Les Dennis, the celebrity who bounced back

Apr 7 2008 by Hannah Stephenson, Liverpool Daily Post

Liverpool comic Les Dennis has suffered the highs and lows of showbiz life, as well as a very public marriage break-up. Hannah Stephenson discovers how he got through it.

THERE are some celebrities who bounce back whatever life throws at them. Les Dennis is one of them.

First, just as his career was reaching an all-time high in the 1980s, his comedy partner, Dustin Gee, died from a heart attack and it looked like Dennis’s star might fade into oblivion.

Then his second wife, the actress Amanda Holden, 17 years his junior, had a very public affair with Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey. Cynics branded Garston-born Dennis a spineless wimp for taking her back.

Two years later, when the marriage was crumbling, he suffered a nervous breakdown in front of millions of viewers who saw him talking to the chickens on Celebrity Big Brother.

Meeting him today, he has gained a little weight but still has that youthful, cheeky chappy look which stood him in good stead for the 16 years he hosted popular TV game show Family Fortunes. Only when you really talk to him do you realise that Les Dennis is much brighter and less cheesy than you might imagine. Thank God.

His life has entered another new phase. His career has been revived thanks to a self-mocking cameo in Ricky Gervais’s hit series, Extras, and he says he’s never been busier, although there’s still a vulnerability about him.

He is also to become a father for the second time as his fiancee, life coach and businesswoman Claire Nicholson, is expecting their first baby at the end of April.

Dennis already has a grown-up son, Philip, from his first marriage, but at 54 is looking forward to becoming a father second time around.

"I’ve got the excitement and the fear that any dad has. Is that because I’m older? No, I think it’s just normal.

"I’m really thrilled about it. I think that being an older dad, I can give so much more this time. It’s not like saying, ‘I got it wrong and now I want to get it right’, because I have a great relationship with Philip."

He left his first wife, Lynne, to whom he was married for 16 years, and Philip, who was 10 at the time, after several affairs, the most prominent being with former Dr Who girl Sophie Aldred.

At the time, his star was on the rise and he was away working a lot, and was increasingly being swept away by the glamorous world of showbiz.

This time around, he’ll think twice about what work he takes on, knowing that his family is more important, he says.

"I was chasing my tail for years, trying to achieve success, but now I can be more relaxed about what I take and if anything comes up in my life that is more important than showbusiness, then you won’t see me for dust. I can be more choosy now."

Indeed, while he says he has to work, property investment has helped to keep him comfortably off. He has moved seven times in less than a decade, and at one point made a cool £500,000 profit from a north London property which he refurbished. He now lives in Highgate, north London.

He is philosophical about bad choices he may have made to retain his celebrity status, particularly that fateful Celebrity Big Brother, when psychologically he was in meltdown.

"I hoped Celebrity Big Brother would reboot my career. It didn’t, in fact it was nearly my death knell, but then Extras did reboot my career. The irony is that, if I hadn’t done Big Brother, I wouldn’t have got Extras.