Lionel Blair: a showbiz phenomenon with all the right moves

That meant he might turn up as a stage or film actor, choreographer or star performer on a TV show such as Give Us a Clue.

If you want proof, you have only to look at a clip of him doing a competitive tap routine with Sammy Davis Jr in a 1961 Royal Variety Show.

I’d classified Blair as a talented hoofer and amiable TV host but here he showed he could wrap his tongue around such quintessential Stoppardian ideas as the subjectivity of truth.

In a sense the show was a forerunner to RuPaul’s Drag Race, in that the men were all in skirts: it lacked, however, the slickness of the RuPaul show and Blair, with his spangled hair and salmon-pink dinner jacket, seemed all too complicit with the evening’s air of fake glitter.

It also turned into a running gag on a BBC radio show, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, where I can still recall Humphrey Lyttelton paying tribute to Blair’s ability to pull off Twelve Angry Men in 30 seconds.

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