Lionel Blair: What Has Happened To My Beautiful England?

Lionel Blair is waving at me from a street corner. ‘Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!’ He is brightly tanned, dressed a bit like a sailor boy in a tight-fitting blue and white outfit, waving a Rothman’s cigarette in a long plastic holder and beaming happily as passing drivers toot and yell ‘Lionel! Lionel!’.

He couldn’t look more camp if he tried. But he wouldn’t choose that word.

‘Camp? Really? I prefer “flamboyant”, or “enthusiastic”. I’ve always been a bit over-the-top. What about David Walliams, for goodness’ sake? Come on! There’s campness there and we all know that he’s not, well, you know...’

Lionel (‘Li to my friends, Lililuli to Bruce Forsyth’) is full of surprises.

Above all, he has been happily married for 47 years and has three children and three grandchildren, whom he adores...

For years, people joked that Lionel was gay. It’s been a running (rather unkind) gag on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. ‘It isn’t nice when you have a family,’ he says.

Mostly, he just bit his lip, but one day at a cricket match organised by Michael Parkinson, a man called him a ‘fairy’ in front of his daughter Lucy, and Lionel punched him. ‘He had to go to hospital!’

Lionel has strong views on gay marriage. ‘I can’t bear it, I’m afraid. Look, if people want to live together, fine. And I do believe in civil partnerships. But marriage is between a man and a woman.

‘The world has changed. What has happened to my beautiful England?’ He suddenly looks a bit sad and old and grey beneath the tan.

Daily Mail - filed under Femail, natch.