To say Paul O’Grady would be opposed to ‘wokery’ misunderstands his legacy and the word itself

‘We need to avoid the wokery and the limitations on comedy, which, I’m afraid, (he) would have had no time for.’

Those were the words of Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab on Paul O’Grady, who had only been gone for a matter of hours when politicians and broadcasters weaponised his death to suit their own agendas and warped definitions of that word.

Both Raab and Amanda Holden (never thought they would appear in a sentence together) jumped at the opportunity to suggest that Paul O’Grady was in some way anti-woke.

On her Heart breakfast show, Holden said that O’Grady ‘didn’t have a woke bone in his body’, so either she doesn’t know what woke means, she doesn’t know who Paul O’Grady is, or she’s unfamiliar with the concept of bones.

Paul O’Grady was about as woke as a person can get.

Despite the fact that the Tory party and some of their allies in the media would have the public believe ‘wokeness’ to be a scourge on our society, a threat to our very existence, its definition is simply ‘an awareness of racial discrimination and issues of social justice’.

That’s it. 

For me, it means ‘Don’t be racist and be attentive towards people who are facing injustice in society.’

Paul O’Grady fought hard for the rights of LGBTQ+ people and spoke out against austerity measures and poverty. 

He was a proud gay man and drag queen at a time when being gay was seen by much of society as shameful. 

He normalised drag culture to the point where his alter ego Lily Savage had her own prime time TV slot.

I have so many fond memories of watching Blankety-Blank as a child with all three generations of my family, laughing at Lily’s sharp wit and sarcasm. 

I don’t remember the moment I found out that Lily was in fact Paul, but I know that I had never questioned her gender or sexuality – she was just Lily Savage. 

How sad that in the weeks leading up to his death, drag queen culture has been demonised and protested against in the name of protecting children from ‘grooming’. 

Those same tropes and lies that contributed to the homophobia pervaded 1980’s Britain unfortunately still exist today. 

So it was pretty galling when, at Deputy PMQs, Dominic Raab took to the despatch box and attempted to pay tribute to O’Grady, but instead paid ‘respects’ to a ‘Paul Grayson’.

We could perhaps forgive Raab for such a slip of the tongue, but what he said next cannot be dismissed as a mistake. 

He went on to try to weaponise the death of O’Grady to further his party’s anti-woke agenda, when he claimed the late comic would have no time for wokery. 

Would Paul O’Grady *really* have no time for wokery? 

Let’s hear him in his own words during an interview with the Sun in 2020: ‘I’m married to a ballet dancer, I’ve got a daughter, two grandkids and was married to a Portuguese lesbian barmaid. It doesn’t get much more woke’.

As for limitations on comedy, I wonder how Dominic Raab would feel about this particular monologue performed by Paul in an episode of Paul O’Grady Live amid the then-coalition government’s austerity measures. 

He said: ‘Do you know what got my back up? Those Tories whooping and hollering when they heard about the cuts…They annoy me. Scrap the pension…No more wheelchairs…Bastards.’

That was in 2010 at the very start of the coalition government, so I can only imagine what Paul would have to say following 13 years of Tory rule. 

Can you imagine a TV presenter being able to say such things without Rishi Sunak stepping in to criticise their speech?

‘I bet when they were children they laughed at Bambi when his mother got shot,’ O’Grady added.

I wonder if that’s the kind of ‘rambunctious’ free speech that Raab himself says we need more of in comedy.

If only Gary Lineker had also done stand-up, then perhaps so many Tories wouldn’t have frantically assembled to discredit him and threaten his position as a TV presenter when he criticised their cruel immigration policy.

Raab was right to praise Paul, but he did so without a shred of self-awareness that the party of which he is Deputy Prime Minister stands for so much that Paul stood against.  

I never met Paul O’Grady, but I suppose that part of his magic was that it felt as though I had. 

But just because we feel as though we know someone, doesn’t mean their memory should be misrepresented to further our own agenda and beliefs. 

Paul was a working-class hero, Lily was a queer icon. He taught me to be kind to animals, be kind to each other, and to care more about who I voted for in parliament than in the X-factor final.

He made fun of the stuck-up, stuck up for what he believed in, and he would stick up for you in a fight – provided you weren’t a total ‘bastard.’

He will be greatly missed, but we can’t allow anyone to try and twist his legacy, because his legacy – and Lily’s legs – will go on forever.

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First appear at To say Paul O’Grady would be opposed to ‘wokery’ misunderstands his legacy and the word itself