The late Paul O'Grady and his best friends Cilla Black, Dale Winton, and Barbara Windsor were an iconic part of the UK's entertainment industry.
On screen, their paths regularly crossed with Paul - who died yesterday evening - taking over Blind Date from Cilla, while she often returned the favour by appearing on his chat show.
Paul, Cilla, and Babara even joined forces for one unforgettable show when they performed at the Royal Variety Performance in 2001, with the poignant footage recirculating today.
The clip was shared on Twitter by James Briggs, who wrote: "The holy trinity of comedy and performing. Can only imagine the party Paul O'Grady, Barbara Windsor and Cilla are having now."
Indeed, off screen, they partied with the best of them.
But sadly, in later life the foursome were all plagued by ill health, collectively suffering heart attacks, strokes and dementia.
Here, The Mirror explores the unlucky later years of the best friends...
Cilla Black
Cilla Black was just 72 when she died at her holiday home in Spain on August 1, 2015.
She had fallen and suffered a stroke, leaving her family, friends and millions of fans devastated.
Cilla first found fame in the 1960s as a singer, with her smash hits Anyone Who Had A Heart and You're My World making her the biggest selling female British artist of the decade.
The national treasure then went on to forge a hugely successful career as a television presenter, hosting some of the biggest shows on TV including Blind Date, Surprise, Surprise and The Moment of Truth.
In 1998 she met Paul on the set of the chat show, Parkinson, where they had an immediate 'unbreakable' bond over their Liverpudlian roots.
Cilla was married to her husband and manager, Bobby Willis, for 30 years until his tragic death from lung cancer in 1999.
Close friends of the singer say she never got over Bobby's death. The couple had never spent more than four nights apart in their three decades as husband and wife.
In an interview after Bobby's death Cilla, who was only 56 when she lost her husband, said: "Without Bobby I felt so alone.
"Before I used to be terrified of flying, but his death cured me. For a while afterwards, I couldn't wait to get on a plane. I thought, 'If the plane crashes, great.' I wanted something to take me now."
After Bobby's death, Paul swooped in and whisked her off to New York, where he admitted he was a bad influence.
"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," he recalled while delivering a eulogy at her funeral.
"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]."
But by the time she reached her 70s Cilla was battling health problems of her own.
She had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was in considerable pain.
Cilla was also struggling with hearing problems and even though she admitted son Robert wanted her around for as long as possible, she herself didn't want to linger.
In a heartbreaking interview, just before she died, Cilla said: "Seventy-five is a good age to go, I still think that way.
"Secretly I don't want to linger. I don't want to be a burden on anybody. I know 75 is only four years away but I take each day as I find it.
"The hearing is the bugbear. I now have an implant in my ear to help my hearing which I have to turn off at night.
"I'm talking in an echo chamber at the moment. I guess that's just getting old – it'll come to you, too."
When Cilla died, a heartbroken Paul said it was like a "light went off in his life."
At her funeral, he recalled their raucous antics and told mourners: "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."
Barbara Windsor
Dame Barbara Windsor died aged 83, after the EastEnders and Carry On legend was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2014.
She kept her condition secret until symptoms started to show in 2018.
Sadly, she died on December 10, 2020 at a London care home.
Her husband Scott Mitchell moved Barbara into a care home in her last years on the advice of her neurologist.
The actress spoke publicly about her condition in 2018, encouraging people to run the 2019 London Marathon in aid of Dementia Revolution, to "support ground-breaking research to find a cure for a condition that affects so many people, like me".
She was friends with Paul for 30 years, and he visited her throughout her illness, recalling one touching exchange.
He asked the star if she could remember who he was, to which she replied: "You're hard to ever forget."
Revealing how he adapted their conversations for her illness, he told The Sun: "If she does repeat herself, you just answer it and carry on like you haven't heard it before."
Dale Winton
Dale, whose big break came in 1993 as the host of TV gameshow Supermarket Sweep, was found dead at home at the age of 62 in April 2018.
Police initially said they were investigating the "unexplained" death but were not treating the death as suspicious, and later a coroner ruled he died of natural causes.
And his friend, TV host Gloria Hunniford said he had been battling ill-health for some time.
"Dale had a lot of things going wrong, he had pain with arthritis, he had a heart complaint, he had a chest infection, and we all know how the winter affected that. He had asthma as well," she said.
After his untimely passing, Paul O'Grady wrote a glowing tribute to his late friend in The Mirror.
He said: "When I think of Dale, I think of Mr Showbiz. Out there, giving it all, with a big smile and the tan.
"He always insisted on getting that glow. He really embraced being in the public eye and absolutely loved it."
Recalling the first time they met at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the West End, he continued: "Dale had just started doing Supermarket Sweep and all he had to do was walk a shopping trolley along the stage – but he was a bag of nerves.
"Encouraging him, I said, 'I've got to go out there and do a really tricky song with an actor I don't know and you're worried about wheeling a bloody shopping trolley!' I said I'd swap with him any day."
"Later we were both very close to Cilla Black. We both spent time with her at her place in Spain.
"One time, 20 years ago, he was the one making sure Cilla was in bed early and I was the bad one who was out partying until 5am.
"It was a joke between the three of us, he was Nurse Winton and I was Nurse Savage.
"Whenever I saw Dale he was cheerful, walking down the street chatting to everybody. I remember him saying to me, 'I'm so lucky, darling'.
"It wasn't something he took for granted and he didn't have a bad bone in his body."
Paul O'Grady
TV and radio star Paul O'Grady 'unexpectedly' passed away at the age of 67, throwing the entertainment world into mourning.
But while his sudden passing has come as a shock, the iconic comedian's health had been ailing for years.
The Cheshire-born star had previously survived several heart attacks along with a near-fatal bout of covid.
Heart disease ran in his family, with his mother and father once both suffering heart attacks in the same week. Sadly his father's proved to be fatal. His mum later died of a separate attack.
The iconic TV host also struggled with cigarette addiction, smoking 40 a day for years and joking that he had two great loves in this world, "Benson and Hedges".
His first heart attack happened in 2002 when Paul was just 47.
He switched to a healthier lifestyle, starting the day with a swim and taking long country walks near his home in Aldington, Kent, but fell off the wagon two years later.
He had a second heart attack in 2006, this time more serious. After a raft of tests and surgery to clear a blocked artery, he was released from hospital and placed on blood thinning medication.
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