Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Mick Jagger told me not to lead Ronnie Wood astray
Paul O’Grady on his wild days
WITH his famed love of dogs, Paul O’Grady is now known as one of telly’s biggest softies.
But the presenter was once such a wildman he was ordered to stay away from rock hellraiser Ronnie Wood by none other than Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
Amazingly, Jagger thought he was a “bad influence” on the showbiz circuit in the 90s.
Admittedly at the time Paul was far from cuddly and making his name as acid-tongued drag act Lily Savage.
Reflecting on his own hard-living antics, Paul said: “I have a very clean lifestyle these days. It’s sad isn’t it?
“Me who was threatened by Mick Jagger to keep away from Ronnie Wood. I mean really? He said I was a bad influence. The cheek.”
After he told his late pal Cilla Black about the warning, she joked: “They never said that to Janis Joplin.”
US rock singer Janis died of a heroin overdose in 1970.
The comic made the admission at Elstree Studios, where he was filming a pilot for his forthcoming TV show Paul O’Grady’s Saturday Night Line Up.
Paul once told how his drug use was so bad he swallowed a lump of cannabis as he approached security guards at a Thai airport to avoid jail.
But he put the brakes on his wild behaviour in 2001 after a near-fatal heart attack.
Now 64, Paul went on to win critical and public acclaim for his TV show For the Love of Dogs.
But he hasn’t lost his love of closeto-the-edge telly and now hopes his new Saturday night prime time show will liven up viewers’ weekends.
He said: “Let’s face it if this goes tits-up it’s going to be a lot better than the c*** on at the moment apart from a certain dog show of course.
“This will never go out. It is too rude. But they want a bit of rudeness now. I mean who the f*** wants to watch Alan Titchmarsh?”
Last month Ronnie, 72, told in the Sunday Mirror how at the height of his drug addiction he would take his own bunsen burners to parties to
smoke cocaine.
LOOKING at him now, you would hardly believe that compassionate animal lover Paul O’Grady was ever a hellraiser.
But in his heady heyday, Paul was ordered by Mick Jagger to stay away from Stones wild man Ronnie Wood as he was a “bad influence”.
We imagine that the raucous pair took not a blind bit of notice of old rubber lips.
But Mick should know better than anyone that You Can’t Always Get What You Want.