EXCLUSIVE: Paul O'Grady had secret eating disorder which 'stemmed from Lily Savage'
An extraordinary new book about Paul O'Grady by his friend and producer Malcolm Prince sheds new light on the star with gripping new testimony from his friends, family and celebrity friends
TV star Paul O’Grady may have had an eating disorder, his friends believe. His producer Malcolm Prince has opened up about the star in his extraordinary new book Paul O’Grady – Not The Same Without You which is being serialized by the Daily and Sunday Mirror.
It features testimony from his friends and family about his life, and explores for the first time his troubled relationship with food. “Until some of the people I’d spoken to expressed it, I probably hadn’t spotted it…but it makes sense,” Malcolm says.
Incredibly, it may have stemmed from trying to remain slender as his alter-ego Lily Savage. His make-up artist Vanessa White recalls: “I think it all stemmed from his days with Lily, when he was wearing corsets, and he had to be slim.”She adds: “He was a very tricky eater, and on filming trips with him, I would always take a box of Weetabix, just in case, because often he just wouldn’t be able to eat anything.”
Other friends observed similar patterns. Amanda Mealing explains: “Food was a necessity, he didn’t particularly like [having to eat] it.” Pal Moira Stewart added: “There was something about food that was tough for him. He told me that his aunty, Chrissie, who was a major influence in his early life, was probably anorexic. And Paul either binged or didn’t eat for days.”
The book also tells how Paul told how he feared his days were numbered shortly before his death. Moira, who picked him up after a hospital visit, said: "As we were driving along the lanes back home, he said to me, ‘I’m not going to be here for much longer.’ I asked him what he meant and pushed him to tell me what the doctors had said to him. He was contemplative, I put my arm around him, and he just replied, ‘That’s it. I think I won’t be here for much longer.’”
Paul said something similar to Malcolm during a phone conversation weeks later. “It’s a conversation I will never forget because he calmly ended our chat with, ‘I won’t make old bones, Malcolm.’” Even weeks before his death, during a conversation about the death of someone close to Malcolm, Paul said about “not knowing what was round the corner.” “Paul joked about his own age and how he wouldn’t be surprised if his own exit would be ‘sooner rather than later,” Malcolm writes. In their final meeting at Paul’s farmhouse on the day of his death, Paul told Malcolm he was reviewing his will, saying the words just “seemed to just hang in the air.”
Paul O’Grady – Not the same without you by Malcolm Prince (HarperCollins, £22) is out on 6th November