Paul O'Grady
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Paul James O'Grady (b. 14 June 1955 in Birkenhead, England) is a UK comedian and television personality. He is the creator of comic character Lily Savage, a vampish Liverpudlian woman.
O'Grady was brought up in an Irish Catholic household in Tranmere. He attended St. Anselm's College in Manor Hill. When he was 19 he worked as a clerk in a magistrate's court and met Diane Jansen, ten years his senior, with whom he had a daughter, Sharyn. However, he claims he was "gay from the moment he was born". Three years after his daughter was born, Paul wed a Portuguese lesbian waitress called Teresa Fernandes in a marriage of convenience.
Paul's jobs have included civil servant, cleaner for Cleo Laine, office work in an abattoir and a woodsman. He has also worked in a children's home in Kirkby.
In 1977, he went to Manila where he worked as a waiter in Gussy's Bar (also a brothel). It was here he got the idea for Lily Savage. He returned to London in the early 1980s and subsequently achieved fame with his creation of Lily, initially playing to gay clubs around Vauxhall in London but then taking the act into the mainstream. For a few years Lily hosted the show Blankety Blank.
In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
More recently (in 2005) he has tended to appear less as Lily and more often as himself, and he has had some success as the star of his own early evening talk show, The Paul O'Grady Show, on ITV1