Alma Cogan bubbled over with such a catchy vivaciousness it earned her the title of "The Girl with a Laugh in her Voice".

Her family settled in Worthing as she entered her teens.

She always loved to sing and, at just 14, succeeded in obtaining an audition with top bandleader Ted Heath who, impressed by her zestful enthusiasm, predicted she would become a big star one day.

Alma studied textiles and dress design at Brighton College of Arts and, in later years, designed many of her stage costumes. By night, she polished her singing technique as vocalist with the resident orchestra at the now long-gone Aquarium Ballroom in Brighton.

A breakthrough came when she was booked to sing at the Grand Theatre in the centre of Brighton on the same bill as Max Miller.

Cabaret, radio and her first recording contract in 1952 signalled success was coming her way and in 1954 Alma signed up to a new record label.

Suddenly it was all happening, with her first release Bell Bottom Blues making it into the Top Five and her trademark infectious giggle much in evidence.

Soon, she had cornered the market in happy-go-lucky songs with an endless stream of Top 20 hits - Twenty Tiny Fingers, Never Do A Tango With An Eskimo, I Can't Tell A Waltz From A Tango and Willie Can were just a few of her 21 chart entries.

Alma Cogan's passion for life was so great it was almost as if happiness had been invented by her.

So it was all the more difficult to accept she had succumbed to cancer.

She passed away on October 26, 1966, at the age of just 34.

The laugh in her voice never left us, of course, and it never will.

-Michael Parker, Brighton