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Read about his personal life near the bottom--very interesting, odd, different and funny.
Paul James O'Grady MBE (born 14 June 1955), is
an English comedian and television personality who achieved fame
as the creator of comic drag character Lily Savage (the "Birkenhead Bombshell"), a vampish
Birkenhead woman. He is noted for his strong Scouse accent and is the presenter of the
television series The Paul O'Grady Show, which
currently airs on Channel 4 in
the United
Kingdom.
Born in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula to an Irish father, O'Grady
was brought up in Tranmere.
His jobs have included civil servant, barman for Yates Wine Lodge, officeabattoir, woodsman and a time as an assistant clerk at Liverpool Magistrates' Court.[1] He
has also worked in a children's home in West Kirby and spent some years as a peripatetic
care officer for Camden council. In 2003, he was listed
in The Observer as one of
the 50 funniest acts in British comedy,[2] and in 2006 he was listed by The Independent at
number 32 in their 101 most influential gay men and women in Britain.[3] work in an
[edit] Lily Savage
Paul
O'Grady's alter-ego, Lily Savage
In 1977, O'Grady went to Manila where
he worked as a waiter in Gussy's Bar (also a brothel). It
was here he got the idea for Lily Savage, his now infamous drag alter-ego. He
returned to London in the early 1980s
and subsequently achieved fame with his creation of Lily, initially playing to
gay clubs and pubs up and down the country. Lily was best known at the time for
her eight year residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. He was in
numerous double and treble acts such as 'High Society' with Adrella {Peter
Searle}, 'L.S.D.' with David Dale and Sandra Hush (David Hunter), The Playgirls,
again with Hunter and The Glamazons with Paul Banks, a former nurse. He toured
Europe with some of these acts,
appearing at Madame Arthurs in Denmark and various night clubs and theatres in Germany, Finland, Sweden, Holland, France and Israel. After appearing at The Edinburgh
Festival, for which he was nominated for a Perrier Award, he became more mainstream. Lily
first became popular on television, making appearances on ITV daytime programme This
Morning, and as the 'On the Bed Presenter' on The Big
Breakfast. Lily was given several shows, by both BBC and ITV, and although they achieved reasonable ratings,
they weren't the huge hits that either channel was hoping for. For a few years
Lily hosted the game show Blankety Blank for the BBC and later for
ITV, as well as her own comedy show Lily Live! with ITV in 2000. Lily Savage also
co-hosted the 1996 Smash Hits Poll Winners Party with Ant & Dec. In a 2006 interview O'Grady stated
that Lily Savage was now living in a convent in Brittany, although on several occasions he has
announced that she has escaped the convent, which was interpreted by some as
meaning that the character is returning.
[edit] Theatre
As well as numerous national tours, O'Grady has appeared on stage in Prisoner Cell
Block H - The Musical, the musical Annie as "Miss Hannigan", Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang as "the Childcatcher" and in the panto Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves as the "Wicked Queen". He has been quoted as saying 'I seem to
be making a living frightening children'
[edit] Television
O'Grady played a prostitute snout called Roxanne in several episodes of The Bill between 1988 and
1990.
In 1990 he appeared in the ITV miniseries Chimera as Tony Donaldson, a social worker
skilled in signing for the deaf.
In 2000 he appeared in a six-part travelogue series as himself, entitled
"Paul O'Grady's Orient". Shot in Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines,
Bangkok, Bali and Singapore, it was produced by Gavin Hill and Collette
Valentine and directed by Paul Watson. This was followed in 2001 by "Paul
O'Grady's America". These were amongst his first major television
appearances out of drag. From 2002 onwards, he has appeared less as Lily and
more often as himself. In 2002 he presented Outtake TV, a bloopers show, and in 2003 starred as the
lead character in the BBC"Eyes Down" for two series, as
the vicious yet hilarious manager of a northern Bingo hall. He also appeared in
Celebrity Driving School for the
BBC. sitcom
Since then, he has had success as the presenter of his own early evening talk
show, The Paul O'Grady Show, on ITV. He won the position after he stood in for Des O'Connor on the now
defunct lunchtime celebrity chat show Today with Des and Mel. The Paul
O'Grady Show somewhat controversially ran head to head with Richard and Judy, who
are close friends of O'Grady, and gave him one of his first TV breaks on This
Morning on ITV back in the early 90's. Now that both Richard and Judy's
and O'Grady's chatshows both run on Channel 4, whenever O'Grady's show is off the air
Richard and Judy fill the tea-time slot, and vice-versa. He has guest starred on
Living's paranormal show, Most Haunted
Live!, after presenter Yvette Fielding was a guest on his show and
invited him on. He holds many awards, and in December 2005 he won the Best TV
Comedy Entertainment Personality category of the British Comedy
Awards. In 2005, he won a BAFTA and is also the recipient of two Royal
Television Society and three National Television Awards.
