Why Did Paul O’Grady Stop Doing Lily Savage?

Paul O’Grady said he stopped doing Lily Savage because her material wouldn’t work in the modern day.

While working for Camden Social Services, O’Grady made his first attempt at putting together a drag act creating the character of Lily Savage; he later said, “I wanted to get up there but be larger than life a creature that was more cartoon than human”.

His debut was on the afternoon of October 7, 1987, at The Black Cap gay pub in Camden, where his act involved miming the words of Barbra Streisands’s Nobody Makes a Pass at Me from the show Pins and Needles.

In March 1983, he joined the Equity union, allowing him to take a role in the theatrical adaptation of “Id They’d Asked for A Lion Tamer at the Domar Warehouse.