Paul O'Grady gave his family and friends one order for his funeral - and that was to have a laugh. One of the TV legend's best pals, Amanda Mealing, said: "He just told us to have a good time. He’d hate it if everyone was morose.”
She explained that everyone was devasted over the 67-year-old's death on Tuesday, March 28, but there were also tears of laughter too as they remembered his "ridiculous" antics. As Paul spent a lifetime making people smile, he instructed his friends that his send-off should be full of laughter as well, reports The Daily Mirror.
Speaking in an exclusive interview, Amanda, a former Casualty star, said: "Whatever happens, Paul’s funeral will be a celebration of his life and it will be full of laughter. He just told us to have a good time – he’d hate it if everyone was mawkish and morose.
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"He would just say: ‘I don’t care, I won’t be here! Do whatever you want’.” The 55 year old also explained there were plans for two funerals as well as a possible tribute back home in Merseyside, and that Paul had lived “67 lives full of adventures” in his 67 years.
She said: "There may be two funerals. A small private one and a big one in a very grand place for those outside the family. I would think it’ll be in London.
“Then everyone can come to that and it gives people a chance to fly in. There are ongoing conversations.
“We’ve also been asking: ‘Can we do something in Liverpool?’ because obviously they very much feel he’s their baby. It’s so difficult.”
Amanda was pals with Paul for 35 years and lovingly called him Savage, a nickname after his drag queen alter-ego Lily Savage.
Amanda learned of Paul’s death in a text from his husband Andre Portasio in the early hours of Wednesday, March 29, and then raced to the couple’s farmhouse in Kent to comfort 41-year-old Andre. She said: “Andre sent me a text at 1am. I woke up to it. I was just numb. I just couldn’t comprehend what the text had said.
“I just couldn’t understand it. As soon as I got myself together I went down to the house. Over the last few days, we’ve started conversations crying and end up laughing with tears just remembering ridiculous stories!
“On the first day we were all just wandering around numb and then yesterday I spent the entire day doing flower arrangements. There were so many flowers and gifts from people. Someone sent a video of a really beautiful send-off at the Vauxhall Tavern [the iconic London venue].
"The thing that got us all was that instead of a moment’s silence, they had a moment’s cheer and that just set us all off. It was such a lovely thing. It just captures you. You think you’re okay and then something like that just gets you."
She added: “It was such a lovely gesture to hear all this noise for him. It’s been an enormous comfort to know he was so loved. And for a kid from Birkenhead to have the Queen Consort send a message of condolence... speaks volumes. They had a great bond, but the thing about Savage was that he treated everyone the same, whether you were related to the Queen or a builder. It didn’t matter to him.”
Amanda spoke to Paul, who was also the godfather to her sons Milo and Otis, on the phone days before he died. She said: “He was feeling great.
"He’d just come back from Thailand where he’d sent endless texts and photos of himself with elephants and things like that. He had a great time out there. I had called him up and said: ‘Savage, I need to know how to remove a curse.’ He said: ‘Right, what you need to do is light a candle, make an offering, you need to do this, you need to do that!’
“That was the ridiculousness of our relationship. I’m heartbroken for me because I’ve lost my best friend, but I’m not heartbroken for Paul because he absolutely rinsed his life."
She continued: “He got absolutely everything he could out of it and that is wonderful. He lived 67 lives with the adventures he created in his life and the things he did and the places he would go. He did everything he could and he never had regrets. He said: ‘What’s the point? It’s done now. There’s no point regretting anything’. I said to Andre yesterday: ‘This could have happened with him alone in a hotel room on tour somewhere obscure.
“Instead, he was at home in the place he loved with the person he loved. I’m sure he would have said: ‘That’s the way to do it’.”
Paul was the youngest of three children in an Irish Catholic family living on Merseyside and found fame as acerbic Lily Savage in the 1980s and helped launch drag into the mainstream of entertainment. He landed TV jobs as Lily, first on Channel 4 ’s The Big Breakfast and then hosting BBC game show Blankety Blank from 1998 until 2002 when he became a star himself as a host of daytime TV hit The Paul O’Grady Show, For the Love of Dogs and Blind Date, which was previously hosted by his close pal Cilla Black, who died in 2015.
Paul was awarded the MBE and won a hatful of TV awards, and he also hosted a Sunday show on Radio 2 for years before quitting last year after being forced to share his slot with a younger presenter. Paul was also playing Mrs Hannigan in a touring version of Annie and had just filmed a wildlife documentary in Thailand.
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