He was the most boyish of teen idols, the object of the loudest screams at the concerts, the cutest and smallest of the bunch. There was certainly something about Davy Jones, with his perfect teeth, Beatles moptop and Mancunian accent.
On screen he was in the habit of falling helplessly in love with a new girl every week - and off screen it seemed that the whole world loved him right back. Even up to his sudden death yesterday he said that he received up to 30 letters a week from fans.
The Monkees were an alchemical and artificial combination of two jobbing actors and two jobbing folk musicians who were engaged to play in a pretend rock band via an advert in Variety magazine in 1966.
Production company Columbia had witnessed the hysteria of Beatlemania, followed by the success of their film A Hard Day's Night, and wanted to put together a new band which could sell music via a TV show.
They ended up being pretty much the biggest thing on the planet; in 1967 the 'Prefab Four', fronted by Jones, outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, shifting 100 million records and scoring hits such as Daydream Believer and Last Train To Clarksville.
On screen the lines were, of course, scripted. But Jones, who has died aged 66, was always terrifically witty.
Appearing on stage at the Albert Hall last year during a Monkees reunion tour he said: "Hello, I'm Davy's dad. Davy will be on in a minute."
It pretty much brought the house down.
Jones was born in Openshaw, Manchester, the son of a British Rail fitter who earned £9 a week.
His first brush with fame was in 1961, playing Ena Sharples' grandson Colin in Coronation Street. He was given the princely sum of £15 a week.
He also appeared in Z-Cars when he was a teenager.
After his mother died of emphysema he left acting to train as a jockey, but was persuaded to go back to the stage by trainer Basil Foster and took a role as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! first in the West End and then on Broadway.
By now he was living in America, and in February 1964 he appeared with the cast on The Ed Sullivan Show. As fate would have it, that was the same night the Beatles made their first appearance.
Watching the girls going crazy from the wings, Jones developed a sudden ambition to enter the music business.
He was among the hundreds who responded to the advert in Variety which ran: "Musicians-singers needed - parts for four insane boys aged 17 to 21."
Producers immediately realised that he had huge appeal, and teamed him with Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith.
Although songs were written for them, they started playing their own instruments and writing their own songs.
Their success was phenomenal, and brought them friendship with The Beatles.
In an interview, Jones said: "Paul McCartney called me up in the Sixties and asked me to send some stuff to his daughter who was a fan.
"And Micky has tapes and videos of George [Harrison] and Ringo [Starr] at his house in the Canyon down in the studio, playing."
At first the band had a great rapport, even though they had not been formed organically.
Jones recalled: "We'd be laughing so much that the producer would say, if you don't stop laughing and get on with it, we are closing the set down."
But soon they started to fight.
Jones recalled headbutting Tork once, being punched above the eye and requiring stitches as a result.
"I fought with all of them except Mike Nesmith, because he was 6ft 2in and would have killed me," he said.
"I used to drink more when younger," he added. "I had this reputation for being a fighter and when I got people round the throat - grrr!"
Tork left the band in 1969, battling alcoholism, followed by Nesmith - an aspiring folk singer who resented the Monkees' success.
By then Jones was married, to Linda Haines. They tied the knot in 1968 - at the peak of his fame - when she was pregnant with daughter Talia. They had another daughter, Sarah.
He admits that he missed countless birthday parties and other milestones, saying: "I didn't know how to be a partner. I was too busy doing The Monkees. Then I woke up one day and realised I'd fallen out of love with her."
He also claimed that he later found out that she had affairs with other men.
They were divorced in 1975 and he went on the road with Dolenz - the period in which he said he was "single and a real rascal".
One of his flings on the road was an English singer and former bunny girl Anita Pollinger.
"We had an affair, and then she called me from Ireland to say that she was pregnant," he said.
"A few days later, she called to say she'd miscarried.
"Soon after that, she fell pregnant again. I thought I ought to do the decent thing by her and we got married."
They also had two daughters, Jessica and Annabel, but again the marriage struggled because he did not put his family life first.
Instead he prioritised his love of horses - he bred horses in Hampshire and raced as a jump jockey.
He finally rode his own winner, Digpast, to victory at Lingfield in 1996.
"I was doing what I wanted to do," he said.
"I wasn't being unfaithful - but I was putting myself first."
It was also clear by this time that his 'fortune' from the Monkees was nothing of the sort.
Jones estimated that he earned a mere £800,000 from the show - something like 25 cents per hour of work as he calculated it.
Despite massive global success, and massive global record and TV rights sales, he, Dolenz and Tork saw very little of the earnings.
Nesmith though, was on a deal which gave him royalties from the B-sides of their hits, a fact which gave rise to abiding bitterness and divisions.
"When we made the show all I cared about was beer and girls," said Jones.
"Mike was smart and got all the B-sides. When we checked into the Grosvenor House hotel in London, Mike booked a whole floor; the rest of us had single rooms."
In another interview he said: "I wish I'd made more money, I wish I'd made millions or even a million."
In 1998 they made an album and planned to tour as a four - but Jones said that Nesmith simply didn't show up for the scheduled week's rehearsal.
Nesmith now runs a media company and is said to have inherited a fortune from his mother, who invented Tipp-Ex. There were various reunions, one in 2002 and another last year - both excluding Nesmith.
Sadly the bickering backstage was still considerable and the last ten dates were cancelled - officially for "business and personal" reasons.
In 2006 Jones met Cuban dancer Jessica Pacheco when they were both appearing in a production of Cinderella. They married in 2009.
There were reports of a tempestuous, even physically abusive relationship, but he insisted in an interview last year that he had never been happier, and explained away bruises he was seen with as being the result of walking into a lamppost.
He said: "She turned to me one day and said: 'Let's run upstairs and make love'. I looked at her. 'At my age', I said, 'it's going to have to be one or the other'."
It says something for his charm that he was, at 66, still getting a few dozen fan letters a week.
He said that he never tired of the recognition, and considered himself blessed to have had the experience of global fame.
"We touched a lot of lives," he said.
"I won't ever stop being grateful for that."
- DAILY MAIL
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