I found out later that Frank had been calling my agent, introducing himself as ‘Amanda’s dad’ and asking questions about me. My agent thought they were talking to Dad, so they told him everything. When I heard this I contacted Frank and told him that I was happy to keep him posted, but asked him not to tell people he was my dad. He’s not! With hindsight, Frank did me a favour. Missing out on the love he should have given us made me into the person that I am today. I am not bitter or sad, just disappointed that he only chose to come back into my life when I started to become ‘famous’ and not when I’d actually needed him. He has become the cliché celebrity dad.
Luckily for me, I have a dad who I love dearly. He and my mum decided that they couldn’t afford any more children, so he sacrificed having children so that he could raise us as his own. I have no room in my life for another father but I’ve decided I’ll keep in touch with Frank on a basic level. It will always be on my terms though.
Chapter 7
I Need Someone, Older and Wiser . . .
The Sound of Music was booked for the summer season in my hometown of Bournemouth and so I arranged to move back in with my parents for a few weeks as a paying guest. It was here that I first discovered what it was to have a fan base – my mum. She was a very proud parent. All her guests were sent to see The Sound of Music, whether they wanted to or not. My friend and dresser Davina even had a T-shirt made for her which said, ‘I am Liesl’s Mum’, which she wore to the show so that everyone she hadn’t already told would know her connection to what she considered to be the biggest show in town.
As the summer season opened we – along with the casts and crews of all the other shows – were invited to an opening-night party in the Pavillion Theatre Bar. There was to be a huge welcome party for all the artists and there was a big buzz backstage as my fellow nuns swapped their habits for party frocks. I exchanged Liesl’s prim little sailor suit for a white mini skirt Captain von Trapp would have blown his whistle at. (Lionel Blair, who was doing summer season there, still loves to tell me how young I was when he first met me. ‘I remember, darling, you were a child.’ (I was twenty-one.) ‘And I said, “Amanda, darling, what would you like to drink?” And you said, “Gin and ice, darling.” And I said, “Gin and ice, darling? Gin and ice, darling? You don’t even want the tonic, darling?” And you said, “No, darling!”’)
We began spending our nights off with the rest of the casts. This was when I was first introduced to Les Dennis. Les told me later that at first he thought I was loud, overconfident and a bit brash, which was probably true. I thought he was a bit of a miserable sod.
The more I got to know him, though, the more he surprised me. I always seemed to be on his team when we went bowling, and we used to have such a laugh. He wasn’t the cheesy comic I’d expected him to be at all. He was good fun. He may not have been the youngest of the crowd in Bournemouth that year, and at thirty-nine he was almost sixteen years older than me. Even so, I felt like he needed mothering. He seemed sad, quiet and troubled and I instinctively wanted to help. He’d come up the hard way, via Butlin’s and the northern club circuit. At twenty (in the year I turned three!), he’d won New Faces and married his childhood sweetheart Lynne. Then he’d worked a double act on The Laughter Show with comedian Dustin Gee but Dustin died of a heart attack in 1986 aged forty, leaving Les alone in the spotlight.
On our nights out, Les would confide in me. He told me how he’d lost both his parents young, moved to London from Liverpool, got married and had numerous affairs, as well as about his marriage break-up two years earlier and the guilt he felt at leaving his son Philip – who was just nine years younger than me. He was pretty deep. He was having an on-off relationship with his girlfriend Sophie Aldred, who played Dr Who’s assistant (it was currently off). I don’t think I consciously fancied him at this stage. But he was charming, sweet, and very bright, and I was intrigued. We became increasingly close. Looking back, things were definitely building up. We had a karaoke evening for my friend’s birthday and there was a lingering hug at the end, but at the time I think we were both just enjoying having found such a close friendship.
One night he had a party at the flat he was renting near the cliffs, not far from my mum’s place at Alum Chine. It was a great party – Les is a brilliant host. Then all of a sudden he told everyone to carry on having fun but that he was going to bed. It hit me that he hadn’t been enjoying himself at all, and I felt a lurch of pity for him, swiftly followed by disappointment that he was calling it a night.
