Fritz Spiegl (27 January 1926 – 23 March 2003) was an Austrian-born English musician, journalist, broadcaster, humorist and collector who lived in Britain from 1939.
Spiegl was born near the Hungarian border in the village of Zurndorf, Burgenland, Austria,[1] where his father was a businessman manufacturing among other things carbonated water.
[3] A native speaker of German, Fritz Spiegl did not speak a word of English when he moved to Britain as a 13-year-old—a fact which has often been regarded as the trigger for his preoccupation with language phenomena such as, say, malapropisms and for the biting yet humorous linguistic purism of his later years.
As a composer, Spiegl scored a popular success with the original theme from the TV series Z-Cars, based on "Johnny Todd",[4] a Liverpool sea shanty.
Another signature tune was 'Conversation Piece' for In the Psychiatrist's Chair, which was based on music from Mozart's Les Petits Riens transcribed for wind instruments.