num_pages: 352
description: In his own uniquely acid tongue Paul O'Grady traces the hilarious tales of life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that took him from a virtuous altar-boy (my first drag) to Britain's best loved entertainer. It's a life that includes varyingly stints in an abbatoir as a social worker in a high-class Mayfair brothel and traipsing down to London to chase his dreams. By 23 Paul O'Grady had been a father husband drag queen gay lover divorcee and degenerate. He did it all with a smile on his face making a mental note to register the whip-smart one-liners that would later inform his star-studded path from the fringes of comedy to the heart of the British establishment first as his own brilliant comic creation Lily Savage then triumphantly as himself. Paul's remarkable childhood and early life is littered with a dizzying cast-list of rogues rascals lovers fighters saints and sinners. Oh and one iconic bus conductress. Told with pathos love empathy and naturally biting humor the story of Paul O'Grady is that of everyman everywoman and inevitably every drag act ever. He has been rich and poor posh and common straight and gay. He has mixed with stars and whores and all that's in between slyly spotting the similarity between them all. His amazing and riveting life story reminds us that there is when all is said and done a bit of savage in all of us.
language: English
title: At My Mother's Knee...: and other low joints
publisher: Transworld Publishers