I was on my way to the loo as he said his goodbyes and climbed the stairs to bed. We crossed on the landing and he came over to say goodnight. We were chatting happily and I jokingly asked him if he’d like me to tuck him in (I often speak without engaging my brain). But I am quite flirty by nature, and have always been very tactile, so I don’t think Les thought he was any different from anyone else he had seen me with. I genuinely wanted to make sure he was okay and didn’t want to think of him leaving his own party feeling sad and lonely. I found myself leaning over and kissing him goodnight. It was a strange thing to do, but yet it felt very right and natural. He was completely surprised. He kissed me back and then asked me out for dinner.
I left and went home to Mum’s straight after. I remember walking home, a bit shocked at myself but thinking, ‘Oh, that was nice, he’s really nice.’
He and I dated the whole of that summer and it was so lovely and special. He properly wooed me – it was old-fashioned courting – and he was very romantic. My friend Emma Cooper – the singing nun – was the only one who knew, and she became our ‘beard’. We called her the Red Herring. We spent days on the beach and on our nights off we’d all go to a gay nightclub called The Triangle that used to play a lot of Abba, as we both had a love of kitsch and this place appealed to us. Every time I walked in they’d play a disco version of The Sound of Music.
They were really fun times. And the more time I spent with Les, the more I liked him. Best of all, he seemed to get me. He had spoken so openly to me about his own problems that I felt able to talk to him about how much the split with GB still hurt me. Les had spent three years in therapy and could have been an analyst. He knew exactly what to say. He was older and wiser, just like the song I sang every night as Liesl in the show.
He said we were each other’s teachers, and I loved that. I still do. Listening to his advice made me want the security of a relationship again and he made me feel safe. Before he came along I thought, ‘I’m not going out there again because I just cause havoc, and my heart’s bashed, and I can’t take any more,’ but something happened with Les. I made a conscious decision that he was the right person for me to be with.
Falling for him was very different from anything I’d ever experienced before. It was a slow burn, and felt very mature and important. We were friends first, who had deep and meaningful talks about proper subjects. He had lovely bluey-green eyes and was a true gent. He was very sweet and caring, and he was a grown-up. When I was with him, I felt like he could take care of anything. His experience meant our relationship worked on every level. And he made me laugh.
To try to prove to myself (and Les) that I was over my ex, I fixed Emma up with GB, telling her she’d be good for him. When they did end up together, she fell for GB hook, line and sinker and then he broke her heart too. I can’t believe I did that to her or to myself. Looking back, it’s bonkers but at the time it was just very painful.
Les helped me through that as well and taught me to accept that the memory of GB would torture me for years. The truth was that as I was letting go of GB I was slowly and surely falling in love with Les and I knew this was much more than a summer romance, that it was meaningful. From day one, though, I felt as if no one else understood us and that all eyes were on me for being with him. Les was a successful family entertainer and well liked by the public. As well as appearing in prime-time TV shows and end-of-the-pier farces, he’d been on the Christmas pantomime circuit for years. Everyone s
eemed to love him and he was often recognised in the street. I’d never experienced fame before .
As the summer ended, it was crunch time. Both our shows had finished their run and we didn’t know what we were going to do about us. He kept telling me that it wouldn’t work between us because of the age difference. He seemed fixated, even at the start, on the idea that he was too old for me, but as far as I was concerned I never really thought about it.
I felt as if we were in a strange kind of limbo, and so, with a heavy heart, I moved back to my flat in London. The bubble of our perfect summer had been burst and our relationship was left totally unresolved as Les flew off to Los Angeles for meetings. (Les had always wanted to make it in America, either as a comic or serious actor.) Meanwhile, I got a job in Boots the chemist, spraying perfume, auditioning for my next part and living off my earnings from The Sound of Music.
We missed each other madly and spoke every day on the phone but it was tough. I had no idea what the future held for either of us, and whether it would be together or apart, but all I knew was that what we had was special and that I missed him. A lot. I tried to focus on work, but all I could think about was when we would see each other again and for how long.
