Paul O'Grady - Biography

In a nutshell

Paul O'Grady was, for a while, one of this country's best kept secrets. But now he's ditched the drag it's clear for everybody to see that we've got a genuine star on our hands.

Paul created the now infamous Lily Savage character and started playing her in London's gay bars in the early 80s. Lily touched the public's hearts (and probably other things) when she started to appear on television. A huge success presenting on The Big Breakfast bed, slots on This Morning with Richard & Judy and even the main presenting job on a revival of Blankety Blank on the BBC.

Paul began to tire of the Lily character ? in particular putting on the make-up ? and so started to present his natural self a little more often. One of the first shows as himself was a documentary which saw him travel around the Orient as well as presenting 'Outtake TV' on the BBC.

His biggest hit has been The Paul O'Grady show which originally started out on ITV. The chat and 'feature' show has seen some big star guests and various ridiculous outfits for Paul to wear and was a massive hit. Nobody saw it coming but, following on from Richard & Judy, Paul jumped ship to Channel 4 in 2006 after claiming that ITV 'forgot' to renew his contract. Lets just say they weren't very happy...

Although Paul is happily gay he has been married ? to, shock horror, a woman! But it was simply a marriage of convenience for his Portuguese friend. He has a daughter, Sharyn, who he sees regularly and he's now a grandfather.

Poor old Paul gave us all a shock when he had a heart attack in 2002. Although he had a successful recovery he had a second attack in 2006 ? since then he's been looking after himself a bit more, we hope.

Paul's teatime chat show on Channel 4 drew to a close in December 2009. Although we don't think he wanted to stop the show, a row with Channel 4 over budgets meant Paul felt he had no choice. He's since signed with ITV to present a new Friday evening entertainment show. Watch this space in 2010...

Did you know?

Paul was all lined up to be the presenter of a new talent show format for ITV produced by Simon Cowell but he had his shock move to Channel 4 and fell out with ITV so the deal was off. The show became Britain's Got Talent, with Ant & Dec presenting.