Paul O'Grady - Personal Life

Personal Life

"We used to fight like cat and dog. We were two alpha males vying to be top dog. He was a tricky b****** and I can be tricky too. We'd have real punch-ups. But I'd tell him everything. Suddenly, I was totally on my own. That's when I said, "Lily's going." Because he's always been here with Lily. I thought "I can't do it any more." So she sort of died with him."

Paul O'Grady on the death of Brendan Murphy, 2012.

O'Grady is openly gay. However, he has previously had relationships with women as well as men, and married a Portuguese lesbian, Teresa Fernandes, who was from a Catholic family, at Harrow Road register office, London, on 1 April 1977 in a marriage of convenience. They separated in 1980, before eventually divorcing in 2005. He is very close to his daughter Sharyn, who married her childhood friend Philip Mousley at Liverpool Town Hall on 30 July 2005. O'Grady's long-term lover and business partner of 20 years was Irish television producer Brendan Frank Murphy (4 March 1956 – 9 June 2005), who was HIV+ and died of brain cancer at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, five days before O'Grady's fiftieth birthday. After the first show of series three of The Paul O'Grady Show, there was a tribute to him.

O'Grady owns a flat in London, and a farm in Aldington near Ashford, Kent where his neighbour is Julian Clary.

O'Grady became a grandfather on 26 December 2006, when his daughter Sharyn gave birth to a son, Abel. He revealed on his show on 2 December 2009 that he had become a grandfather again as Sharyn had given birth to a girl in the early hours of that morning.

O'Grady is publicly known for having had many high profile and celebrity friends, including the late politician Mo Mowlam, actresses Amanda Mealing and Barbara Windsor, comedienne Brenda Gilhoohy, and singer Cilla Black.

In 2012, O'Grady became a Celebrity Ambassador of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home after recording the first series of his ITV documentary For the Love of Dogs.