Paul O’Grady became a presence on our televisions after stealing the hearts of the country with his drag act Lily Savage, hosting a slew of adored shows from The Big Breakfast to Blind Date.
The TV host and comedian died ‘unexpectedly but quietly’ on Tuesday night at the age of 67, prompting condolences from celebrities such as Lorraine Kelly and Carol Vorderman.
O’Grady began acting as Lily Savage in the 1970s while working as a peripatetic care officer for Camden Council in north London. She was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1955.
He went on to tour Northern England with drag duet the Playgirls before settling into an eight-year run as Savage at London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
After being nominated for a Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1991, the comedian built a reputation for himself by speaking out about LGBT problems and gained a mainstream audience.
With TV and radio performances in character, O’Grady’s career as Savage took off, and he was finally chosen to take over from the late Paula Yates as The Big Breakfast host as Savage from 1995 to 1996.
His TV career soared even further, with his alter-ego handed a talk show, The Lily Savage Show, which aired on the BBC for a brief while in 1997, before taking on a resurrected version of the gameshow Blankety Blank.
O’Grady then gained a new following as the host of The Paul O’Grady Show, which ran in a teatime slot on ITV from 2004 to 2005 before moving to Channel 4 as The New Paul O’Grady Show.
The TV veteran also hosted his own BBC Radio 2 show, which he left after 14 years in August.
He told Metro.co.uk that he left the station because ‘they’re going for a lot younger audience, which makes no sense.’
The national treasure later announced a collaboration with the BBC’s ‘rival’ station Boom Radio, but died only days before a special Easter show.
O’Grady, who has performed in a number of theatrical productions like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was also set to play Miss Hannigan in a touring version of Annie later this year, a position she shared with Strictly Come Dancing‘s Craig Revel Horwood.
He joked to Metro.co.uk that he would tackle the job “where she has no tolerance for children – all she wants to do is listen to her radio and get drunk.”
O’Grady’s lifelong passion of animals led him to expand out into presenting new forms of programming, including Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans, which aired between 2014 and 2016 and saw him tour Africa to meet infant animals.
The Queen Consort even joined him for a special royal edition of his favourite show, For the Love of Dogs, which commemorated Battersea Dogs and Cats Home’s 160th anniversary.
O’Grady was a creative polymath who wrote multiple novels, including an autobiographical trilogy about his boyhood, the invention of Savage, and his time in the spotlight.
He received an MBE in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to entertainment and was named deputy lieutenant of Kent last year.
In 2017, O’Grady married ballet dancer Andre Portasio in a private wedding in front of 50 guests, including Sir Ian McKellan and Julian Clary.
O’Grady was heartbroken a year before he met Andre when his long-term lover Brendan Murphy died suddenly of a brain cancer at the age of 49.
A father-of-one, O’Grady, had a daughter Sharon, with his friend Diane Jansen.
Sharon Moseley was born in 1974 and grew up with her father, who even gave her away during her wedding to Philip Moseley.
O’Grady received several awards over his career, including a TV Bafta, a British Comedy Award, and a National Television Award for The Paul O’Grady Show.
Source My Celebrity Life.