The day I put a man in hospital for calling me a 'fairy': He's long been ridiculed as camp but here pugnacious Lionel Blair (a father of three) reveals why he's 'flamboyant'
Lionel Blair is waving at me from a street corner. ‘Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!’ He is brightly tanned, dressed a bit like a sailor boy in a tight-fitting blue and white outfit, waving a Rothman’s cigarette in a long plastic holder and beaming happily as passing drivers toot and yell ‘Lionel! Lionel!’.
He couldn’t look more camp if he tried. But he wouldn’t choose that word.
Lionel (‘Li to my friends, Lililuli to Bruce Forsyth’) is full of surprises.
Above all, he has been happily married for 47 years and has three children and three grandchildren, whom he adores.
He counts Joan Collins among his glamorous exes (‘A dear friend, just lovely — I think Percy is her nicest husband yet’) and his friends include Paul McCartney (‘I used to dye my hair, too, but I think it’s better natural’), Bond actor Roger Moore (‘How many wives have I known? I’ve only known him since Dorothy’), Simon Cowell (‘he always tells me I look wonderful’), Lulu (‘wasn’t she brilliant at the Commonwealth Games’) and Bruce Forsyth — now they’ve patched things up following a tiff after Lionel didn’t attend his 80th birthday party.
Oh yes, and every strand of Lionel’s extraordinary bouffant hair is his own.
He takes his seat with a little twirl and a pitter-patter of feet. He is in astonishingly good shape for a man of, gosh, how many years is it? He’s always been tight-lipped about the exact number.
Lionel is still ‘performing good’. He is celebrating 65 years in showbusiness — working, dancing, telling jokes and entertaining on the occasional cruise ship. He is also about to record a new album of standards and guest star in a revival of The Good Old Days.
A couple of weeks ago he joined in an alternative comedy night in West London, tap-dancing onto the stage in a metallic suit to a standing ovation. ‘They had to ask me to leave so they could get on with the show. How wonderful is that?’
As someone who refuses to give up work, he’s worried that Forsyth’s retirement from Strictly will be a ‘big test’ for him.
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In recent times, he’s popped up on the odd celebrity TV show, including reality TV series The Farm, for which he was paid £50,000.
For years, he refused to go on Celebrity Big Brother — ‘until they said how much they’d pay me’. So earlier this year he appeared on the humiliating series in a PVC suit. ‘You had to join in, dahling. It was great fun.’ His bad language caused a stir. ‘Everyone was so shocked, but it was brilliant. I’m sick of being that nice Lionel Blair. I want to be evil. I want to be a proper Bond baddie. I want people to be afraid of me.
Right on cue, a trio of women rush over to where we’re sitting in the sun. ‘Ooh, Lionel. We love you. Please can we do a picture?’
So on work-days he plans his outfits carefully, wears fake tan, and douses himself in Issey Miyake cologne.
He loves afternoon movies on TV, game shows, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and EastEnders.
Then it’s a quick sedative (diazepam) and bed. ‘It used to be valium — I’ve been on it for years and years. Brilliant. Every night, out, bang. It just works.’
Lionel was born Henry Lionel Ogus in December 1931. His dad was a Russian barber. He and younger sister Joyce (they taught themselves to dance by watching Fred Astaire films) entertained people on Piccadilly Line Tube stations during air raids in World War II.
He became a junior member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, but his serious acting dreams evaporated at 15 when his father died of a strangulated hernia and he and his sister had to earn a living with their dance routine.
They danced together until 1977 when she moved to America, as Lionel says, ‘to get away from being Lionel Blair’s sister.’
Meanwhile, he choreographed and appeared on endless shows at the London Palladium, formed his dance troupe, became best friends with Sammy Davis Jr, appeared in The Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night and, rather embarrassingly, turned David Bowie down at an audition for a group called 68 Style In Chelsea.
Lionel had an active bachelor life — squiring several ‘well-known models’ — and was often asked to sign women fans’ bosoms.
But then he met a model called Sue in 1967 and they married six weeks later. He talks endlessly about how fabulous she is, how it was love at first sight, how she runs their finances, and how he’d be dead if she wasn’t looking after him.
The News of the World once ran an article in which he admitted a series of one-night stands. Today, he says: ‘It was nothing. Darling, I’m not a flirt, but I’m always friendly. I can’t really remember it now. It’s very lonely on tour.’
He certainly worked hard. He was a team captain on the celebrity TV quiz Give Us A Clue, presented Name That Tune and made lucrative adverts for Harp lager.
He also became the king of panto. But that suddenly stopped about ten years ago. During one performance in Stockport, as part of the act, he asked a boy in the audience his name. The youngster retorted: ‘Touch my nuts and you’re dead!’ Everyone laughed but Lionel stopped the show. ‘I realised I couldn’t do that any more. I can’t hug them. It’s madness. So I stopped.’
It isn’t just the nature of panto that has changed. Lionel is appalled at the prevailing culture of political correctness. He was upset by John Barrowman promoting gay rights by kissing another man at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. ‘What was all that about for goodness sake?’
For years, people joked that Lionel was gay. It’s been a running (rather unkind) gag on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. ‘It isn’t nice when you have a family,’ he says.
Mostly, he just bit his lip, but one day at a cricket match organised by Michael Parkinson, a man called him a ‘fairy’ in front of his daughter Lucy, and Lionel punched him. ‘He had to go to hospital!’
Lionel has strong views on gay marriage. ‘I can’t bear it, I’m afraid. Look, if people want to live together, fine. And I do believe in civil partnerships. But marriage is between a man and a woman.
Lionel Blair is the best lunch companion you could hope for. His impressions are brilliant. His anecdotes superb — if largely unrepeatable and startlingly un-PC. But there’s no masking his frustration at the way his career unfolded. He believes that he didn’t get his own show, like Bruce Forsyth or Des O’Connor, because he was ‘just a dancer’.
I can’t help thinking he’d add a certain spice to the judges’ panel on Strictly Come Dancing. ‘Oh no! I couldn’t be rude to anyone who was a friend and tell them: "That was **** darling, you’ve got to go!"
And tomorrow? Is it another fake-tan ‘work’ day or pyjamas and watching Home And Away on TV?
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