Paul OGrady - At my mothers knee - and other low joints

Contents

Paul OGrady is one of Britains very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage and the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul OGrady Show on Channel 4.

Now, in his own unique voice, Paul tells the story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead and his first steps on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a hilarious tale of gossip in the back yard, bragging in the corner shop and slanging matches on the front doorstep, populated by larger-than-life characters with hearts of gold and tongues as sharp as razors. Meet Paul in some of his earliest roles as boxer, civil servant, barman, cat-burglar and enthusiastic denizen of Liverpools nightclub scene.

At My Mothers Knee is a book which really does contain something for everyone and which reminds us that, when alls said and done, theres a bit of savage in all of us...

Paul OGrady first came to fame in the guise of Lily Savage, and was nominated for a Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991. Lily later became a regular on This Morning, took over the bed on The Big Breakfast and presented Blankety Blank, but has now retired. Paul OGrady, of course, currently presents The Paul OGrady Show on Channel 4. He lives in Kent.

In memory of the Savage Sisters Mary, Anne and Christine without whom my world wouldve been a much duller place to grow up in.

AT HOME IVE got a box containing what I suppose you might call the Family Archives. Family Archives sounds very grand but its actually just an ordinary cardboard box containing an assortment of birth certificates, letters, old diaries and sepia photographs the flotsam and jetsam of lives past. Theres even a pair of yellowing false teeth wrapped up in a handkerchief. God knows who they belonged to. It could have been any one of my long-dead forebears.

When I was growing up in Birkenhead, nearly every adult I knew had false teeth or at least had a couple of fake choppers on a dental plate either that or no teeth at all. My mother, christened Mary but known to everyone as Molly, had every tooth in her head extracted when false teeth became available on the National Health. She came from a generation where a poor diet and only the most primitive dental hygiene had taken its toll on working-class teeth, therefore a set of gleaming white gnashers courtesy of the NHS was a highly desirable acquisition.

In the early sixties, when she was only forty-four, she underwent this extreme dentistry. I remember her then as being quite slim and pretty, though I cant recall what condition her teeth were in. She used to say that the reason shed had them all taken out was because she had a mouthful of teeth like a row of bombed houses, which was a slight exaggeration. Like everyone else, she had all her teeth out because it was fashionable.

The sight of her lying in bed, moaning softly, a tea towel pressed to her swollen mouth and a bucket for blood on the floor beside her, horrified me. That nightmare scene put me off going to the dentist for life. Nothing and nobody could persuade me to go, and Im still the same today. OK, I might not develop rigor mortis, throw myself on the front-room floor and hold my breath until my face turns a vivid scarlet at the mere suggestion of a check-up any more, but if a tooth is playing up Ill stupidly ignore it until the final hour. When Im defeated by the pain and my cheek is as swollen as Popeyes Ill give in and go for treatment.

My patient dad would try and gently coax me into taking the trip to see Mr Aboud, our dentist, inevitably with no luck. Eventually my mother, exasperated by my carry-on, would get me there by means of devious trickery. On the pretext of visiting a clothes shop called Carsons that just happened to be close to Abouds House of Torture, shed whip me into his surgery with the speed and efficiency of the Childcatcher before I realized what was happening.

Mr Aboud, a dapper little man who wore neroli oil in his hair and spoke with an exotic accent if he had chosen acting instead of dentistry he would have made the perfect Hercule Poirot would place me firmly in his chair and press the foul-smelling rubber mask over my nose and mouth, telling me to Close your eyes, child, and breathe deeeeply, deeply... To my ears he sounded just like Bela Lugosi in the Dracula films Id seen on the telly. The gas would take effect and, slipping into a coma for what felt like hours but was actually only seconds, I would have wild, technicolour dreams and come to with a start on the leather bench in the waiting room, retching from the after-effects of the gas into a bloodied bowl held by my mother.

Dentistry has come a long way since the sixties. Ive been through more dentists than I have socks over the years, but now Ive finally found a sympathetic marvel Im a lot better. I still wont have an anaesthetic though; I dont like the after-effects. The dentists creed back then was rip them out. My aunty Chris, who kept all her extracted teeth wrapped in tissue in a jewellery box in her bedroom and was always threatening to have the poisonous-looking fangs made into a necklace, could never understand why anyone would want to spend their lives rootin around peoples gobs and dismissed all dentists as butchers.

After shed had weeks of soup and soggy toast, the long-awaited day came when Mr Aboud proudly presented my mother with her brand new set of dentures. She went straight from the dentists to her sisters, Annie and Chrissie, and the new teeth were premiered in their back kitchen.

Come on then, Moll, give us a gander at the new choppers, said Annie, rubbing her hands together like a bookie with a hot tip. My mum, lips pursed tightly, removed her headscarf and arranged herself by the kitchen sink so that the light from the window would catch the full effect of the revelation. She ran her tongue back and forth across the teeth, cleared her throat and then slowly curled back her top and bottom lips, rather like a camel, to expose a set of startling white tombstones. For a moment, nobody spoke. You could have heard a pin drop.

Jesus tonight, said Aunty Chris, its Mr Ed.

My mum hated those teeth. They joined the ranks of her btes noires. The reasons she loathed the teeth were many. They were agony. They crucified her, it was like having a mouthful of barbed wire wrapped around your gums. She couldnt eat with them, they fell out when she talked and she wasnt bloody wearing them for no amount of sodding money so you can shove that in your pipe, sunbeam, and smoke it.

She was forever taking them out when she was around the house and then forgetting where shed put them. Wheres me teeth? was a familiar cry around the halls of Holly Grove. These peripatetic choppers would turn up in the most unlikely places, sometimes with embarrassing consequences.

In my teens, Id go for a night on the razz, clubbing it over in Liverpool. If Id managed to pull a bloke with a car, Id try to convince him that giving me a lift home through the Mersey Tunnel would be well worth his time. Inevitably, such was my gratitude at being spared the hell of the tunnel bus, I would ask him in for a cup of tea a familiar euphemism for a grapple on the front-room couch, but a quiet one because my mum was upstairs in bed. During the preliminary necking session I would open one eye and to my utter mortification spy the Teeth, wedged down next to a cushion or grinning up at me obscenely from the pages of an upturned library book. As I tried to hide them by dropping them on the floor and pushing them under the sofa with my foot Id be completely thrown off my stride.