camelot and The Sound of Music, and returned to the UK in the 1990s to live in Devon.

He kept recording and performing, playing the Glastonbury Festival’s Spirit of ’71 stage in 2011. He performed his last concert the same evening he died in hospital following a heart attack at home.