Kenny Lynch, British singer and entertainer, dies at 81

Tributes have been paid to Kenny Lynch, the British singer and entertainer, who has died at the age of 81.

Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker remembered him as "a delightful, funny, talented man", while Boy George said he had been a "huge part of my 70s life".

Lynch had two Top 10 hits in the 1960s, toured with the Beatles, wrote songs for the Small Faces and appeared on Celebrity Squares and other TV shows.

According to his family, Lynch died in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

His songs Up on the Roof and You Can Never Stop Me Loving You reached number 10 in 1962 and 1963 respectively.

Born in east London in 1938, Lynch was one of the few black British pop singers to find fame in the early 1960s.

Lynch was the first artist to cover a Beatles song when he released a version of Lennon and McCartney composition Misery in 1963.

A decade later, he was one of the celebrities to appear with Paul and Linda McCartney on the sleeve of the Wings album Band on the Run.

Lynch, whose film work included appearances in The Plank and Carry On Loving, was awarded an OBE in 1970 for services to entertainment.

Broadcaster Danny Baker described him on Twitter as "one of the key witnesses to the 20th [Century] UK music [and] entertainment scene".

"Everything is funny to me, everything's musical to me, everything is readable to me," said Lynch, who had previously been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"That's how I go through life and how I shall go for the next few weeks I've got left," he said in a recent interview for the 1000 Londoners project.