WHAT A LIFE!

Paul Vance, writer of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

Money spinner

PAUL VANCE, who has died aged 92, wrote one of the best-known novelty songs in pop music history. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini sold more than 20 million copies and topped the U.S. charts in 1960. Thirty years later, it was an unlikely British No 1 for children’s TV presenter Timmy Mallett. No wonder Vance once boasted: ‘It’s a money machine.’

Why so popular?

THE song’s core message will be familiar to any woman who has bought a racy new bikini and looked in the mirror, only to be plunged into a deep depression. ‘She was as nervous as nervous can be,’ sang Brian Hyland in the original. ‘She was afraid that somebody would see.’ Basically, it’s body shaming. Also, does anybody really look good in yellow?

Daughter’s despair

VANCE was inspired by the discomfort of his daughter Paula, aged two, during a family trip to the seaside. Cheeky boys pointed at her new bikini and said: ‘That girl has no clothes on.’ (These days they’d probably be arrested.) Paula hid in the changing room.

She was eventually coaxed into the water, but lost her bikini bottoms. Were her parents sympathetic? Not entirely. Her mother Margie was laughing so much that she briefly choked on some food. And Paul wrote the song’s lyrics during the trip home.

The early years

JOSEPH PAUL FLORIO (he changed his name when his career took off) was born into an Italian immigrant family in New York, where his mother Katie was a bit of a character.

Paul’s real father was a Jewish barber called Willie, and his five older sisters had ‘maybe two or three fathers’. Katie also claimed to be a witch, and sold illegal hooch which she made in the bath.

Vance left school at 15, joined the army, and began writing songs while in solitary confinement for fighting. As you do.

Just like sex

VANCE once said: ‘My life was like an endless orgasm.’ He was certainly a bit of a ladies’ man, but he was talking about the string of hits he wrote for people like Perry Como (Catch A Falling Star) and Frank Sinatra (Then Suddenly love).

Hang on, I’m not dead

VANCE was surprised to learn from a TV news report in 2006 that he was dead. The actual dead man, called Paul Van Valkenburgh, had boasted to his family that he wrote the song — under the name Vance — but had signed away the rights.

The real Vance was furious, and demanded an apology after fearing for his royalty payments. ‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘If they think you’re dead, they ain’t going to send the money.’

If that wasn’t bad enough, two horses that he owned were withdrawn from races as a mark of respect.