Paul O'Grady on Bob Monkhouse: Comedy was like oxygen to him, it was his life

When Paul O’Grady was an unknown comedian, playing working men’s clubs and bars as brassy alter ego Lily Savage, he received a phone call out of the blue. To his shock, it was Bob Monkhouse on the line asking if Paul would like to work with him. 

“I thought it was somebody else!” recalls Paul, with a rasping laugh, of that day in 1990. “‘Get lost,’ I said. He said, ‘No, it’s Bob. I want you to do a show with me’. 

“I was stunned. It was Bob Monkhouse. This was someone I’d grown up watching on television. Suddenly he’s on the phone! It was very flattering, to have an iconic figure like Bob calling me, a real confidence boost.”

That fateful phone call ignited a friendship that endured until Bob’s death from cancer 13 years later, aged 75.

Paul appeared on Bob’s final lottery show in 1997, on Bob’s 70th birthday special in 1999 and co-presented a BAFTA Award with him, among other work. He even visited Bob at his holiday home in Barbados. 

All of this makes Paul the perfect choice to present Gold’s new three-part series looking at Bob Monkhouse’s life and near six-decade career. He’s been granted access to Bob’s famous volumes that contain thousands of handwritten jokes, as well as to his private script collections, diaries and letters. 

Paul was asked to make the series by Colin Edmonds, Bob’s friend and fellow comedian, to whom he bequeathed his joke books. Colin knew that Paul and Bob had been good friends. 

Paul recalls his memories of Bob as a man for whom comedy was a mission more than just a career. Bob, he says, was obsessed with making people laugh. 

“He never stopped, he never relaxed,” recalls Paul, 59. “Comedy for him, I always thought, was a vocation. It was almost like a religious order. If he were here he’d be looking now for a gag somewhere.

“And then it would be written down in his book. He had all these fabulous books, beautifully illustrated. He was such a clever man.” 

A man of many talents, Bob was not only a comedy writer, comedian and actor, but a compere and presenter of game shows. In addition, he was a talented illustrator and comic book writer. 

Bob had been a household name since the 1950s but he never rested on his laurels, explains Paul. Always eager to learn more, reinvent himself and remain relevant to audiences, Bob kept up with the next generation of comedians. 

Paul was surprised to discover that when Bob rang him, he’d researched him thoroughly. “I said, ‘How do you know about me?’” recalls Paul. “‘I’ve seen all the stuff you’ve done on telly,’ said Bob, which at that time was usually Channel 4 at about 3am, because it was the only place they could safely put me!”

Bob, he said, had about 10 televisions and videos and a massive library of videotaped shows in his house near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire. 

When they worked together, Bob didn’t play the elder statesmen of comedy. On the contrary, says Paul, he was generous and meticulous. “When we were rehearsing, he’d say, ‘No, that’s your laugh,’” recalls Paul. “And that’s really rare in comics, believe you me, because they really do hunt laughs down.” He said Bob liked to work out comedy routines with precision: nothing was left to chance. 

Although the men became friends as well as colleagues, Paul says that Bob never allowed troubles in his private life to seep into his working life. Bob’s personal troubles are well documented: he’d had a difficult relationship with his mother, Dorothy, and an unhappy first marriage to Elizabeth, which ended in 1967. 

Of his three children [all from his first marriage], Bob’s first-born son, Gary, suffered from cerebral palsy and died in 1993, aged 40. Tragedy followed when his son Simon died suddenly from a heroin overdose in Thailand in 2001, aged 46 – Bob and Simon hadn’t spoken for 13 years. However, Bob was by all accounts close to his and Elizabeth’s adopted daughter, Alison, and he had a very happy second marriage to Jackie, which lasted from 1973 until his death. 

“He kept his private life private. It was never brought into the workplace – and yet he’d probably been up all night with his son [Gary], or driving through the night [after seeing his son]. Not a mention.” Paul adds that Bob would discuss personal matters if Paul asked, but that comedy took his mind off his troubles. 

Paul fondly recalls their last appearance together, on The National Lottery Live in 1997, presented by Bob. Paul tells a funny story about how he nodded off while waiting to go onstage and had to be hustled on at the last minute. “Bob goes, ‘Hello Lily’ and I’m like ‘Hello Blub.’ I’d just woken up and couldn’t string two words together. When they cut away from us, I said 

‘Bob, I’ve had a sleep, my leg’s dead’.

And then it cut back to us and he was crying with laughter.” 

Although comedy turned out not to be a vocation with Paul, who swapped his Lily Savage persona for a career as a chat show host and TV presenter, for Bob, giving up was unthinkable. 

“If you made a funny, you made his day if it was something he’d never heard before,” says Paul. “He’d say ‘Oh! Can I write that down?’ He’d be over the moon! It was like oxygen to him, comedy. It was his life.”

Bob Monkhouse: Million Joke Man, Wednesday, 9pm, Gold