Danny La Rue dies.

(From Yorkshire Evening Post)

The legendary female impersonator had been suffering from cancer.His spokeswoman said: "Danny died peacefully in his sleep just before midnight last night after a short illness."His beloved companion Annie Galbraith was with him at their home in Kent."OBITUARYFemale impersonator Danny La Rue spent more than half a century on the stage.The entertainer's take on glamorous leading ladies like Marlene Dietrich and Zsa Zsa Gabor made him a British institution.La Rue was one of the first to take cross dressing to the wider British public.But he disliked being called a drag artist, preferring the title "comic in a frock".La Rue was born Daniel Patrick Carroll in Cork, Ireland, on July 26 1927.His father Tom, a soldier in the Irish Republican Army and cabinet maker, died when he was only 18 months old.La Rue's mother took the family to London, and a flat above a dress-hire shop in Soho, when La Rue was nine years old.Years later, La Rue joked to an audience at a show in Cork: "See what they did to me in England."I left in short pants and I've come back in a frock."La Rue was evacuated to Devon during the Blitz, left school at 15 and got a job as a window dresser in Exeter.He first donned his wig and eyelashes during a Navy concert party in Singapore at the end of the Second World War.La Rue got his stage name in the early days, thanks, to Harry Secombe.He said: "I dabbled with the occasional stage appearance, but my great friend Harry Secombe advised me to forget fame and fortune."He said I'd never make the big time and I should stick with my proper job."A few months after the conversation with Secombe, La Rue had the chance to fill in for a singer at London's Irving Theatre."I wanted to call myself Danny Street so Harry Secombe wouldn't know I'd gone back to the stage. But there was already a singer called Danny Street, so I became Danny La Rue," he said.La Rue was snapped up ...