“Camp? Really? I prefer ‘flamboyant’, or ‘enthusiastic’. I’ve always been a bit over-the-top.”
Very sad news today, as another of the veterans of British variety showbiz television has tap-danced his way up the silver staircase to Fabulon - that great "all-rounder" Lionel Blair is dead, aged 92.
One of the original perma-tanned, perfectly-coiffured, brilliant-white-toothed all-singing, all-dancing entertainers, of a generation that spawned the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Frankie Vaughan, Des O'Connor and their ilk, he was loved and mocked in equal measure for his chirpy camp-but-not-gay persona; in his vast career he appeared as a dancer in a number of films including A Hard Day's Night, as a guest star on myriad variety shows from the 1950s onwards - such as those hosted by Dickie Henderson, Benny Hill, Mike & Bernie Winters, the aforementioned Brucie, and indeed the Royal Variety Show - as one of the inspired and unlikely "comic foils" for Kenny Everett in his Video Show and Television Show, a judge on talent contest New Faces, and as a mainstay of game-shows such as Give Us a Clue (from 1979 until the early 1990s, alongside the lovely Una Stubbs, who we also lost this year) and Name That Tune. Like so many other faded celebs, he also did stints in reality TV crud such as Big Brother, The Farm and The Real Marigold Hotel. Outside of his telly career, he also became known as the "King of Panto".
He quite rightly earned that oft-bandied-about moniker "national treasure"...
Facts:
- He was born Henry Lionel Ogus in Canada, but his family moved to Britain when he was just two years old, settling at Stamford Hill in North London. His family were of Russian Jewish origin but not orthodox and their habit of eating bacon was frowned upon by their neighbours [Stamford Hill is, to this day, a rather Orthodox neighbourhood].
- He began performing in plays when he was a child and attended the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in 1944 before joining a touring company called the Savoy Players. After a stint on stage in the West End, he decided to swap acting for dancing and took the stage name Lionel Blair.
- He married Susan Davis at Kensington Register Office on 21st March 1967; they had three children together.
- At the Royal Variety Performance in 1961, he engaged in a "dance-off with the legndary Sammy Davis Junior.
Madam Arcati and I saw him on stage way back in 2000 in the bizarre "drag-beauty-contest musical" Pageant, and he was as perfect an MC as you could possibly imagine...
There will never be another.
RIP, Lionel Blair (born Henry Lionel Ogus, 12th December 1928 – 4th November 2021)
