SINGER Frankie Vaughan, 71, was ''critical but stable'' last night after emergency heart surgery.
Vaughan had an aortic arch replacement but later suffered an aneurism which required further surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
His wife, Stella, was at his bedside as he fought to recover from two ''difficult and dangerous'' operations.
Doctors found that an aneurism, a swollen artery, had burst and was bleeding into his lungs, said his agent, Mr Peter Charlesworth. Surgeons spent four hours on Sunday morning rebuilding the artery wall, inserting a tube along the length of the weakened area.
The bleeding started again hours later and Vaughan had to undergo a second operation.
The operation was the latest in a long line of health problems for the entertainer famed as ''Mr Moonlight'' who took the limelight in Glasgow in the 1960s when he helped curb gang warfare in Easterhouse.
At the end of 1986, he almost died of peritonitis after he failed to seek medical help because he wanted to continue with his show. In 1992 he underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured artery.
Liverpool-born Vaughan this year celebrates a half-century in entertainment.
In 1968 the singer persuaded the hard men of Easterhouse - then the biggest housing scheme in Europe - to give up the weapons they used in gang battles.
He set up the Easterhouse Project, designed to keep youngsters off the streets, and staged a week-long show at Glasgow's Alhambra Theatre, to raise funds for a youth club in the deprived scheme.
He has had a string of chart hits, although his trademark song, Give Me the Moonlight, was never a hit. Vaughan, real name Frank Abelson, had two number one hits: Tower of Strength and Garden of Eden.
He is also famed for his show-stopping high kick, which he often executed while waving his top hat and twirling a cane.
He was also in films, including the comedy Ramsbottom Rides Again opposite Arthur Askey, an acclaimed straight role in These Dangerous Years and Heart Of A Man, in which he appeared with the late Anthony Newley.
Vaughan's career also extended across the Atlantic, with stage appearances in Las Vegas and a movie role with Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love.
He was given an OBE in 1965 and further honoured in 1993 when appointed by the Queen to the position of Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire.
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