During the late 1950s and early 1960s Adam Faith vied with Cliff Richard as the leading figure of the first generation of British pop idols. But while Richard survived as a singer and continued at the top for several decades more, Faith was to reinvent himself, with varying degrees of success, as an actor, producer and businessman.

Faith’s first hit record, What Do You Want If You Don’t Want Money?, came out in 1959 when he was 19. It had novelty value thanks to Faith’s weak and almost tuneless voice and Americanised Cockney accent, and John Barry’s unusual arrangement for pizzicato violins. It went to number one in the charts, as did his next record, Poor Me. He followed it with other big hits, including Someone Else’s Baby, Made You, and How About That? — all composed by Johnny Worth.

But his time at the top was brief, lasting only from 1959 to 1963, when the Beatles arrived and rendered obsolete earlier conceptions of what a pop idol should be. Faith had a few lesser hits after that, of which the biggest was the Burt Bacharach song Message to Martha. And surprisingly, having failed to conquer the United States at the height of his British popularity, he belatedly made amends in 1965 with It’s Alright.

Fair-haired, with blue eyes, craggy square-jawed features and high cheekbones, Faith had considerable presence despite standing only 5ft 6in. He also showed himself a man of wider interests and more searching intelligence than was usually expected of a pop singer. This was demonstrated as early as 1961 when he appeared on John Freeman’s celebrated interview series, Face to Face. Freeman could be a ruthless inquisitor — he reduced Gilbert Harding to tears, for instance — but Faith acquitted himself well with balanced and honest answers, and probably won over many viewers who would not generally warm to a pop singer. In the following year he debated with the Archbishop of York on the BBC religious programme Meeting Point after the Archbishop had publicly accused Faith’s songs of teaching teenagers that “the meaning of life is sex”.

Adam Faith was born Terence Nelhams-Wright in 1940, the third of five children of a working-class family. He grew up on a council estate in Acton, West London. His father was a coach driver and his mother a cleaner. He left school at 15 and worked as a messenger boy for the Rank Organisation in Soho. He joined a skiffle group formed by workmates called the Worried Men and made his television debut on the BBC pop show Six-Five Special. It was produced by Jack Good, to whom he owed his stage name. Good had hit upon Adam and Faith after thumbing through a book of children’s names. But after two records flopped, Faith went back to Rank as an assistant editor at Pinewood studios.

Early in 1959 he returned to television on the series Drumbeat, where he met the composer Johnny Worth, who offered him What Do You Want? His pop career was launched, but even when it was in full swing Faith had aspirations to act. His first film was Beat Girl, followed by the thrillers Never Let Go, with Peter Sellers, and Mix Me a Person. In 1968, with his days as a pop singer over, he made his stage debut in a touring production of Emlyn Williams’s Night Must Fall opposite no less a figure than Dame Sybil Thorndike.

In 1971 he landed the title role in the television comedy drama Budgie. Written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (and attacked by Mary Whitehouse for bad language), this had Faith as a cockney hustler just out of prison, whose schemes inevitably come to grief. The likeable rogue was to become a television cliché, but at the time it was perfect casting.

If Budgie was a loser, Faith’s business career was a mixture of ups and downs, both of which could both be spectacular. In the 1960s he was credited, at least in part, with the emergence of the barefoot singer Sandie Shaw. In the 1970s he discovered, promoted and managed Leo Sayer. He also produced records by Roger Daltrey of The Who, and a comeback album by the skiffle king, Lonnie Donegan.

But Faith’s business activities spread much wider than pop. He made fortunes from property and the stock market, had a city column in the Daily Mail which promised to turn readers into millionaires, and started a celebrity financial consultancy called Faith. But he also lost heavily, both on property deals and at Lloyd’s, and his consultancy collapsed in the 1980s. Michael Winner, one of the victims, said: “Adam Faith is to financial advice what Frank Bruno is to English literature.”

More compromising for Faith was his link to the financier Roger Leavitt, to whom he had introduced clients. Not only did Leavitt’s business fail, but he was convicted of fraud. Faith’s newspaper columns, having failed to deliver riches, were brought to an end, and the relationship with Leo Sayer ended sour-ly when Sayer sued Faith for mismanagement and won an out-of-court settlement. But Faith was a survivor and continued to make more money than he lost. In 1997 his wealth was estimated at £10 million.

As an actor Faith played David Essex’s manager in the film Stardust (1974), supported Daltrey in McVicar (1980) and was in Minder on the Orient Express (1985), a movie-length spin-off from the television series with George Cole and Dennis Waterman. There were occasional guest appearances on television, too, but it was not until 1992, some 20 years after Budgie, that he had another series of his own.

This was the comedy-drama Love Hurts in which Faith, in rough-diamond mode again as a plumber who has turned himself into a millionaire, finds romance with a city drop-out played by Zoe Wanamaker. Written by the prolific Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, the show ran for three seasons, charting a bumpy relationship which was eventually led to marriage and parenthood.

In the 1990s Faith made a rare appearance in the theatre, playing Bill Naughton’s lecherous Alfie in Los Angeles, directed by his daughter, Katya. In 1997 singing, and for the first time dancing, he took the lead in a British touring production of the American musical A Chorus Line.

Despite his chequered record, Faith’s reputation as a financial guru led to a Channel 4 series called Dosh, and in February 2000 he and the stockbroker Paul Killik launched the Money Channel, which claimed to be the first television station devoted solely to financial matters. Shares in the company initially and inexplicably soared, but in May 2001, hit by a slump in advertising and poor audiences, it went into administration.

Faith was no luckier with another return to acting. After being off the television screen for virtually a decade he was back in 2002 in the BBC sitcom The House That Jack Built, playing another working-class millionaire, who lives in a vulgar mansion with his brash wife and adult children who will not leave home. But the formula was jaded, the critical reception lukewarm and ratings poor.

Despite his chirpy public persona, Faith’s personal life did not always run smoothly. He survived a serious car accident in 1973 and a helicopter crash in 1981, either of which could have killed him, and in 1987 he had open-heart surgery.

His marriage in 1967 to Jacqueline Irving lasted 28 years despite publicly admitted infidelities, including an affair with the tennis star Chris Evert. Faith and his wife separated in 1995 but never divorced and he remained close to her and their daughter.

Adam Faith, pop singer, actor and businessman, was born in London on June 23, 1940. He died from a heart attack in Stoke on Trent on March 8, 2003, aged 62.