The showbiz world has been left in mourning following Paul O’Grady’s sudden death at the age of 67, but the beloved star previously admitted he thought his number would be up long before now.
The Chesire-born TV and radio presenter experienced a number of health scares in his time, including heart attacks, kidney failure and Covid, but he always seemed to bounce back.
He also experienced a number of losses. One that hit him particularly hard was the death of Cilla Black in 2015.
O’Grady and the Liverpudlian singer-turned-TV presenter had been close friends for 20 years and he admitted a “light went off in his life” when she died.
He also revealed at her funeral that although Black was 12 years his senior, he hadn’t expected to outlive her.
Delivering a touching and comical eulogy, he even shared how he had planned for her to have a “major role” at his funeral involving “a mantilla and some lilies.”
He said: “I’ve been asked to speak about Cilla on numerous occasions but I never thought I’d be here.
“I firmly believed she was indestructible and I always thought I’d be the one to go first.
“We discussed my funeral a number of times and she had a major role in it which involved a mantilla and lilies. I’m going to have to re-think that now aren’t I?”
Of their friendship, he said they “just clicked”. He also joked that he was a bad influence on the late Blind Date presenter and introduced her to the “finer things of New York” after her late husband Bobby sadly died.
He said: “Even if we went for a meal something always happened, usually to me. We just clicked.
“After Bobby died we sat up at 5am in the morning and decided to go to stay with Peter Brown in New York, which we did.
“I introduced her to the finer things of New York, like bars, burlesque shows and nightclubs with such reputations that taxi drivers were always unsure [about dropping us off].
“If I had to sum Cilla up in one word it would be ‘laughter’, because that’s all we did. We got up to a lot of trouble but we laughed while we were doing it.”
