EXCLUSIVE: Paul O'Grady's heartbreaking confession to pals - 'I’m not going to be here for much longer'
An extraordinary new book about Paul O'Grady by his friend and producer Malcolm Prince sheds new light on the star with gripping new testimony from his friends, family and celebrity friends
TV star Paul O’Grady confessed to friends that he thought he might not have long to live in the months before he suddenly passed away.
His producer Malcolm Prince has opened up about the star in his extraordinary new book Paul O’Grady – Not The Same Without You which is being serialized by the Daily and Sunday Mirror. The book features gripping testimony from Paul's friends and family, including long-time pal Moira Stewart who picked him up after a hospital visit.
“As we were driving along the lanes back home, he said to me, ‘I’m not going to be here for much longer.’ I asked him what he meant and pushed him to tell me what the doctors had said to him. He was contemplative, I put my arm around him, and he just replied, ‘That’s it. I think I won’t be here for much longer.’”
Paul said something similar to Malcolm during a phone conversation weeks later. “It’s a conversation I will never forget because he calmly ended our chat with, ‘I won’t make old bones, Malcolm.’” Even weeks before his death, during a conversation about the death of someone close to Malcolm, Paul said about “not knowing what was round the corner.”
“Paul joked about his own age and how he wouldn’t be surprised if his own exit would be ‘sooner rather than later,” Malcolm writes. In their final meeting at Paul’s farmhouse on the day of his death, Paul told Malcolm he was reviewing his will, saying the words just “seemed to just hang in the air.” Malcolm also revealed how in the final months of his life, the star refused an implantable defibrillator because he didn’t want to let anyone down.
“He’d signed up to do the musical Annie, he signed up to do the dog show, “ Malcolm tells the Mirror. “He didn’t want to go back into hospital to have another procedure and then spend time recuperating. He wanted to get on and live his life but also work. He didn’t want to let people down.” Ultimately, the device could have saved his life.
Paul, who had a history of heart problems, eventually died from a sudden cardiac arrhythmia on March 28, 2023.
Joan Marshrons, his manager and close friend, had explained the procedure to Paul at length. But there was no convincing him. “In the last few years, he worried about his own body letting him down and that was all very depressing for him,” says Joan. “He was scared of losing control and I think that’s why he wouldn’t have the pacemaker because he didn’t want to be on camera or in front of an audience when the thing kicked in … he would have been embarrassed about it all.”
Paul O’Grady – Not the same without you by Malcolm Prince (HarperCollins, £22) is out on 6th November