PAUL O’Grady is a brilliant and unashamed name dropper. The late Lauren Bacall, a regular on his chat show, was “prickly but wonderful. She had no time for fools, been there, seen it and done it... I love them like that”, says the Liverpudlian, in that recognisable cigaretteladen voice.

Lady Gaga’s a sweetheart. “I love the bones of Gaga,” he exclaims. “We hit it off and I get little cards from her.”

And so the anecdotes continue. And frankly, you could listen to him for hours. “I’m writing another book at the moment, so I get carried away,” admits O’Grady, who’s already published a three-volume autobiography.

Not all his celebrity meetings evoke fond memories, however. Jackie Mason’s just one he can recall. “I find American comedians are tricky because the chat shows over there are often quite brittle, with lots of snippiness, so they come on all guns blazing.

But the big stars aren’t monsters.” Nor are the canines he works with at Battersea Dog And Cats Home for his series For The Love Of Dogs. An animal lover, and an ambassador for the charity, the 59-year-old finds it impossible to film a series without adopting another animal.

“It’s deadly in there. You go, ‘No, I’m not going to get fond of anything’, and of course you can’t help it. I should have aversion therapy and turn into Cruella De Vil!”

Unfortunately one of his dogs, Eddie, isn’t so keen on newcomers and took particular dislike to a boxer Staffy puppy. “Eddie hated her, and because she was so passive and gentle, he bullied her ruthlessly.”

For her own good, she was rehoused. “God, I was upset, it was ridiculous,” he says shaking his head. Fortunately, another attempt, with a Labrador puppy, has proven a greater success. Eddie might not like her either “but she’s ballsy, so will have a go at him, and you’ll see him retreat”.

Despite suffering two heart attacks in 2002 and 2006 and an angina attack in 2013, O’Grady is looking well and reveals he feels “smashing”.

“The worse thing for your health is to sit down on the sofa, count your tablets and watch daytime TV,” he states.

Following the last scare, he was out of hospital on Thursday and back at work on the Monday. “My cardiologist rang me and said, ‘What are you doing? You said you’d take it easy?’ I said, ‘I am’. It’s a state of mind really, and how you respond to it, because I know people who enjoy bad health.”

He also attributes his new lease of life to clean-living, and camping, on his farm in Kent. “Down there, you do a lot of hiking about, whether you want to or not,” he says.

The farm is now home to nine sheep, six pigs, six chickens, five barn owls, four dogs, two goats (along with a wild pheasant named Archie who’s taken to living with them) and a one-legged crow. “We put bird food out and he started hanging around. Now he sits on the table and I say, ‘How’s tricks kid?’”

The idea of O’Grady toiling on the land might seem strange to some, but he doesn’t think so.

“It’s not a chore. Well, it is in the winter when there’s a six-foot snowdrift.”

In fact, while he was born in Merseyside, he’s of Irish descent and spent a lot of his childhood on a farm in Ireland “so it’s second nature to me to milk a cow”.

“I remember my uncle said, ‘Come and see this calf that’s just been born’. I must’ve been about five, but remember it vividly.” It’s why he tries to emulate such experiences with his grandchildren (O’Grady has a daughter who’s gone on to have two children).

“I put them in with the pigs and sheep. At first, they were a bit scared, but they’re fine now.”

  • For The Love Of Dogs, ITV1, Thursday, 8.30pm