Lily Savage brought drag culture into the mainstream. With Lily Savage, he made drag dangerous.
They were camp but it was a safe sort of queerness. Before O’Grady, drag queens were figures of fun – but never political. He was incapable, almost at a genetic level, of dullness. Whatever he did, wherever he went, O’Grady – who became famous with his drag alter-ego Lily Savage – made things interesting.
It was a silly moment – a man in a boat waving at the wildlife – but O’Grady was so full of joie de vivre that he turned it into riveting telly. At one point, he sat in a motorboat waving at seals. He did so with an effusive mixture of charm and spikiness – that amiable personality spritzed with just enough vinegar to keep you on your toes. Here was more stodge shovelled out to fill the schedules.īut O’Grady, who has died suddenly at age 67, made it work. Lockdowns were rolling ever onwards, everyone was miserable, and the weather was pretty grim. In the hands of many presenters, Great British Escape would have been the sorriest filler. In November 2020, during the dog days of the pandemic, Paul O’Grady hosted a travel show in which he pottered around the UK.
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