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.

Lionel Blair: My Gay Hell!

Daily Star Sunday - kindly giving some much needed publicity to Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother.

And what does Lionel actually say, pray?

“I don’t understand why people think I’m gay. I’ve been married for 47 years, yet my children had to move schools twice because of it. They had a bad time at an ordinary school.
“I moved them to the Italia Conti stage school, then there was no problem because there were other children with famous families.”

So things were so hellish you sent your kids to the Italia Conti stage school?

Funny that Dante forgot to include that one, dear.

Lionel Blair: Give Us A Clue!

But many fans were furious when, in recent years, Lionel became the subject of vile jibes on the Radio 4 spoof panel game I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.
The host Humphrey Lyttelton [Humph died five years ago] would regularly make crude gags, implying that Lionel is gay.
Lionel says: “It was merciless and just plain mean. I didn’t mind for myself but my wife and family really hated it and became very upset.
“I don’t understand why they had to be gay gags either. Yes, I’m very over-the-top and flamboyant but I always have been. I’m theatrical, darling!
“But I’ve been happily married for 46 years, I’ve got three wonderful kids and three grandchildren I adore.
“I could have sued, I suppose, but that would have been breaking the comedians’ code – and you simply don’t do that."

Daily Mirror.

He probably isn't, you know.
Can't a straight man be "theatrical" (darling)?
We don't own it.