Lionel Blair obituary
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Although his star status was rooted in talent and solid achievement, on the musical stage, in revue and in television light entertainment, Lionel Blair, who has died aged 92, was one of the first media celebrities famous for being sort of famous. He played up roguishly to his image of a bouffant-haired, perma-tanned dancer, impossible to send up in any meaningful way because he was sending himself up, on gameshows in the 1980s (Give Us a Clue, Blankety Blank) and reality shows in the new century (Celebrity Big Brother).
Blair was a genuine hoofer and a superb choreographer, who performed a scintillating dance routine with his friend and idol Sammy Davis Jr at the 1961 Royal Variety show and directed one of Danny La Rue’s most lavish spectaculars at the Palace theatre in 1970. He was quick on his feet and witty in speech, and audiences loved his unique brand of extravagant ingratiation, even if the critics sometimes squirmed.
Endearingly, he owned up to having lied about his age in his autobiography (he shaved off four years), on the daytime chatshow Loose Women in 2016. But in 2010, as one of six oldie celebs on the BBC reality show The Young Ones – along with Sylvia Syms (with whom he had appeared as a dancing sailor in the 1960 movie The World of Suzie Wong), the newsreader Kenneth Kendall, cricket umpire Dickie Bird, actor Liz Smith and Fleet Street editor Derek Jameson – he was easily the most agile and youthful.
He was born Henry Lionel Blair Ogus, in Montreal, Canada, where his parents – of Russian and Polish extraction – had emigrated from the East End of London in 1926. In 1930, the family returned to Hackney before settling in Stamford Hill, north London. Lionel’s father, Myer Ogus, was a barber; his mother, Deborah (“Della”, nee Greenbaum), was a tailor. Lionel very much cared about his hair and his clothes all his life (and his legs were once insured for half a million pounds, a sum then comparable to the $1m quoted – admittedly two decades earlier – to cover Betty Grable’s pins).
He was educated at Craven Park school – where he first met his lifelong friends Mike and Bernie Winters, the comedians – and Egerton Road school, connected to a synagogue. During the war years, he and his younger sister, Joyce – a budding Fred and Adele Astaire sibling song-and-dance act who were soon billed as “England’s youngest swingsters” – entertained Londoners in the air raid shelters at Manor House station on the Piccadilly line.
Lionel made a professional debut as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz at the Grand, Croydon, in 1942, shortly after that theatre reopened following the heavy bombing of Croydon earlier in the war. In 1943, he was one of the children in the post-West End tour of Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, a powerful anti-Nazi play, and made a West End debut in 1944 in Flying Colours, a revue starring Binnie Hale and Douglas Byng.
In the same year, he joined the Memorial theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon to play five roles in the summer season directed by Robert Atkins, including Macduff’s son in Macbeth; Gregory in The Taming of the Shrew; and third player in Hamlet. After a season in rep in Belfast there was a short run in RF Delderfield’s cosy comedy Peace Comes to Peckham. When his father died in 1947, Lionel became the family breadwinner – Joyce was just starting at a dance school – and decided to change his surname and concentrate on dancing as a more likely way of maintaining a regular income of sorts.
This he did, as a waiter, in Bob’s Your Uncle (1948) at the Saville, a musical comedy vehicle for Leslie Henson with a score by Noel Gay, then on the touring production of Annie Get Your Gun and in Kiss Me, Kate at the Coliseum in 1951. By the mid-1950s he was choreographing the celebrated Five Past Eight shows, swishly staged by Dick Hurran at the Alhambra, Glasgow, with headline stars such as Jimmy Logan, Eve Boswell and Stanley Baxter, and this led to his pre-eminence on BBC television in the 1960s, choreographing and dancing with his own group of show girls.
In that same period, he choreographed several movies and appeared in Michael Winner’s The Cool Mikado (1963) with Frankie Howerd and Stubby Kaye, and in Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) with the Beatles. He was a regular in the biggest London pantomimes, commanding a fee of £15,000 a week as Buttons, Dick Whittington, Jack on his beanstalk and Aladdin.
But he was really now subsumed in his television work, and his last “legit” West End stage appearances included a cheerful 1968 revival of the Gershwins’ Lady Be Good at the Saville, partnering the self-parodying squeaky “blond bombshell” Aimi MacDonald (who had won television prominence in At Last the 1948 Show with John Cleese and Marty Feldman); and critically acclaimed “turns” as the Player King in a touring production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Piccadilly in 1987 and as the oleaginous compere of Pageant (like Liberace on speed, said Sheridan Morley) at the Vaudeville in 2000. He also toured with Jimmy Edwards in Doctor in the House in 1978.
On Give Us a Clue (1979-92), he and Una Stubbs captained teams competing in charades. On Name That Tune, which had been running in some shape or form since being imported from the US in 1956, he took over as presenter from Tom O’Connor from 1983 until 1988. And he filled in missing words on Blankety Blank during the best years of that show, with Les Dawson chaotically and uninterestedly in charge. This extensive warmup as a self-mocking celeb made Blair a prime candidate for reality shows, and he started mucking out down on The Farm on Channel 5 in 2005.
On a Christmas special of Extras by and with Ricky Gervais in 2007, Blair paid the ultimate humiliating price for self-preservation with a needy plea to extend his career on Celebrity Big Brother; and this eventually came to pass in 2014 (he was the third house guest to be evicted). In the same year, on the BBC drama Doctors, he played an old actor stricken with Alzheimer’s disease; this, he said, was a move to escape being Lionel Blair. He made another bid for freedom on Emmerdale in 2014.
