Paul O’Grady’s death came as a huge shock. If you didn’t feel that at the time, you almost certainly did during For the Love of Paul O’Grady, ITV’s tribute to the late comedian. The most scattershot, breakneck, flung-together hour of television you may ever watch, the show was, quite frankly, all over the place. It was unevenly structured, oddly paced and contained a bizarre framing device, in which edit points were covered with footage of dogs watching a television, one of whom posed mournfully next to a tissue box, making the whole thing look like an especially macabre canine-based obituary episode of Gogglebox. Clearly, ITV didn’t know this was coming any more than we did.
So with that in mind, it’s all the more remarkable that the show was as moving as it was. What beat through every frame was the sheer strength of feeling that O’Grady inspired, in his friends, colleagues and fans alike. I am deliberately trying to avoid using the word “love” here, because that doesn’t seem quite right. This was a man for whom a huge spectrum of people felt tangible affinity. They felt as if he belonged to them and them alone.
