Danny La Rue made drag acts respectable in Britain and introduced them to a mass audience. He lifted such performances to a new level by dressing glamorously in extravagent costumes and expensive blonde wigs and using his own voice to remind his audience of his true gender.

Gliding on to the stage in a skin-tight, wide sequined dress, full-length pink chiffon cloak, diamond earrings and blonde wig, he would lean on a microphone and rasp gruffly: “Wotcha mates!”

La Rue’s originality and professionalism led him to be named Showbusiness Personality of the Year by the Variety Club of Great Britain in 1959. His respectability was also marked that year when he appeared before the Queen at the annual royal performance.

Throughout the 1960s he packed variety theatres, breaking box-office records and was a leading entertainer on television. By 1970, when he performed in a long-running revue at the Palace Theatre in the West End, he was being described as the highest- paid entertainer on the British stage. He liked to describe himself as Max Miller in sequins.

A key element in La Rue’s success, in addition to his emphasis of his true gender, was his avoidance of jokes about homosexuality. His fans tended to be women rather than gays; they were intriqued by how well he imitated their movements, and it was said that agents sent models and actresses to him so that they could learn how to hold their hands naturally or walk down a staircase. He never abandoned glamour even when appearing as one of the ugly sisters in Cinderella.

La Rue made a point of ending his act by singing On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep, dressed in the male attire of top hat and tails. He pointed out that he never pretended to be a woman but simply parodied them affectionately. Until close to the end of his career he refused to portray real women on stage, reportedly turning down the opportunity to star in Broadway in Mame! and Hello Dolly!.

Neither would he play homosexuals. In 1984 however, after the death of Jack Hanson, his manager and partner, La Rue did star in Hello Dolly! at the Prince of Wales Theatre. He also made plans to play Albin, the gay cabaret singer, in a London revival of La Cage aux Folles although these plans never came to anything.

Although he never married, La Rue kept alive in his public persona the possibility of having a heterosexual private life. He said that on several occasions he had come close to marrying. “I’m a dame during the show but always a fella when it’s all over,” he would say, emphasising that dressing up in frocks was strictly for laughs.

La Rue always maintained that he could never sing a love song to another man. Dressing up as a woman had to be fun otherwise it would be grotesque, he said. This approach was reinforced by his off-stage presence. In contrast to his shimmering feminity on stage, off-stage he was as broad-shouldered as a scrum half and often sported a heavy black stubble. Bawdy and vulgar he might have been, but La Rue prided himself on the fact that his variety hall and television act being nevertheless wholesome family entertainment. The same could not be said of his nightclub performances, but the club he owned and appeared at in Mayfair for ten years was a fashionable, if risqué, nightspot, and Princess Margaret and other society figures were often in to be seen there.

Danny La Rue was born Daniel Patrick Carroll in a working-class area of Cork in 1927. His father, a carpenter, died when he was 18 months old, and his mother took him to London to live with a relative in Soho. When their home was destroyed in the Blitz they went to live with another relative in the village of Kennford, Devon, where, at the age of 12 La Rue appeared in plays at the village hall.

He left school aged 14 and soon joined the Royal Navy. He served in the Far East and performed in naval amateur dramatic groups, dressing up as a native girl to appear in White Cargo. On his demob he worked as a window dresser in Oxford Street, then toured with one of the all-male variety shows that were popular in the immediate postwar years. He was given a stage name to protect his identity and allow him, should it all come to nothing, to carry on as a window dresser.

After being spotted in a small revue at the Irving Theatre in London, he was invited to perform in cabaret as a female impersonator at Churchill’s Club in Mayfair, and this was followed by stints at the nearby rival Winston’s.