On 10 January 2006, in a shock decision, O'Grady decided to defect from
ITV and take his daytime chat show to Channel 4 after ITV apparently 'forgot' to renew his
contract. It was said that he had wanted to produce the series with his own
company and had wanted to from the start but Granada always refused. He is still
in an ongoing dispute with ITV, regarding the use of props and studio design for
his new daytime chat show. As a consequence of this, O'Grady has decided he
never wanted to work for ITV again and has pulled out of appearing on a new talent showThe British Soap Awards. He was very
outspoken in his anger towards ITV for a while after his move to Channel 4, but
less so recently. and was replaced as
host of
On 27 March 2006, Paul O'Grady began hosting his talk show on Channel
4, now called The New Paul O'Grady Show. It is
shown weekdays from 17:00 to 18:00 UTC. and the first series ended its run on the 16 June2006. Channel 4's Richard and Judy and O'Grady share the
Channel 4, 5 p.m. - 6 p.m. slot with each show sharing taking 3 months of the
Channel 4]teatime schedule.
O'Grady retired his Lily Savage character around 2004. He claimed she had
"seen the light, taken the veil and packed herself off to a convent in France"
but recently on his current TV show, he said, "she's escaped the convent and
she's heading towards these shores!", which may signal the return of the Lily
Savage character. Also on 23
January 2007 on his show, someone wrote
in saying is Lily Savage going to be working in a midnight burlesque club and
O'Grady says that there's a 99.9% chance of that happening, so he could be
bringing her back. However, on the 30th October episode on his show, Lily Savage
was one of 10 "smiles" examined by a body language expert. After finding out
that it's Lily, O'Grady covered her up before revealing her again, claiming
she's still in the convent. On 23 May 2008 on the 500th edition of the Paul
O'Grady Show, guest star Julie Goodyear told O'Grady that Bet Lynch, the character she
famously played in Coronation Street, had joined Savage in the
French convent.
On 16 March 2007, O'Grady presented part of Red Nose Day
2007, where he performed several circus tricks, including fire eating.
The fourth Channel 4 series (7th series when including the three original ITV
series) started on 17
September 2007. On 24 August The
Daily Mirror[citation needed] Instead he has signed a £4 million deal to remain with Channel 4 until the end
of 2009.[citation needed] revealed that Paul had rejected a £5 million deal to return to
ITV as the "New Parkinson."
On 28 June 2008 O'Grady appeared in the Doctor Who episode The Stolen Earth.[4]
[edit] Personal life
O'Grady is openly gay, but has previously had relationships with
women, and was once married to a female Portuguese friend in a marriage of
convenience. He is now very close to his daughter Sharyn, who married her
childhood friend Philip Mousley at Liverpool Town Hall on 30 July2005. His
long term lover and business partner of 20 years was Irishman Brendan Murphy,
who died of cancer on 9 June 2005, five days before Paul's fiftieth
birthday. After the first show of series three of The Paul O'Grady Show, there
was a tribute to him.
O'Grady owns a farm in Aldington near Ashford, Kent and a flat in London. The farm is
stocked with 32 animals, including a flock of geese which O'Grady refers to as
the "Geese-stapo" (a pun on the Gestapo).[5]Shih Tzu/Bichon
Frise crossbreed dog called Buster[6], who
usually appears on his TV show with him, or occasionally will be replaced by
Paul's other dog, Olga, a Cairn Terrier who O'Grady named his recently formed
production company, 'Olga TV' after.[6] He
also has another dog called Louie, who only appeared a few times (mainly due to
his bad behaviour), in the first ITV series, before he adopted Olga live on
air.[5] O'Grady has a grey
O'Grady became a grandfather on 26 December 2006, when his daughter Sharyn gave birth to a son,
Abel.[7]
He was appointed Member of the Order of
the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.[8][9]
[edit] Health
In April 2002, O'Grady suffered a heart attack after weeks of complaining
that he felt unwell. After an emergency operation and weeks of rest, O'Grady's
health recovered and he gave up smoking for two years.
O'Grady went back to his 40-a-day habit after his boyfriend and business
partner Brendan Murphy died in 2005; he had continued to work on the show at the
same time as nursing Murphy. He suffered a second heart attack on 30 June 2006;[10] again he was taken to the William
Harvey Hospital and into intensive care. He was given an angioplasty operation before
being moved to a cardiac unit. He was released on 4 July and again promised to give up smoking [11].
He therefore postponed the new series of his show from 4 September to the end of the month. The delayed
second series started on Monday 25 September 2006.