The time Les was away felt interminable, but in reality it was only a matter of weeks – long enough, however, for Les to decide that we were going to be together.
In November 1994, Les suggested I move in with him, to his converted railway workshop down a cobbled street in Archway, north London. Although I was sure about us, and knew this was what I wanted, it seemed like a big step so soon, and I asked for time to think about it. I wanted this to be right and wanted to be mature about it, but there was no doubt we were both committed.
Instead, we picked up where our summer romance had left off, but this time with a new depth of feeling and certainty about where we were headed. We spent every moment we could together, and it felt like such a huge wrench to be parted again a few months later. I saw Les off at King’s Cross station on his train to Scotland, where he was booked to do panto in Edinburgh, and he wept (his emotions were always quite close to the surface!) and said, ‘Please never leave me. I love you. This is it for me. Whatever happens with us we’ll face it and we’ll deal with it.’ I felt the same, and once he was settled in Edinburgh, I visited whenever I could. His cast were a lot of fun and, best of all (from my point of view!), they liked and accepted me.
Les being away gave me time and space to think about his suggestion that I move in and I decided we were ready, so after his stint in Edinburgh that’s exactly what I did. We bought a Cairn Terrier puppy and called him Nobbie. Andy Grainger had spotted him in a pet shop, so I rushed out and brought Nobbie home. We were now a little family, and it felt great.
Even so, I was careful from the start not to take advantage. I’ve always been fiercely independent, and I always paid my way and was often the one to treat Les. When Les left his wife Lynne after sixteen years, he was incredibly generous to her and to their son Philip and at that point financially, as well as emotionally, had to start again from scratch. He even lived in his car for a while. I’m all for child support but as a woman and a mother, I’ve never wanted to be the sort of woman to take advantage of a man and I never have. Despite his lucrative job hosting Family Fortunes, doing pantomime wasn’t just a bit of fun for Les: it paid his maintenance and other bills.
I got to know Les better than I knew myself over the next few months. When he was at his best, he was great – usually after a glass or two of wine. Those first few months together were our happiest times. We were in love and I was so happy and relieved to be in what I regarded as my first adult relationship. We shared the same musical tastes, my friends and family got along well with him and most of the time he was good company.
But I was equally focused on our family life, and early on in our relationship I entertained Les’s estranged family. He was from a working-class Liverpool background and had drifted away from them over the years – especially during his marriage to Lynne. I persuaded him to reconnect with them at a red-brick hotel in Liverpool one day, where I met his sisters Margaret and Mandy, his brother Ken and his Auntie Pat for the first time. ‘Our Marg’ was always very grateful and I was happy that Les had them back in his life.
Les never stopped working and business began to pick up for me too. My agent Patrick got me an audition for the role of Carmen, a stallholder, in EastEnders. I appeared in five episodes, mainly as a sidekick to Ian Beale. It meant horribly early starts, but I loved it. At the time, I’d have killed to have my character developed further. (Against Patrick’s advice, I would repeatedly fax slightly desperate suggestions to the director about what Carmen’s surname might be, including ‘Carmen Get Me’ or ‘Carmen Make Eyes at Me’.)
Whatever it was, Les always encouraged me, even if it meant I might be away from him for weeks at a time. He’d been in the business a lot longer than me and he understood that an actor has to go where the work is. So when I was offered a season at the English Theatre in Hamburg, Germany, playing Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest (where my deportment lessons from Estelle Westcomb came in v. handy), he was genuinely happy for me.
He took me to the airport and held me close, and off I went, suitcase in hand, to a country where I didn’t speak a word of the language. It didn’t get much better, it was exciting but daunting. The theatre had been described as bijou in an art deco building, but was actually depressing and smelly, right next to two tandoori restaurants and a dentist. Added to this, the show was strange – not least because Lady Bracknell was played by a man. (Note this was meant to be serious theatre, not panto.) His name was Ginger Halstead and he was skinny as a whippet. He’d walk around backstage in his wig and padded knickers, with no top on, fag on the go. ‘Do you think they know I’m a man, darling?’ It was an eye-opener to me.
