Margarita Pracatan (born Margarita Figueroa; 11 June 1931 – 23 June 2020) was a
Cuban
Cuban or Cubans may refer to:
Related to Cuba
* of or related to Cuba, a country in the Caribbean
* Cubans, people from Cuba, or of Cuban descent
** Cuban exile, a person who left Cuba for political reasons, or a descendant thereof
* Cuban Americ ...
-born novelty singer, who became well-known in the UK, during the 1990s, when she performed regularly on television on ''Saturday Night Clive'' hosted by
Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Santiago, Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
. Her father was a union leader. She began to sing at home when she was three years old. Her family fled to the U.S. after the
Cuban revolution
The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...
. She worked in a store selling men's underwear while singing at night.
She found success in the 1990s when she was booked on numerous occasions to appear on
Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019. James showed clips of her heavily Hispanic-inflected performances of pop hits (including
Lionel Richie
Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a songwriter and the co-lead singer of the Motown group Commodores; writing and recor ...
's "
Hello
Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
Early uses
''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the '' Norwich Cou ...
" and "
New York, New York
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on New York Harbor, one of the world's largest natural harb ...
") on his BBC series ''Saturday Night Clive''. According to her website, Clive James discovered her on Manhattan
public-access television
Public-access television (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is Narrowcasting, narrowcast through cable tele ...
cable TV
Cable television is a system of delivering television broadcast programming, programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This ...
program in 1994 and invited her to the UK to appear on his show. He sweet-talked her into believing he was serious, and she signed up. Although he never mocked her openly, his introductions to her end-of-show performances contained teasing irony. James once said of Pracatan, "She never lets the words or melody get in her way. She is us, without the fear of failure."
Pracatan toured regularly in the United Kingdom and Australia, also appearing as part of the
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or Sydney Mardi Gras is an event in Sydney, New South Wales attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. One of the largest LGBT festivals in the world, Mardi Gras is the ...
festival during the mid-1990s. Pracatan appeared in an episode of ''
The Real Housewives of New York City
''The Real Housewives of New York City'', abbreviated ''RHONY'', is an American reality television series that premiered on Bravo on March 4, 2008. Developed as the second installment of ''The Real Housewives'' franchise, it has aired fifteen s ...
'' in 2019, performing a cover version of
Luann de Lesseps
Luann de Lesseps (née Nadeau, previously D'Agostino; known as "Countess Luann" from her first marriage, although she no longer has that title; born May 17, 1965) is a Canadian-American television personality, singer, model, and author. She is b ...
’s “Money Can’t Buy You Class”. Radio disc jockey
Martin Kelner
Martin Barry Kelner is a British journalist, author, comedian, singer, actor and TV presenter, whose primary career is in radio presenting. He has spent over 40 years hosting radio shows, mostly for the BBC, in particular Radio Leeds. He has ...
also played her frequently on his
BBC Night Network
The BBC Night Network (sometimes referred to on-air as BBC North FM and originally Radio North East) was an all-evening radio network which linked up the North East England, Yorkshire and the Humber, and later the North West England regions of BBC ...
and
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the List of most-listened-to radio programs, most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 14 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the sta ...
programmes.
Pracatan died in New York in June 2020, aged 89. She was divorced with one daughter.
IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...