Well here we are, in his own words, and in his own graphic Liverpudlian style too. This is the paper back version of Paul O’Grady telling it like it was about his early life in working class catholic Birkenhead, from alter boy to national treasure (in his own words) if you like him; from whinger to winer and diner if you don’t.

I don’t like O’Grady or these endless and vacuous celeb’ autobiographies that are ghost written and churned out by the tonne, but then I don’t like drag queens either, but O’Grady made me love Lilly.

Like her, the book feels more real somehow, and this honest and very funny testimony to working class life in the 1970’s and 80’s is lovely.

From the start O’Grady charmed me and I enjoyed the book.  It’s laugh out loud funny, touching in the right places, grim and brilliantly evocative. 

From the back-alley ways, to the gossip, the hearts of gold and the sharp tongues, it’s full of brilliant observed characters and casually explicit dialogue, just like Birkenhead itself. 

O’Grady never leaves us alone enough for  a moment to feel the real hard work that must have led to his current success instead it’s a  roll call of rascals, loves, saints and sinners, and one – very iconic- bus conductress to keep us entertained.

It’s an anecdotal feast but even the pain and suffering is made to dance for us, it’s a pity that Paul’s not as indiscrete as Lilly is, although we do get to meet the real life prototype for Lilly too.

This was the best selling hardback of 2009, which ain’t bad for a drag queens memoirs, but O’Grady continues to know how to tap his keen perception’s of life into the hopes and fears of us all and remind us that there’s a bit of Savage in all of us.