KNOWN for his caring nature, Paul O’Grady stood up for the vulnerable and least fortunate, not only at the height of his fame but also before he became drag icon Lily Savage.
His love of the underdog was epitomised in later life on TV shows such as For the Love of Dogs, but as a social worker for Camden Council in North London, the young dad saw, firsthand, families in need of support.
Here in extracts from his memoirs he recounts some of the sad, terrifying and hilarious encounters he had...
One of my assignments was looking after a girl and her three brothers while their mother went into hospital for a hysterectomy and their father went into prison for IRA activities.
It was in another rundown flat that I found myself playing Mary Poppins for six solid weeks.
Luckily they were smashing kids, their ages ranging from four to 10, who were hardly any trouble at all to look after and seemed to live only for food and football, the girl included. I took them to see Arsenal play, only the second time I’d ever been to a professional match.
My induction into professional football had taken place years earlier when Frank, our next-door neighbour, had taken me to see Tranmere Rovers play and the man standing behind me had done a beery wee down the back of my duffel coat through a rolled-up copy of the Liverpool Echo.
One morning Liam, the youngest boy, wearing only a dirty vest, seized the opportunity of an open front door to escape. When I eventually realised that he was missing I took off looking for him in my bare feet, frantic that he’d wandered on to the busy road.
Finally discovering him outside the station, barefaced and bare-arsed, I suffered the humiliation of seeing commuters on their way to catch their trains either averting their eyes completely or viewing the pair of us with a mixture of disgust and pity.
A woman on her way out of WH Smith said that I wanted reporting to the social services for allowing a child to run around like that. Catching my reflection in the window, unshaven and unkempt, clutching a none too clean half-naked child, I could see why.
I’d taken the children to see their mother in hospital. She was a nice woman, a loving mother trying to raise her kids on what she received from the government.
When we got back to the flat I found I had unexpected visitors, two men, one of whom was in the cupboard under the stairs. They turned out to be the children’s uncle and his friend. The uncle emerged from the cupboard explaining that he was looking for a sports bag but as it wasn’t there it didn’t matter.
They were affable enough as we stood around talking and drinking tea but I couldn’t help sensing their unease. What was in that cupboard? I’d have a look later after they’d gone and the kids were asleep.
Tucked away at the back of the electricity meter, wrapped in a carrier bag, I found my answer. A gun. I unwrapped the bag and stared at it, wondering what I should do now. I couldn’t have four lively kids running around a flat with a gun waiting to be discovered by inquisitive fingers, nor was I prepared to put them and myself at risk by living in a possible secret armoury for the IRA.
The uncle had either been looking for the gun when I disturbed him, which meant he’d probably be back, or been hiding it.
Either way I didn’t feel particularly safe and slept with one eye open. In the morning, the children’s mum turned up. I didn’t want to worry her but felt I had to tell her about the gun.
“If you’d lifted them floorboards up you’d have found a few other bits and pieces,’ she said resignedly. “That bloody Gerry, I’ve warned him about using my house to hide his arms. Don’t worry, I’ll see that it’s out of here by tonight and that will be the last of it. Forget you ever saw anything, d’ye hear?”
Towards the middle of January, Maura rang as a job had come up she really needed me for. It was the usual story: mother in hospital leaving a two-year-old and an 18-month-old baby, lovely little kiddies, at risk... It would be better if a man went in as there was a history of violence with the father.
And so I moved into a furnished rathole in Camden Town to look after the two “lovely little kiddies”. Two nights later the father, on the run from the police, turned up drunk and, mistaking me for his girlfriend’s latest squeeze, tried to kill me. I locked myself in the bathroom with the two kids, who by now were extremely distressed, and prayed the door would hold, leaning against it as he tried to kick it down.
Thankfully he gave up after a while, transferring his attentions to the room next door.
“I’m going to burn the f***ing place down,” I could hear him ranting as he smashed up furniture. “D’you hear me? Burn it to the ground.”
It was now or never. I had to make a run for it. The kids were in their pyjamas so I wrapped them in towels, picked them up, took a deep breath and opened the door. If Dame Kelly Holmes had seen me running she’d have given up there and then. I was nothing more than a blur as I legged it down the hall, out of the door and down the stairs and didn’t stop running till I reached the High Street. I’m amazed that I didn’t slip on the snow and ice and can only assume I was moving so fast my feet weren’t actually touching the ground, à la Billy Whizz.
So here I was, trudging along Camden High Street in heavy snow at 10 o’clock on a Sunday, carrying two frightened kids wrapped in towels and searching for a phone box that hadn’t been vandalised.
In desperation I fought my way through a crowd of punks gathered at the Electric Ballroom to ask a bouncer if there was such a rarity as a phone. The Lurkers and Adam and the Ants were playing and it was bedlam but the bouncer was a gent and he escorted me and the kids downstairs to the office. Bemused punks glared as I pushed past with the kids, a couple
of them aggressively
asking what I thought I was doing bringing kids into a club.
“Earning a living,” I shouted back. They must’ve thought I was a courier for a baby farmer.