I was thrown into digs with the actress who played Gwendolen and became close friends with a lovely actor named Philip Goodhew. He and I clung to each other for mutual support and spent all our time together. To top it all off, we got burgled.
Les would fly to Germany for a few days whenever he could and I lived for those visits. He and Philip got on really well, and we always had a ball. Then Les took a short break with Andy Grainger. Les would call me every now and again but, in the days before mobiles, we were never able to chat for long. It was so hard as I missed him terribly. He felt so far away.
My play hadn’t even started and we were still in the middle of rehearsals one day in June when we were interrupted by the company manager, telling me I had a phone call from Les. We were rehearsing the first scene of the second act – a big scene for me, full of double entendres and mistaken identity, where my character is proposed to by someone she believes is someone else.
‘Oh, sorry about that,’ I said, embarrassed to have been the cause of the stop mid-scene. ‘Can you ask him to call back later?’
‘But he insisted I put him through!’ the manager told me rather crossly in front of everyone. ‘He said it was urgent.’
Red-faced, and by now a bit worried (overseas calls were expensive and I wondered what on earth could be so important that he would interrupt his break and mine to make one), I asked for some time out and hurried to take the call. But far from a man frantically trying to deal with an emergency, I was greeted, on the other end of the line, by a man who’d clearly had a long (and very boozy) lunch. The ship-to-shore connection wasn’t great as it was, and then he started rambling on about dates and proposals. I thought he was suggesting some social event for when he got back.
‘Can we talk about this some other time?’
There was a time delay and the line crackled back at me. This time I could only make out the word ‘proposal’.
‘Yes, Les!’ I said, getting annoyed now. ‘That’s the bit I’m rehearsing now!’
The line crackled more indignantly this time and suddenly his voice was crystal clear. ‘I’m proposing to you!’
I was stunned. We were on a £12 a minute ship line complete with satellite delay and interference – hardly the most romantic way for Les to ask me to be his wife.
In the end, I laughed. ‘Les, are you asking me to marry you?’
‘Yes! I mean, I’m in a phone box on a ship!’
‘Are you serious? You’ve been drinking . . .’
‘Absolutely.’
There was a long pause as I held my breath and tried to take in what this meant. I felt giddy with happiness.
‘Amanda?’
‘Yes, I mean, yes!’
I went back into the rehearsals in a daze and announced to the rest of the cast that I was engaged. Everyone was happy for me, especially Philip Goodhew. I couldn’t quite believe it – we were getting married.
It was amazing. I was so excited. Les flew out to join me as soon as he could and we went on a ring-shopping trip. I chose a modest, understated gold band with a pretty little diamond. (I deliberately didn’t pick a blinger. Even at that happy moment I was second-guessing what others would think and how everything would be judged.) We went for a romantic stroll along the banks of the River Alster so that he could find the perfect spot to give it to me.
After a few minutes a swan paddled past us. I thought that was lovely, and it made us both smile. Then a second, dead, swan floated past. Swans mate for life, and this poor specimen was obviously its other half. It kind of took the shine off the moment.
I thought, ‘Don’t see that as symbolic.’
Chapter 8
Our Survey Said . . .
I’ve always loved an empty theatre. It’s something about the discarded props and scenery. You can almost smell the history. During a run, I like to get there in time to stand on the stage and soak up the atmosphere. I played Elaine Harper in a national touring production of Arsenic and Old Lace, with Tom Baker, Josephine Tewson, Steven Pacey and Patsy Byrne, including a stint at the Theatre Royal, Bath, one of the most beautiful in Britain. Theatres are superstitious places and actors are notoriously superstitious too. Bath theatre has a legend that if an actor sees a butterfly inside, either your show will be a success or you’ll make it in the business. (There is some logic to this – in the old days shows were lit by candles and that warmed the butterfly pupae to life. The candles were only lit if an audience was in, so a butterfly came to represent good luck.)
No Holding Back Page 8