On 28 March 2023, the nation lost one of its most beloved comedians when Paul O’Grady passed away in his Kent home at the age of 67. Famed for his sharp wit, kindness, loyalty and love of dogs, when the news broke even Queen Camilla paid tribute to him (they grew close when working together for animal welfare charity Battersea Dogs and Cats Home).
“He was the most welcome guest at any event, from glamorous parties to private visits to our beloved Battersea, and was loved by one and all,” she said. “Perhaps this is no surprise. After all, there are no finer judges of character than dogs, and about Paul, they were unanimous in their devotion, as were we all.”
There is no doubting that Paul’s untimely passing is still being felt. We spoke to his radio producer of 20 years, Malcolm Prince, who has written a book all about his close friend, Paul O’Grady - Not The Same Without You. He wants everyone to know what the real Paul was like and why the world is a much duller place without him in it.
“There will never be another Paul O’Grady and I just miss everything about him,” Malcolm tells us. “The endless chats we used to have on the phone, which would mainly involve him talking at me for about an hour and putting the world to rights! But whenever my phone goes, even now, I still expect it to be him and that’s what I miss the most.
“I wrote this book about my best friend but what I ended up writing about was everybody’s best friend. Because everybody who worked with him or who saw him on telly, listened to him on the radio or read one of his books, felt like they really knew him. And that’s a genuine, genuine skill.
“I’ve worked with some mega stars at the BBC. I mean, huge, huge stars. And they’re not all nice. But what you saw with Paul was the real Paul O’Grady. If you saw him playing with the dogs at Battersea, or if you heard him do one of the thank you messages on the radio show when he’s thanking doctors or teachers or bus drivers or whoever, that’s what he was really like.
“And the reason I mention all of that is because in March, it will be three years since we lost him and in those three years – and trust me, I did a lot of research for the book – no bad stories have appeared about Paul O’Grady.
“A lot of celebrities die and a few months later you get one of the tabloids saying, ‘Oh, but did you know he used to do that? Or she was actually like that?’ Nothing’s come out. And the reason for that is Paul laid it bare in his own work. He hid nothing. He was a very genuine, decent person.”
Malcom says Paul had many great attributes and one of them was his ability to stay in touch with his working-class background – he was born into an Irish family in Tranmere in the Wirral area of north-west England – while mixing with some of the highest people in society, including the Royal Family.
“He’d come into the studio carrying his WHSmith Carrier bag, which always contained a Gregg’s sausage roll and would say, ‘You know they’re listening?’ and I thought he’d be talking about actual listeners,” Malcom recalls. “But he’d say, ‘No, the royals, they listen.’
“On one occasion he’d been round to see his friend Liza, also known as Lady Anson, Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin. She hadn’t been well and Paul, being the loyal friend he was, went round to her regularly and once he was shown into the kitchen and Queen Elizabeth was sat there. Now I would’ve been a bit flummoxed by that but not Paul. He just sat there and had a conversation with her because he could talk to anybody. It wouldn’t bother him where they came from, he treated everybody the same and that was one of his many strengths.
“The Queen thanked Paul for being so loyal to her family member. And he said, ‘Well, it’s what I would do to any friend.’ Which is true, by the way – if a friend was ever in trouble, Paul was there. He then went on to discuss with her all sorts of things. Now, I’m not going to reveal what they were because he said I couldn’t reveal what they were. Let’s just say it was about families.”
For his book, Malcom spoke to many of Paul’s friends and family including his daughter Sharon so they could all pass on their memories of him.
“I was lucky doing this book as I got to get to know his daughter,” he says. “Sharon’s been incredible with the support that she’s given the project. And she allowed me to talk to Paul’s grandchildren. So, I did sit-down interviews with them and we were all crying.
“The other thing about all of this is I was with him on the last day. And I left him and I said goodbye, he said goodbye to me and an hour after I went, he died. Nobody else got to say goodbye to Paul O’Grady.
“We spoke for two hours. We did talk about death. My husband Rene had just lost his sister, and Paul was very worried about him and how he was coping. He told me to look after him. So, the conversation started about death, and it did bubble up again through the two hours.
“He’d just come back from a week playing Miss Hannigan in Annie, so he was tired and he looked a bit tired. But he was going off to do Annie in Southampton, and we were about to record a new show for Boom the next day. So, I’d set everything up in the kitchen for him to record the show. Looking back, and with hindsight, you know, you can say something may not have been quite right.
“He did used to say to me, ‘You don’t know how much time you’ve got.’ And he kept on saying, ‘I’m not going to make old bones.’ I devote quite a bit of the last chapter to that.
“Not long after I got home, I received the phone call to say he’d died,” Malcolm remembers. “Rene said to me, you need to write down everything that you spoke about because you’re going to forget it. And I made notes. So, when I had the chance to talk to Sharon and Phil, her husband, and the grandchildren, Paul’s friends Vera and Moira, and his manager Joan and a lot of his other friends like Alan Carr, none of them had the chance to say goodbye to him and I could tell them everything. I wanted to give people the chance to say farewell and thank you to Paul in the book.”
Paul O’Grady: Not the Same Without You by Malcolm Prince, RRP: £22 (HarperCollins)
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