Sally Lindsay says she still chats to her late friend Paul O’Grady every day – by talking to a nodding figurine of his beloved dog Buster
Madame Blanc star Sally Lindsay says although she still misses her late friend Paul O’Grady three years after his death, she chats to him every day – by talking to a nodding figurine of his dog Buster.
The actress and writer became close pals with the Lily Savage drag artist-turned-TV-presenter, who passed away from heart disease aged 67 in 2023.
On his afternoon ITV chat show, he used to give away canine models of his pet Shih Tzu-Bichon Frisé cross, Buster, to viewers. Former Corrie favourite Sally, who was a regular guest on his programme and became good friends with him, now has six of them.
To see more of the stories you love from The Mirror and to find them easily in Google, make us your preferred source. Free and easy to do, just click on the link here to find more from The Mirror at the top of your feed.
But she keeps one on her work desk at home and every day she greets the hound as though she were talking to Paul and even shares gossip and bitches about celebrities with him – a favourite pastime they shared.
Sally, 53, said: “The special thing in my office on my desk near where my computer is I have a Buster. I’ve got about six Busters from when I used to go on Paul O’Grady’s show. And I’ve got a Buster there and he looks at me every day and I tap his head every morning and I say ‘Hello Paul’.
“I like to have a chat with him and slag people off, I swear, and I like political chats with Paul and I do it through Buster. I know I’m mad but I am very emotional with my things.
“And I’m just dead mad because he should not be not here. It is just not fair. The world was a better place with him in it, let’s put it that way.” Sally also became great friends with the late comedian and actor Bobby Ball – one half of the duo Cannon and Ball.
The pair worked together on the Sky series Mount Pleasant playing father and daughter Barry and Lisa. She has a ‘souvenir’ from the show in her south London home which she will never part with as it reminds her of her time with Bobby who died from COVID complications in 2020 aged 76.
Sally, who is married to musician Steve White, added: “When Mount Pleasant got cancelled, which we did really well with as we did seven years, there was this table. It is knackered, it’s old, it’s falling apart. It’s a distressed kind of one of those old ones that folds out.. dead old fashioned.
“But the reason I’ve got it is because it was in The Dog and Dart which was the pub in Mount Pleasant. And I love this table so much because this is where I used to sit with Bobby Ball. So when we did all our scenes, we did them with Bobby and I feel a bit connected with him.
“Even though we’ve had the kitchen done, I won’t get rid of this table. I’m absolutely married to it. So that’s it. It’s staying. It’s knackered and it’s staying, but that’s it. So he’s always part of me. I’ve got a Cannon and Ball poster in the loo as well but this table is the one I know he was sat around and I loved him so much and we were dear friends. I miss him every day.”
The Madame Blanc Mysteries which Sally co-writes, is back on our screens on Channel 5 on Thursday (October 29) for a fifth series and a Christmas special and this latest season has a raft of famous faces appearing including Bonnie Langford, Lesley Joseph, Brian Capron and Su Pollard.
Sally plays antiques dealer Jean White, originally from Cheshire, who has a sideline in solving mysteries in the fictional village of Sainte Victoire in Southern France. The new series of the crime drama, which Sally writes with co-star Sue Vincent, begins with violent murder in the town square.
She said: “I wanted to be quite brutal with this first one just to get us back in the world. This murder is quite gruesome and visceral. It’s in the square so the audience is straight back into Saint Victoire.
“It’s like we’ve never been away. I won’t give anything away, but I’m fascinated by crimes where people have got away with stuff for years and are still walking around free. It’s like I think there are also loads of people who’ve had affairs but never been found out. In drama, we always tie everything up. But that’s not the truth. So, there is something historical in this murder.”
And although the series is set in France, most of the filming takes place in Gozo and Sally mixes business with pleasure whilst she is there with fellow actor and friend Robin Askwith who plays Jeremy Lloyd James.
She explained: “The boys, my sons, who are now 16, come over. We always go to Robin Askwith’s flat just before we start filming. It’s beautiful overlooking the sea and mountains. It’s magical. We go there and play some records and then Robin makes the boys choose a photo album and he talks us through all the pictures.”
Having had Paul O’Grady on as a guest during the first series in 2021, she also finally managed to get Jason Manford along for series five, playing
“Jason’s been saying, ‘When am I going to be in Madame Blanc?’,” she said. “I’ve known him since he was 17 and I was 24. I was doing stand-up. I said, ‘I keep asking but you’re never free.’ He is the busiest man alive.
“I told him I had this idea for him. He said, ‘If I can do it, I will’ The story of Freddy Winner gets quite deep. Families are so wrong sometimes, aren’t they? They are supposed to be the people that love you the most but they’re not always. I loved delving into that.
“I would have also loved him to sing as Freddy, but we just didn’t have the time. Jason nailed it. Of course he did. Swanned in, did it, buggered off again. We don’t have a read through on Madame Blanc. It saves money. We want to put everything on screen.
Instead, me and Sue just read all the characters. We think that if we can read it then the actors will be able to read it. “If we lose a location or somebody becomes ill, we can write around it. I think that has kept Madame Blanc on its feet over the years.”
And being something of a magpie, Sally admits that she has ‘borrowed’ items from the set of the drama – where she plays a crime solving antiques dealer – and others too which she has appeared in.
She told the Love What You’ve Done With The Place podcast: “In my office where I write – which is a shed at the bottom of my garden – that’s where all my Madame Blanc stuff is. So on the top shelf there are murder weapons or antiques we have had remade or so that’s when I say ‘Can I have that one?’ But before I co-produced the show, I used to just nick stuff.
“I’ve actually got loads of stuff from The Rovers from when I was on Corrie. They’ll be like a sale when they had the Granada Tours and there was a Coronation Street shop and towards the end we just sort of nicked stuff and I’ve got bar mats. I got loads of stuff from The Rovers. What else have I got? I’ve got stuff from every job really.. like I’ve got some from Arkwright’s shop in Still Open All Hours, obviously I nicked a bit of stuff from there.”
Series 5 of The Madame Blanc Mysteries will start on Thursday October 29 at 9.05pm. Watch | Stream on 5
Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: mirror.co.uk
