1. At My Mother's Knee...: and other low joints
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Paul O'Grady, apart from being one of Britain's best loved entertainers, is a classic example of reinvention, as At My Mother’s Knee demonstrates. The young Liverpool entertainer, an altar boy from Irish Catholic Birkenhead, becomes the acid-tongued and outrageous drag queen Lily Savage, and moves from gay pubs to national television, creating something of a British comic institution en route (O'Grady's caustic drag character was a world away from safer predecessors such as Danny La Rue). But O'Grady (like other comic performers such as John Cleese) realised that comic creations can have a limited shelf life, and reinvented himself as ‘Paul O'Grady’, coming out from behind the false breasts and towering wigs as a toned-down (but still camp), more audience-friendly TV presenter (wisely, he retained the abrasive voice and a Scouse accent that could be cut with a knife).
Author: Paul O'Grady
Format: Kindle 464 pages
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Guide price:* Book: £6.30, Kindle: £4.30
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| 2. Still Standing: The Savage Years
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As a narrator, stroppy of tongue but melting of heart, O'Grady still charms and tickles. The comic scenes with his truly mythological mum ("the Madame Defarge of Tranmere"; "Columbo in a flannelette nightie"; "Eleanor of Aquitaine with a chip-pan") can touch the hem of Alan Bennett's robe... Leaves most fiction and history of the era in the dust.
Author: Paul O'Grady
Format: Paper & Kindle 432 pages
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Guide price:* Book: £5.60, Kindle: £5
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| 3. The Devil Rides Out
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Birkenhead, 1973. The eighteen-year-old Paul O'Grady gets ready for a big Saturday night out on the town. New white T-shirt, freshly ironed jeans, looking good. As he bids farewell to his mum, who's on the phone to his auntie, and wanders off down the street in a cloud of aftershave, he hears her familiar cry: 'Oh, the devil rides out tonight, Annie. The devil rides out!'
The further adventures of Paul O'Grady - following on from the million-copy-selling At My Mother's Knee - are, if anything, even more hilarious and outrageous than what has come before.To say that The Devil Rides Out is action-packed is an understatement. Its extraordinary cast of characters includes lords and ladies, the legendary Vera, a serial killer, more prostitutes than you can shake a stick at and drag queens of every shape and size. Wickedly funny, often moving, and searingly honest, Paul's tales of the unexpected will make your jaw drop and your hair stand on end. And you'll laugh like a drain. The Devil Rides Out is one hell of a read!
Author: Paul O'Grady
Format: Paper & Kindle 432 pages
Publisher: Bantam
Guide price:* Book: £6.30, Kindle: £6
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Hits: [2223]
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