It was a great shock to hear of the sudden and early death of performer Paul O’Grady.
Although he came to prominence as a drag artist in the 1980s with his alter ego Lily Savage, latterly it was as a dog lover that he was principally known.
He hosted two animal-themed television shows Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs from 2012–2022 and Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans from 2014–2016. For the Love of Dogs was a documentary that promoted Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and O’Grady not only filmed there but volunteered for six months. There is a bronze statue of his dog Buster, a bichon-frisé/shih tzu cross (pictured left) in the centre and he adopted another dog, a JRT/Chihuahua form there. His Animal Orphans programmes took him to Africa and India.
Although the programmes that he made about dogs were a fraction of his wide output, it is probably safe to say that they were close to his heart. he will be sorely missed.