From Drags to Riches | My Autobiography

In a career spanning four decades, Danny La Rue's success has been phenomenal. He has starred in seven major West End shows and appeared in three Royal Command Performances. He continues to tour Britain in his own show, is one of the biggest attractions in the summer season and possibly the biggest ever in pantomime: 1986 marked Danny's twenty-fifth traditional pantomime.
In From Drags to Riches Danny tells his own remarkable story for the first time. Born Daniel Patrick Carroll, he was brought to England from Cork at the age of nine by his widowed mother. From a childhood spent in the unlikely surroundings of London's Soho, through wartime evacuation to Devon and then service in the Royal Navy, Danny's youthful years were busy and happy-a perfect preparation for the arduous show-business life he was to take up later. After touring the country in variety for five years, his break came with an invitation to perform at Churchill's late-night club, and from that modest beginning he rose to open his own now legendary night-club in Hanover Square in 1964. In its eight years' existence the club attracted royalty, Hollywood stars and ordinary people in their thousands - and became one of the most famous show-business spots of the 1960s.
Of course, there have been black moments too-none blacker than the crash, in 1983, of his hotel and country club, Walton Hall, with a personal loss to Danny of nearly a million pounds. Every penny he had earned in show business had gone into the venture.
It was Danny's personal strength and professionalism that pulled him through to a position where, once again, he scales the heights. His extraordinary talent is universally recognized by his fellow show-business stars, many of whom feature in this book. As he says, 'My life is my job. 1 work forty-eight weeks in a year and I've never missed a performance.'