\n Announcing Rea’s death, a spokesperson for his family said: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The popular songwriter,\u00a0from\u00a0Middlesbrough,\u00a0penned\u00a0the smash hit ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, which makes a reappearance on the UK Singles Chart every year, in 1978.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Middlesbrough-born musician was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had his pancreas removed in 2001, and in 2016 he suffered a stroke.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rea found fame in the late Seventies and Eighties with hits such as Fool (If You Think It\u2019s Over), Let\u2019s Dance and The Road To Hell.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rea\u2019s debut album titled Whatever Happened To Benny Santini?, a reference to the stage name his record label wanted him to adopt, was released in 1978.\n<\/p>\n
\n The track Fool (If You Think It\u2019s Over) went on to be nominated for a Grammy.\n<\/p>\n
\n He did not find such success again for a few years but by the time his eighth album On The Beach, spawning a hit single of the same name, was released, he was a star in the UK and around Europe, with sporadic hits in the US.\n<\/p>\n
\n When Road To Hell was released in 1989, he became one of the biggest solo stars in the UK, and cemented himself as a favourite among a predominantly male audience of a certain age.\n<\/p>\n
\n Two of his studio albums \u2013 The Road To Hell (1989) and Auberge (1991) \u2013 went to number one in the UK.\n<\/p>\n
\n His famous song Driving Home For Christmas features in this year\u2019s M&S Food Christmas advert. It was first released in 1986.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Announcing Rea’s death, a spokesperson for his family said: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-330195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}