Exclusive:
It’s been a year since TV legend Paul O’Grady past away, and to mark the difficult first anniversary his loving and loyal husband Andre Portasio sat down for an emotional and wide-ranging interview with The Mirror
Paul O’Grady’s husband has opened up about the “heartbreaking” moment the TV’s star’s “favourite” dog nuzzled his shoulder in his final moments.
In an extremely emotional and wide-ranging interview with The Mirror to mark a year since the TV legend’s passing – which you can read here – his loving partner Andre Portasio spoke about how dog Arfur comforted Paul as the ambulance was called. Today marks 12 months since Paul suffered a sudden cardiac arrhythmia, aged 67.
“I walked to the kitchen to start putting some food on, and I started taking things out of the fridge,” he says. “And all of a sudden, I could see him lying on the floor.” Andre remembers being frozen with shock.
“I just didn’t know what to think at first,” he recalls. “He had a cut on his forehead, and I thought he was probably just unconscious.
“I called the ambulance and they said the best chance to keep him alive was to do CPR.”
Andre tried desperately to save Paul’s life. “I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to arrive but by the end I was exhausted,” he says.
When the crew arrived, they spent an hour trying to resuscitate him.
He adds: “At one point, they were like ‘yes, he’s breathing.’ I thought the nightmare was gone but it was very short-lived, and very shortly afterwards they pronounced him dead.”
He added: “The saddest part of this all is that when all of this happened, and as I was trying to resuscitate him, I was trying to keep the dogs out of the room. But somehow Paul’s dog Arfur, who is one of his favourites, escaped and he nuzzled his face as he always did on Paul’s shoulder, as if to say ‘wake up’. It was just heartbreaking.”
After such a traumatic experience, the next days, weeks and months passed in a blur.
Andre says Paul’s birthday in June was a terrible time. He thought he was strong enough for Christmas and had invited all of Paul’s family, only to cancel and spend the day alone.
“I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I just sat with my feelings,” he says. But one of the things which got him through was the astonishing outpouring of love for his husband. I couldn’t leave the house for three weeks because people kept coming to leave flowers, cards, or even little miniature dogs. It just reinforced quite how popular and deeply loved he was.”
In the interview, Andre said he didn’t want to be in the same house on the anniversary.
“I wanted to be as far away from it as possible in New Zealand,” he said. “I don’t want to be anywhere near my kitchen where I found him, and be reminded of what happened.”
Rather touchingly, he’s bringing Paul’s passport along with him.
“It will feel like he’s coming with me anyway, which is what he would have loved as he couldn’t do long-haul flights as he got older,” he says. But he would have loved New Zealand, and on the day in question, I will remember him quietly in my own way.”
