'Climbing the walls': Why showman Engelbert Humperdinck refuses to quit at 90
Saturday, 6 June 2026
‘King of Romance’ Engelbert Humperdinck has been blasting out evergreen ballads for six decades, but the 90-year-old — who arrives in New Zealand later this month to play three dates — says he will sing until the end.
The British pop icon, whose 1967 record Release Me propelled him to global stardom, will perform in Wellington, Christchurch, and Auckland, his Celebration Tour marking his first visit to Aotearoa in seven years.
At an age when most of his mid-century contemporaries have since departed, Humperdinck is a showbusiness time capsule, but has no interest in taking things easy in his twilight years.
Speaking from his Bel Air, California, home, the veteran singer says a period of inaction before a tour two years ago was enough to show him that hanging up the microphone was not an option.
“Before The Last Waltz tour started, I was home for a couple of months, and I was just going crazy climbing the walls. And I called up management, [and] I said, ‘there's no way this can be the last waltz for me. I've got to keep going until I can't do it anymore, until God's called me’.”
Born in India in 1936 as Arnold Dorsey, he was 10 when the family - his mother, father and their 10 children - moved to Leicester in the UK.
His recording career began in the late 1950s, but his journey to international super stardom was cemented in 1967 when Release Me spent 56 weeks on the charts, famously preventing The Beatles' double A-side single Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever from reaching the number 1 spot.
The massive success introduced the singer — who was already a young married father of two children — to the star-studded life he had dreamed of. A move to the celebrity-filled St George’s Hill estate in Surrey brought him into the same neighbourhood as the Liverpudlian foursome he had just thwarted in the charts.
He recalls watching the Fab Four's luxury vehicles flashing past his property.
“I used to see their cars going out from my house. I could see the cars flying by, all these Rolls Royces with black windows and so I thought to myself, ‘I think I’ll put black windows in my car too,’ so I copied them.”
“If you're going to steal, steal from the best.”
By the 1970s, follow up hits including The Last Waltz, There Goes My Everything and A Man Without Love cemented Humperdinck as a mainstay of the Las Vegas circuit, where he formed friendships with members of the legendary Rat Pack — featuring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin — together with Elvis Presley, who famously stole the show during one of the British singer’s performances in the resort city.
Spotted by Humperdinck and introduced from the stage, Presley stood up in his booth and dramatically threw open his cape, sending the audience into a 10 minute frenzy.
Humperdinck had to yell to his friend, “Elvis, this is my show!”
Following Presley’s death in 1977, Humperdinck often stayed in the King of Rock n Roll's massive 30th-floor penthouse suite at the Las Vegas Hilton. Living in the 5000-square-foot (464sqm) space where Presley had lived during his legendary residencies was an atmospheric experience.
“It was quite eerie. It was strange, very strange,” Humperdinck said. “But I learned a lot from Elvis, and I know he wouldn't do anything to harm me.”
While he looks back fondly on the musical icons he rubbed shoulders with, one of them managed to thwart a creative opportunity for him. The classic track Strangers in the Night was offered to him in 1966 by German songwriter Bert Kaempfert and Humperdinck had already recorded it when his manager called.
“’You can't have Strangers in the Night’.
“I said, ‘Why not? It’s a hit song, I’m sure.
“He said, ‘Sinatra wants it’.
“So he took it, recorded it and had a number one with it.”
Ironically, Sinatra quickly came to loathe the song, considering it cheesy and superficial.
“He said he didn’t like the song. Why did he take it?” Humperdinck asks with a chuckle.
Behind the glitz that surrounded him from the mid-60s onwards, was Humperdinck’s wife Patricia, who he met as a teenager at a dance hall in Leicester, several years before his rise to fame.
He has spoken publicly about regretting being unfaithful to his wife of 57 years as he embraced his fortune and describes Patricia — who forgave his misdemeanours — as his soulmate and biggest supporter.
After living with Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade, Patricia died from Covid-19 complications in February 2021. The loss fundamentally changed her husband’s connection to his repertoire.
“Since I've lost her, I read lyrics a lot differently, they mean a lot more to me now, as I portray them,” he says. “I think it's a different feeling altogether, and I recognise it.”
For a performer who has outlived many of his fans, Humperdinck has always energetically moved with the times. While he admits the modern mechanics of digital music and charts can be confusing compared to the days of calling up his record company to track physical sales, he has successfully transitioned into a digital-era star. His latest single, I’ve Got You, recently reached number 1 as a new bestseller on the Amazon charts.
In recent years A Man Without Love featured in the Disney Plus show Moon Knight, Brad Pitt movie Bullet Train included a Humperdinck rendition of Forever Blowing Bubbles and the singer is heard on Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, performing Quando, Quando, Quando.
The nonagenarian has built a large online community, posting his regular Tuesday Museday series on Youtube and Tiktok to hundreds of thousands of followers.
He has 2.89 million listeners on Spotify and despite his many decades in the business he says he always finds a way to make performances fresh.
“Release Me is 59 years old, and when I sing that on stage — I don't sing the entire song, because the audience sings it with me — but as soon as I hear the intro it does send the hairs up on the back of my neck, because to think, this is the song that started my life. And it’s such a big song; it’s such an amazing song.”
Engelbert Humperdinck’s The Celebration Tour 2026 is at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington on June 26, Christchurch Town Hall on June 28 and the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Auckland on June 30. Tickets from Ticketmaster.