Paul O'Grady, who has died "unexpectedly but peacefully" at the age of 67, was a British national treasure like no other. Though he first found fame in the '90s as the fabulously salty and acerbic drag queen Lily Savage, he became even more successful in his fifties and sixties as a sharp-suited – and still sharp-tongued – chatshow host and radio presenter. Enormously warm but never quite cosy, he was always natural on screen, whether chatting to animal rescue workers on Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs or interviewing Cher on The Big Breakfast.
If you grew up in the '90s, as I did, Lily Savage was probably the first drag queen you ever clocked eyes on. There was no RuPaul's Drag Race back then, so the sight of Lily with her peroxide-blonde beehive and brassy leopard print outfits was genuinely breathtaking. Her confidence was pretty breathtaking, too, as Lily fired off priceless one-liners about her less than salubrious lifestyle. "I like a Blackpool breakfast, me – 20 ciggies and a pot of tea," Lily would say. Or "when a girl's skint, the best thing to do is have a break-in."
Birkenhead-born O'Grady honed his drag persona and cemented his status as a longtime LGBTQ icon during the most challenging years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when homophobically motivated police raids became commonplace at queer venues. Famously, one such raid occurred in 1987 while Lily was on stage at London's iconic Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Spotting that the officers were wearing rubber gloves – presumably because they ignorantly feared "catching something" – Lily quipped: "Well well, it looks like we've got help with the washing-up."
In the early '90s, having worked the drag circuit for 15 years or so, initially while holding down a day job as a social worker, O'Grady parlayed this quick wit into a groundbreaking TV career. Lily Savage wasn't the first drag queen to become a household name – Danny La Rue had been huge in the '60s – but she was most definitely a TV pioneer. "I was always offered TV things at four o'clock in the morning. They were terrified of me," O’Grady recalled just last month. "I couldn’t get on Richard and Judy or anything. Of course, when I did go on it, they realised I was sensible. I wasn't swearing. I had a daytime head and a night-time head, a gay bar head and a theatre head."
O'Grady's persistence soon began to pay off. After cameoing in the Channel 4 soap Brookside and guest-hosting an episode of Top of the Pops, Lily landed a regular job in 1995 as The Big Breakfast's "on the bed" interviewer. A clip shared on Twitter today shows her trading double entendres with the equally provocative gay comedian Julian Clary. At a time when authentic LGBTQ representation was patchy at best, their innuendo-filled exchange must have felt quietly thrilling.
Two years later, Lily pulled off an even bigger coup when she was hired to host the BBC One game show Blankety Blank. Looking back, it is remarkable not just that a drag queen had a primetime Saturday night slot in the late 90s, but that this particular drag queen was the one to penetrate the mainstream. O'Grady was more than capable of tailoring Lily’s act to the pre-watershed audience, but by then we all knew the character's backstory – she was a chain-smoking, law-breaking mistress of mayhem. "You need two things in a riot," Lily once joked, "flat shoes and a pram."
Blankety Blank, which became my and countless grandmothers' favourite show, was effectively Lily's last hurrah. As he approached 50 in the early '00s, O'Grady began appearing on TV out of drag and became more popular than ever. I can remember my mum observing that he was "actually a very handsome man" while watching one of his ITV travel series. He began hosting a long-running teatime chatshow in 2004 – the same year he confirmed he had retired Lily to "a convent in Brittany".
More recently, O'Grady returned to drag – though not Lily Savage – by portraying Miss Hannigan in a touring production of Annie. He was due to resume the role in Southampton next month. At this point in his career, he was such a beloved figure that the Royal Family has paid tribute to him today in a tweet. But at the same time, this South London drag legend who had refused to be intimidated by police raids never lost his edge or social conscience. Asked in 2021 which living person he most despised, O'Grady told The Guardian: "Every single stinking member of this lying, self-serving government."
He will be remembered as a brave and deeply kind pioneer who brought LGBTQ culture into the mainstream at a time when it wasn't necessarily asking for it. If something like heaven does exist, I hope he is there now, enjoying a glass of champers and a catch-up with his old friend Cilla Black.