Paul O’Grady, TV presenter and comedian, dies aged 67

Paul O’Grady, the beloved TV presenter and comedian who broke on to the scene with his drag act persona Lily Savage, has died at the age of 67.

His husband, Andre Portasio, confirmed in a statement that O’Grady died “unexpectedly but peacefully” on Tuesday evening.

“We ask, at this difficult time, that whilst you celebrate his life you also respect our privacy as we come to terms with this loss,” Portasio said in a statement.

“He will be greatly missed by his loved ones, friends, family, animals and all those who enjoyed his humour, wit and compassion.

“I know that he would want me to thank you for all the love you have shown him over the years.”

Days ago, O’Grady had finished a stint playing Miss Hannigan in the musical Annie and was set to resume the role in performances around the UK and Ireland later this year.

View image in fullscreen

Tributes poured in early on Wednesday. “Such sad news,” TV presenter Lorraine Kelly wrote on Twitter. “Paul O’Grady – funny, fearless, brave, kind and wise ... I always think dogs are the best judge of character and they ADORED him.”

The LGBTQ+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell remembered O’Grady as “one of the loveliest people you could ever meet. Everyone whose lives he touched will miss him greatly, as will those who enjoyed his wit and admired his compassion”.

Born in Birkenhead in 1955, O’Grady moved to London in his 20s and worked as a social worker for Camden council. By 1978, he was developing his drag act Lily Savage in gay clubs, basing the loud-mouthed single mother and occasional sex worker on female relatives.

O’Grady came to mainstream attention in 1991 when he was nominated for the Perrier award, the UK’s most prestigious comedy prize, and began appearing on radio and television as himself. O’Grady retired Savage – to “a convent in Brittany” – in 2004.

During his career, he hosted Bafta-winning talkshow The Paul O’Grady Show, Blankety Blank, celebrity gameshow Paul O’Grady’s Saturday Night Line Up and the reboot of Blind Date, taking over the reins from the show’s long-running presenter and his close friend Cilla Black, who died in 2015.

A well-known animal lover who kept dogs, pigs, bats, ferrets and more at his farm in Kent, O’Grady also presented the award-winning show For The Love Of Dogs. Last year he was joined by the queen consort in a special one-off episode to mark 160 years of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, an organisation for which he was an ambassador. He was also a patron of Orangutan Appeal UK and won an RSPCA Animal Hero award for his “outstanding contribution to animal welfare”.

2:20

Throughout his career he was famously outspoken about the neglect of care workers, austerity and the Tory party: he made headlines when he said he wanted to see David Cameron and George Osborne’s “heads on spikes on Tower Bridge” over austerity cuts, and revealed that he quit his talkshow because celebrities were so dull they were like “relatives you felt obliged to visit”.

In August last year, O’Grady presented his final BBC Radio 2 show, having hosted the Sunday afternoon programme for nearly 14 years. In his final show, he said it was “one of the longest jobs I’ve ever held down. I only came to do a few hours for Elaine Paige and look what happened.”

O’Grady wrote a four-volume memoir and in 2008 he was awarded an MBE for his services to entertainment. When described as a national treasure in an interview with the Observer in 2017, he responded: “Oh, what a terrible phrase. That wasn’t planned.”

O’Grady is survived by his husband, his daughter, Sharon, and two grandchildren.