Paul O’Grady [Lily Savage’s alter ego] had seen me shaking the bucket outside a couple of times: he always gave money and offered a few words of comfort, but could see that the collections weren’t raising a huge amount of money. And so on two or three occasions, he wouldn’t let anyone leave the bar until they put money in the bucket. And the collection went from four quid to twenty-five quid on those nights because everyone was absolutely terrified of Lily. I certainly was: there weren’t that many things that frightened me then but Lily Savage was one of them.
