A showbiz song and dance star
LIONEL Blair was an old-school entertainer and consummate professional who sang, joked and danced his way into audiences’ hearts. In a career spanning seven decades, he presented quiz show Name That Tune and was for years a team captain on charadesstyle show Give Us A Clue, opposite Una Stubbs.
In 1961 he formed a lifelong friendship with Sammy Davis Jr, after the pair dazzled audiences with their comedic dance-off at the Royal Variety Performance.
Three years later, he played The Beatles’ choreographer in A Hard Day’s Night.
More recently, he appeared on 2014’s Celebrity Big Brother and BBC reality travel series The Real Marigold Hotel in 2017.
During the Second World War he and his sister Joyce performed in air-raid shelters before they were evacuated to Oxford.
In the West End, he played the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and starred in Pageant, Lady, Be Good! and Mr Cinders.
In 2006, he and comedian Alan Carr saved the life of a suicidal man while filming a show in Blackpool. After hearing that a man was trying to jump off a pier, they raced to his side and found him holding on by his fingertips but successfully talked him down.
Blair said: “We spent about 10 minutes talking to him. He just kept saying he wanted to end it all.
“Then someone said it was Lionel Blair from TV and he did a double take.”
The flamboyant star was born Henry Lionel Ogus in Montreal, Canada to Jewish parents Myer Ogus, a barber, and Deborah “Della” Greenbaum.
The family returned to Britain because his mother was homesick and Blair was raised in north London’s Stamford Hill.
Obsessed with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire from an early age, he mimicked their dance routines with Joyce and relished every opportunity to perform in public: “We’d sing, we’d tap dance, we’d jitterbug,” he once said.
Blair got his big break as a munchkin in a pantomime of The Wizard Of Oz and became the family’s breadwinner at the age of 13, after his father’s death. The following year, he made his West End debut in the play Watch On The Rhine.
Blair was named Oldie of the Year in 2019 by The Oldie magazine.
He married Susan Davis in 1967 and she survives him along with their three children: Lucy, Matt and Daniel and three grandchildren.