{"id":236616,"date":"2025-10-31T21:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/236616\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:14:11","slug":"paul-ogrady-had-secret-eating-disorder-which-stemmed-from-lily-savage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/236616\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul O’Grady had secret eating disorder which ‘stemmed from Lily Savage’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n

19:58, 31 Oct 2025Updated 19:59, 31 Oct 2025<\/p>\n

\"MalcolmMalcolm Prince has opened up about life with Paul O’Grady in a fascinating new book(Image: PA)<\/p>\n

TV star Paul O\u2019Grady<\/a> 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\u2019Grady \u2013 Not The Same Without You which is being serialized by the Daily and Sunday Mirror<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It features testimony from his friends and family about his life, and explores for the first time his troubled relationship with food. \u201cUntil some of the people I\u2019d spoken to expressed it, I probably hadn\u2019t spotted it\u2026but it makes sense,\u201d Malcolm says.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, it may have stemmed from trying to remain slender as his alter-ego Lily Savage. His make-up artist Vanessa White recalls: \u201cI think it all stemmed from his days with Lily, when he was wearing corsets, and he had to be slim.\u201dShe adds: \u201cHe 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\u2019t be able to eat anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other friends observed similar patterns. Amanda Mealing explains: \u201cFood was a necessity, he didn\u2019t particularly like [having to eat] it.\u201d Pal Moira Stewart added: \u201cThere 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\u2019t eat for days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MalcolmMalcolm Prince with Paul O’Grady and his dog Conchita(Image: PA)<\/p>\n

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, \u2018I\u2019m not going to be here for much longer.\u2019 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, \u2018That\u2019s it. I think I won\u2019t be here for much longer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LilyPaul as alter-ego Lily Savage <\/p>\n

Paul said something similar to Malcolm during a phone conversation weeks later. \u201cIt\u2019s a conversation I will never forget because he calmly ended our chat with, \u2018I won\u2019t make old bones, Malcolm.\u2019\u201d Even weeks before his death, during a conversation about the death of someone close to Malcolm, Paul said about \u201cnot knowing what was round the corner.\u201d \u201cPaul joked about his own age and how he wouldn\u2019t be surprised if his own exit would be \u2018sooner rather than later,\u201d Malcolm writes. In their final meeting at Paul\u2019s farmhouse on the day of his death, Paul told Malcolm he was reviewing his will, saying the words just \u201cseemed to just hang in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malcom’s new book<\/p>\n

Paul O\u2019Grady \u2013 Not the same without you by Malcolm Prince (HarperCollins, \u00a322) is out on 6th November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An extraordinary new book about Paul O’Grady by his friend and producer Malcolm Prince sheds new light on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,100024,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-236616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-paul-ogrady","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}