Ten years ago people were calling him Les Miserables but now Les Dennis has got his life back on track with a new family and a new outlook on life. Alan Corr meets the Liverpudlian funnyman
Les Dennis thinks he hit rock bottom when he started talking to the chickens. He was an inmate in the Celebrity Big Brother house and still very raw following the very public break-up of his marriage to Amanda Holden when he starting chatting back to the cucks after being cuckolded by his wife.
“I was in this weird little bubble which was very public for about three years,” he says. “I don’t think it was a breakdown but it was a watershed in my life. It’s something I don’t want to go back to but it just shows that you can move on and have a fantastic life.”
That much is true. Headlines like “the tears of a clown”’ and `Les Miserables’’ followed Dennis around after that infamous Big Brother moment but that was all of ten years ago. The Les Dennis I meet is very much the cheesy but smart Liverpudlian comedian who first made his name on variety shows in the eighties and later, as the host (for sixteen years) of game show Family Fortunes.
A few years ago Dennis, now 57, even turned his former misfortune into comedy gold. He played himself with agonising honesty as a washed up tv variety performer clinging on to fame as he was lead on by an actress in an episode of Ricky Gervais’ Extras.
More importantly for Dennis three years ago he became a father for the first time in 28 years when his third wife Claire gave birth to their daughter Eleanor. Dennis already has a 31-year-old son, Phillip, from his first marriage and just seven weeks ago, Claire gave birth to his new son, Thomas Christopher.
His family fortunes have certainly improved. “I was 54 when we had Eleanor,” he says. “I think it’s a great age to be a new dad because you’re up three times a night anyway. It’s fantastic, having young kids is a gift I didn’t expect. I see the world through new eyes.”
This summer Dennis, who has been working consistently on tv and stage, reverts back to childhood again when he plays Captain Smee in a new, modernised production of Peter Pan which makes its world premiere in Dublin. He’s performed in Peter Pan before in a panto production two years ago with former Happy Days star Henry Winkler playing Captain Cook and like Dennis, Winkler was famous for a particular show that he can’t seem to escape; Les will always be associated with Family Fortunes.
“Henry embraced what he got from Happy Days and you have to,” he says. I’m the same with Family Fortunes. There’s no point going, oh I’ve been pigeonholed by that show and it’s all people talk about because it’s what got you talked about in the first place and it’s what gets you the work. I don’t see why people deny where they’re from or what made them famous.”
Thankfully Extras gave Dennis a new lease of life and a chance to show that he could laugh off his former misfortunes. In fact, he told Ricky Gervais to go as far with his real life tumult as they wanted. “I said let’s go for it even to the extent where I say that in Celebrity Big Brother I considered suicide. Which I never did. In fact, I thought I was doing alright on Big Brother. It was only when I came out that I went, hello? I was up for anything on Extras because I wanted to show that I had much more of a sense of humour about the s*** that was going on than people thought.”
As for Amanda Holden, Dennis wishes her well especially following the sad news that she’s lost her baby earlier this year. “Me and Claire were absolutely gutted for her because it was at a time when we were pregnant as well,” he says. “We sent our condolences but me and Amanda were a lifetime ago. I don’t feel any emotion about it. One of my favourite lines in any book is from The Go Between - “the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
Dennis continues to turn press perceptions of himself to his advantage. He remains an old style comedian but the cult of Les now means that he’s invited to the Edinburgh comedy festival every year to work the same circuit as some of the coolest young comedians in Britain.
But it’s as a family man for the third time around that he’s really having the last laugh. “Someone said to me you must be knackered. Anybody who has kids is knackered. I saw someone say on a tv the other day is it appropriate for Les Dennis to have a kid at his age? And I thought, you know what? However long I’m here I’ll be here for my kids. I can’t kick a ball like I could when I was thirty but I can kick a ball.”
Peter Pan is at the Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin from July 15 to August 6
