Val Doonican, sometimes called the Irish Bing Crosby, has died at the age of 88. 

There is a brief report here.

Certainly there are Bing influences, with an impish Irish slant, though possibly the influence is filtered a little through Perry Como.

For a long period Val had his own show on British TV, with several "trademarks" - a rocking chair, knitted woollen jumpers or cardigans (later abandoned), and his relaxed style, playing  his guitar.

He specialized in relaxed ballads intermixed with jocular Irish ditties - "Delaney's Donkey", "Paddy McGinty's Goat" and "O'Rafferty's Motor Car" being notable,  The "Guardian" site with the link above has a good embedded clip of Delaney's Donkey.
 
Of his fifty or so albums there were two that had distinctly Bing material - "Val Sings Bing" and "Christmas Album". The first was certainly a conscious tribute to Bing, covering many of the best known songs, whilst the second could hardly avoid a number of Bing's hits - "Silent Night" and "White Christmas" (and who has not covered that?) among them.

There are many TV and song clips of Val on Youtube. I'm uncertain how far he may have been known further afield but in the UK and Ireland the weekly TV shows, under a number of names, were very popular indeed right through the mid/late 1960s through to the mid 1980s.