Blair was involved in a variety of charity work, including for the organizations Stage for Age and Age UK. Latterly, he occasionally dusted down a one-man show, Tap and Chat, for the delectation of his loyal fans.
For many years he lived in Surrey with his wife, Susan Davis, whom he married in 1967. He is survived by Susan, their daughter, Lucy, two sons, David and Matthew, and three grandchildren. His sister, Joyce, a well-known performer in her own right, died in 2006.
Actor (50 credits)
2018 The Celebs: Rock with Rudolph (Video short)
Lionel Blair
2016 Evil's Evil Cousin (Short)
The Dapper Man
2014 Doctors (TV Series)
Michael Cave
- Bliss (2014) ... Michael Cave
2013 Being Lionel (Short)
Lionel Blair
2012 Run for Your Wife
Cyril
2011 The New Bromantics (TV Series)
Bournemouth Jack
2010 The One Ronnie (TV Movie)
Monster
2009 Chris Rea: Driving Home for Christmas (Version 2) (Video short)
Lionel Blair
2008 Britain's Got the Pop Factor (TV Movie)
Lionel Blair
2008 Emmerdale Farm (TV Series)
Lionel Blair
- Eye for an Eye (2008) ... Lionel Blair
2007 Extras (TV Series)
Lionel Blair
- The Extra Special Series Finale (2007) ... Lionel Blair
2005 Footballers' Wives (TV Series)
Lionel Blair
- Episode #4.7 (2005) ... Lionel Blair
2001-2004 Revolver (TV Series)
Various Characters
- Episode #1.4 (2004) ... Various Characters
- Episode #1.0 (2001) ... Various Characters
2003 Last of the Summer Wine (TV Series)
Lionel Blair
- A Short Blast of Fred Astaire (2003) ... Lionel Blair
2001 Crossroads (TV Series)
Valentine Starwood (2003)
2000 Daddyfox (TV Movie)
Doctor
1999 Comedy Lab (TV Series)
Mayor of Ipswich
- The Lenny Beige Television Show (1999) ... Mayor of Ipswich
1998 Babes in the Wood (TV Series)
Lionel Blair
- Episode #1.6 (1998) ... Lionel Blair
1997 Melissa (TV Mini Series)
Party guests
- Episode #1.3 (1997) ... Party guests
1991 Lazarus & Dingwall (TV Series)
Duane Blake
- What Happened to the Gerbil? (1991) ... Duane Blake
1990 Motormouth (TV Series)
- Episode #3.17 (1990)
1988 Emu's Wide World (TV Series)
Count Rosnopovnevich
- Episode #3.4 (1988) ... Count Rosnopovnevich
- Episode #3.3 (1988) ... Count Rosnopovnevich
- Episode #3.2 (1988) ... Count Rosnopovnevich
1982-1988 The Kenny Everett Television Show (TV Series)
- Episode #5.6 (1988)
- Episode #5.5 (1988)
- Episode #5.4 (1988)
- Episode #5.3 (1987)
- Episode #5.1 (1987)
Show all 10 episodes
1986 Absolute Beginners
Harry Charms
1982 Janet and Company (TV Series)
- Episode #2.3 (1982)
1982 The Jim Davidson Show (TV Series)
- Episode #4.1 (1982)
1981 Nice to See You! (TV Movie)
Performer
1979 The Plank (TV Movie)
Paint-covered House Owner
1978 Whodunnit? (TV Series)
Paul Stratfield
- Underneath the Archers (1978) ... Paul Stratfield
1973 Bless This House (TV Series)
Jules
- Entente Not So Cordiale (1973) ... Jules
1972 All Star Comedy Carnival (TV Movie)
ATV Commissionaire (segment "Christmas With Wogan")
1971 The Persuaders! (TV Series)
Quinn Travis
- Powerswitch (1971) ... Quinn Travis
1971 The Dickie Henderson Show (TV Series)
- Episode #1.7 (1971)
- Episode #1.6 (1971)
- Episode #1.5 (1971)
- Episode #1.4 (1971)
- Episode #1.3 (1971)
Show all 7 episodes
1969-1971 The Sooty Show (TV Series)
- Episode #5.4 (1971)
- Episode #2.9 (1969)
1970 The ITV Play (TV Series)
Dandilli
- Cinderella (1970) ... Dandilli
1966-1967 The Bruce Forsyth Show (TV Series)
- Episode #2.3 (1967)
- Episode #2.2 (1967)
- Episode #1.6 (1966)
1967 Maroc 7
Hotel receptionist
1964 A Hard Day's Night
T.V. Choreographer
1964 Contest Girl
Talk of Town Producer
1963 The Cool Mikado
Nanki
1962 The Main Attraction
Clown (uncredited)
1961 The Dickie Henderson Show (TV Series)
- The Dancer (1961)
1960 The World of Suzie Wong
Dancing Sailor
1960 Jazz Boat
Dancer on boat (uncredited)
1959 Armchair Theatre (TV Series)
Tommy Nelson
- Light from a Star (1959) ... Tommy Nelson
1956-1959 Saturday Spectacular (TV Series)
Dancer
- Hughie Green (1959) ... Dancer
- The Johnnie Ray Show (1956) ... Dancer
1958 ITV Play of the Week (TV Series)
Jeffrey
- The Curious Savage (1958) ... Jeffrey
1955 King's Rhapsody
Dancer in Fantasy Ballet (uncredited)
1953 The Limping Man
The Dancer
1952 Kaleidoscope (TV Series)
Self in Dancing Time segment
- Episode #6.8 (1952) ... Self in Dancing Time segment
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