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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
In that same period, he choreographed several movies and appeared in Michael Winner’s The Cool Mikado with the Beatles.
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 at the Vaudeville in 2000.
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.
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 .
Blair was involved in a variety of charity work, including for the organisations Stage for Age and Age UK.
For many years he lived in Surrey with his wife, Susan Davis, whom he married in 1967.