Les Dennis is still a local boy at heart

May 23 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

IF YOU feel a little down in the dumps don’t worry, it will probably pass. As an example, one need only look at the experience of the Liverpool-born entertainer Les Dennis.

A couple of years ago, he was generally reckoned by media hacks to be the most miserable man in Britain.

His marriage to the beautiful Amanda Holden was breaking up... slowly. So slowly that it became the stuff of newspaper gossip.

Then he agreed to go on Celebrity Big Brother where his despair was only too apparent as he ended up talking to chickens.

The tabloid press dubbed him Les Miserables and he became a figure of cartoon fun in the juvenile satire magazine Viz. And finally the marriage ended.

Many thought his career might have ended there, too.

But fast forward to today and here is Les, all bright and breezy, in a new relationship, a father again and a career that is moving so fast he has to turn down work.

He is also back in his home town of Liverpool rather a lot. He has been filming a documentary series for Granada, Les’s Liverpool, announcing his appearance in this year’s Liverpool Empire pantomime and on Wednesday back on the comedy stage as compère for the opening night show in the Liverpool Comedy Festival, the Best of Liverpool Night.

"I am scared witless about that as I don’t do that sort of stuff any more," says Les, 53. "But I am just compering that night so it will be nice to introduce the new cutting edge guys and some of the older guys."

It was as a comedian that he began his showbusiness life (he’s from Liverpool, after all) and television viewers first saw him working with Chester-born Russ Abbot on Russ Abbot’s Madhouse.

Later, urged on by others, he formed a double act with fellow comic Dustin Gee, a successful partnership but one which ended in tragedy with the sudden death of Gee when they were performing at the Southport Theatre in 1986.

The following year, he reinvented himself as a television game show host on Family Fortunes, another successful move which saw him staying with the programme for a 15 year run.

But Les has always been an actor, too, and in many ways it has been the saving of him.

Perhaps his greatest television acting performance was in Ricky Gervais’s comedy series Extras – playing himself. In the show, he exaggerated his own foibles, playing in pantomime to empty houses and working on the Les Miserables character to huge comic effect.

He credits that episode with helping make his comeback.

"It was great to do, brilliant, such a gift and really gave me a chance to show I had a sense of humour about everything that was being written about me at that time.

"It certainly did me no harm, and was a kind of regeneration for me. I had done Celebrity Big Brother before which wasn't my best moment but if I had not done that, Extras would not have come along. So there’s always a silver lining."

His Liverpool Empire pantomime Cinderella in which he plays Buttons alongside fellow Liverpudlians Cilla Black, Ted Robbins, Jennifer Ellison and Pete Price will not be anything like the panto in Extras, he promises.

"We'll have a few more people in the audience – and I certainly won't be breaking down on stage."

In fact, he went back to pantomime for the first time in ten years last Christmas, Cinderella again for the same company – First Family – at Sunderland opposite Hollywood star Mickey Rooney.

"It was a great experience and Mickey is an absolute legend. I wondered at first if I was too old for Buttons but Buttons is kind of ageless really."