Lionel Blair

Lionel Blair (born Henry Lionel Ogus; 12 December 1928 – 4 November 2021) was a Canadian-born British actor, choreographer, tap dancer, and television presenter. From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, he made regular appearances as a dancer and entertainer on British television. He also presented the quiz programme Name That Tune, and was a team captain on the televised charades gameshow Give Us a Clue. Early life Henry Lionel Ogus was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was born to Jewish parents, Myer Ogus and Debora "Della" Greenbaum. His father, a barber, emigrated from Russia to Canada to start a new life, and his wife joined him shortly afterwards. Blair came to Britain when he was two years old, and the family settled at Stamford Hill in north London, where his father continued to work as a barber. Although his parents were Jewish they were not orthodox; they would eat chicken on a Friday night. Due to the anti-semitism of the time, his father changed the family name to Blair. His first public performances were with his sister Joyce (1932–2006) in the Manor House Underground station air raid shelters and on the trains of the Piccadilly line during the air raids of the Second World War. During the Blitz, mother and children were evacuated to Oxford, but when they saw a German plane crash from the back garden, the family decided they might as well be in London. When Blair was thirteen, his father died after what should have been a routine operation on an ulcer. After this, Blair became the breadwinner for the family and took to the stage. He started out with girlish parts, as his voice had not yet broken.