Death of popular TV presenter Paul O’Grady mourned locally

The death of well-known British entertainer Paul O’Grady was this week mourned locally as the former comedian, broadcaster and drag queen had many family connections in counties Roscommon and Galway.

He died suddenly on Tuesday evening aged 67 and his death was announced on Wednesday morning by his husband Andre Portasio.

Born in Birkenhead near Liverpool in 1955 he moved to London in his 20s and worked as a social worker for a period. He developed a drag act as Lily Savage and came to prominence in the early 1990s when he won a number of TV awards, including a Bafta. In later years Paul worked for animal rights charities and raised money for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

After retiring from television, he established a farm in Kent, where he kept a wide variety of animals and traced his love of farm life to his time spent as a child on his granduncle’s farm in County Galway. As a child, Paul O’Grady paid many visits to his granduncle’s house in Ballincurry, Glinsk during the summer holidays and visited family connections in Glinsk, Creggs and Tulsk.

Paul’s grandfather Pat Grady moved from Leahive, Creggs to Glinsk but died suddenly from a heart attack shortly afterwards (in January 1912) at the age of just 31. He had been among those agitating for the breaking up of the Pollok Estate and was one of the first to receive a holding when new farms were created by the Estates Commissioners in the early 1910s. He left behind a widow Biddy (nee Britton), his mother Mary (nee Dolan) and two young daughters Mary and Sarah Ann. Later that year his young son was born and was named Patrick or Pakie after his father.

The young Pakie Grady was brought up on the farm in Glinsk and was trained in farming ways by his mother and his uncle James who lived with them prior to his marriage. Pakie suffered from significant ill health and decided to move to England. The farm was sold at auction in Creggs in the late 1940s and Pakie set up home in Birkenhead near Liverpool with his wife, Molly Savage, who he had met at a dance in

Birkenhead. Her parents had emigrated to England from County Louth so the family had strong Irish connections.

As a young child, Paul and his parents and brother and sister made the journey back to Glinsk, staying at his granduncle’s farm in Ballincurry where Pakie’s three children joined James’s family for the school holidays, taking part in the summer farm work and visiting the family’s relatives in Glinsk, Creggs and Tulsk.

He has many relatives still in the local area and Mickey Grady, a first cousin of