Tony Monopoly
Australian actor and singer (1944–1995)
Tony Monopoly (3 December 1944 – 21 March 1995) was an Australian-born cabaret singer and actor who enjoyed success in the United Kingdom. Born Antonio Rosario Monopoli in Adelaide, he was a regular on the national radio show, Kangaroos on Parade at the age of nine as a boy soprano.
At the age of sixteen he became a Carmelite friar and remained in the order for five years. During the 1960s he regularly performed with Edwin Duff and Norm Erskine, as a trio of singers, on In Melbourne Tonight and Tonight with Don Lane.
In 1975 he was appearing at Caesar's Palace in Luton when he auditioned for and appeared on Opportunity Knocks, a British television talent show, and won six weekly shows. In June 1976, his self-titled album peaked at No. 25 in the UK Albums Chart.
In a national pre-selection to choose the song that would go to the Eurovision Song Contest, held on 9 March 1977 at the New London Theatre, Monopoly earned 66 points and placed ninth with the tune "Leave a Little Love."
By the early 1980s Monopoly performed aboard cruise liners, "I lived on one yacht for a year," he said. "I went to 56 countries. I had champagne for breakfast.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tony Monopoly” is australian actor and singer (1944–1995). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tony, Monopoly and Australian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “australian actor and singer (1944–1995)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7823008. VIAF identifies the subject as 73465788. The Library of Congress control number is no98019789. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1995, 1975 and 1976.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tony Monopoly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.