@CliffJoannou
The morning before we went to print on this issue, I woke up to the sad news that Paul O’Grady had passed away, aged 67. His death was entirely unexpected, and he had only just finished the Edinburgh run of a UK tour of Annie, in which he played Miss Hannigan. As a young teen, I was first introduced to O’Grady when he hosted The Big Breakfast as Lily Savage on Channel 4 during the 90s. Here, on national television while I tucked into my Coco Pops before school, was an undiluted example of drag culture direct from the stage of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in south London, which I was then too young to experience in person. I was captivated by his acerbic wit — not to mention that OTT wig and those laddered tights.
His career took off and O’Grady, as Lily, hosted primetime gameshows, and eventually his own afternoon chat show, sans maquillage. “When we worked together at Channel 4, Paul O’Grady insisted that new roles on his show were advertised in the local Jobcentre,” said Mark Downie in a tweet. “He wanted anyone and everyone to be able to apply so they could get a break like he had. And it made the show better. A kind and generous man.”
It’s quite remarkable how many lives O’Grady touched. From his outrageous early years in Liverpool indulging in gay bacchanalian sex-capades on merchant navy ships (from which his drag name Shanghai Lil, later Lily Savage, was bequeathed) through to his incredible work during the Aids crisis de-stigmatising the victims that doctors and nurses refused to touch, he lived life to its absolute capacity, with heart and unapologetic candour. (For more racy stories, do listen to the Paul O’Grady episode of the Attitude Heroes podcast.)
“I’ve just gone through life enjoying myself, and never, ever kept my sexuality hidden,” O’Grady said when he accepted the Attitude Icon Award in 2013 (for the full video, go to the Attitude magazine YouTube channel). O’Grady went on to say how he received letters from younger fans who asked how he coped during his early years when being gay was even less socially unacceptable. “How the hell did I cope? I tell you how we coped, because when you’re gay, you’re stoic, you’re devious, you learn lots of tricks, you learn how to survive and you learn how to cope. For me being gay means being special, absolutely special, because I’ve been given access to lots of avenues that if I were a straight lad, I’d have never seen.”
Even throughout his fame, when he could have stepped away, he remained a champion of the LGBTQ+ community. In 2014, Peter Tatchell and I organised
