One day in Bath I arrived early as normal and, backstage, I came across an old chest that I hadn’t noticed before. Without thinking I lifted the lid and a butterfly flew out – a big, brightly coloured butterfly which fluttered around my head for a while before flying up into the gods. I was gobsmacked and my heart was pumping with adrenaline. It felt like a real movie moment for me – I was excited and utterly amazed, but thought no-one would believe me.
After this, Les and I bought a new house in Highgate and once we’d revamped it, we filled it with people. Les was welcoming and generous to my friends – Jason, Jane, my sister Debbie – and my friend Emma ‘the nun’ even moved in with us for a while. After her relationship with GB ended I’d fixed her up with Andy Grainger, so the four of us had even more laughs together.
I was quite domesticated back then and cooked all the time (which Chris finds hard to believe now), but Les was the real gourmet. He knows so much about food and fine wine and to my twenty-three-year-old self he seemed so cultured, sophisticated and worldly-wise.
When my tour ended, Les took me to Norfolk, a place he loved. I fell in love with it too – it’s so flat and wild, with vast open skies. I had never seen anywhere like that in my life before and I felt instantly at home, and able to breathe and relax. We stayed at The Hoste Arms in Burnham Market. The owner, Paul Whittome, was a good friend of Les’s, and was always so welcoming. Paul was a larger-than-life character who was very theatrical, funny and devoted to his wife Jeanne. He called our dog ‘Snobby’ because he claimed he had delusions of grandeur. (It’s true! He had a real air about him. He would never dream of rolling in poo or anything like that!) Paul never judged Les and me – he treated us as equals and I loved him for that.
That Christmas Les and I worked together for the first time, in Aladdin in Glasgow. I played Princess So Shy (big stretch!).
We set the date for our wedding – 4 June 1995 – which gave us six months to plan. We couldn’t wait for the big day. All of our friends and family could see we were in love. Even Jane, who years later admitted that she was initially baffled as to why I, straight out of drama school and with so much ambition, wanted to get embroiled not only in the institution of marriage (she considered herself a feminist!) but also to a much older man. She got to know the homely, family-orientated side of me and understood that I had always wanted those things from a very early age. Les and I provided those things for each other and, at the time we married, I had no doubts we were in love and we knew we were doing the right thing. Our wedding day was one of the happiest of my life.
I recently unwrapped my wedding dress again, nearly twenty years on, and when I pulled it out of the chest, wrapped in tissue paper with bags of lavender, I felt quite emotional. I’d been so full of hope the day I wore it. I bought it from Mirror Mirror in Crouch End just as I’d always planned, only my bridegroom turned out to be Les, not GB. It was sleeveless white satin, beaded, with a square neckline and pleats and the back had a full cathedral train. I wore a pearl tiara and long white satin gloves, and carried a bouquet of yellow roses. I was also wafer thin and looked so young. I had four bridesmaids: Jane, Emma Cooper, Tamsin Mallinder (a friend from Mountview) and my sister Debbie.
The ceremony was at the United Reform Church in Bournemouth – the only church we could find that would perform the marriage because of Les’s divorce. It was also big enough for our 120 guests, mostly family and friends. It was very camp. Les’s son Philip was his best man. Nobbie, our dog, was an honoured guest and wore a ribbon for my ‘something blue’. My dad gave me away – it never even occurred to me to invite Frank. Of course, the newspapers found him anyway and he gave them the predictable ‘I can’t believe I’m not invited to my own daughter’s wedding’ story. On the day I was warned to keep a lookout in case Frank was lurking in the background somewhere. It made me really anxious – I was terrified it would upset Mum and my nan. Thankfully none of us ever saw him and if he was somewhere watching, we weren’t aware and there were no unpleasant scenes.
As Dad and I were getting ready to leave Chase Lodge for the church, he surprised me with a horse and carriage. I was thrilled. As we were about to step up into it, he asked me the traditional question, ‘Do you need to talk about anything before we go, lover?’
‘No,’ I told him honestly. ‘I want this, Dad.’
He nodded and said, ‘Let’s do it then!’
Thanks to the combination of the photographer’s demands and the slower pace of the horse and carriage, I ended up being forty minutes late to my own wedding. (In the event, it was just as well because Jason got stuck on a broken-down train and almost didn’t make it.) At the church, whilst Les fretted that I’d changed my mind, Lionel Blair stood up in front of the guests and hosted a riotous game of Give Us a Clue. It’s probably the first time a wedding congregation has been sad to see the bride arrive.
At the reception, at Rhinefield House Hotel in the New Forest, Dad gave a really funny speech and, rather than the usual bawdy best man’s affair, my new stepson Philip gave a sweet speech which my mum typed out for him. Taking on a teenager had turned out to be easier than I’d thought it would be – Philip and I got on from the start and were good friends with an easy relationship. Since the divorce, Philip’s mother had been quite overprotective and his relationship with Les had been strained, mainly revolving around Sunday visits to the movies where they couldn’t communicate or talk things through, but I wanted us to be part of his life and encouraged Les to talk to him more and do more interactive things with him.
Two days after the wedding, Les and I flew off to Jumby Bay in Antigua for our honeymoon. It was so romantic. On holiday I love to lie on a sun lounger or beach, read a book. I don’t like drinking at lunchtime because it makes me sleepy, but Les enjoyed wine with lunch, followed by a power nap. This habit carried on through our married life. My mum used to say to me, ‘If you have children, Amanda, Les can’t disappear off for the afternoon and sleep.’ But at the time I never complained (he’d always be much more cheerful afterwards!). Our holidays together were our happiest times and, over the next few years, we had some great ones. I took him to the George V in Paris and on a three-day cycling and wine-tasting tour of the Chambertin region of France. We spent the whole time drunkenly riding bikes around the vineyards! But my best memories of my marriage to Les are all in Tuscany, where we rented fabulous places near Montepulciano and had great holidays with and without friends. Florence is my favourite city and we’d stay up in the hills near by, sampling fine wines in between trips into the city. It all felt very grown up.
I looked grown up, too. When I flick back through photos of me then I look so much older than my years – dressed in suits and blouses with scarves and matching accessories. When I was with GB I’d worn quirky outfits. With Les, I looked like an air hostess. I think I did it to make myself seem older than I was – to make myself fit in. I looked so much like my mother, but I was trying to match Les.
That summer, Les was booked for a 16-week season at the end of Blackpool North Pier in a show also starring Su Pollard and Roy Walker. Despite working hard at auditions, I had no work on and so, eager to be a good wife, I went too, with Nobbie. We stayed in a big old house that I nicknamed The Pink Palace and I invited Jason and his partner Taro up to stay. The four of us went to some of the famous drag clubs there, including The Flying Handbag and Funny Girls. We took Les on the Big One rollercoaster but he was not a happy bunny. Jason has a photo of us on that which he vows never to destroy as it still makes him laugh.
Determined to be the perfect wife, I threw myself into supporting Les and spent a lot of time backstage, soaking up the atmosphere.
During one show, Les farted next to Roy Walker. Roy went mental, stormed off stage and came into the Green Room where I was sat peacefully enjoying a cup of tea. Les came in, Roy picked up the coffee table (which was big) and charged round after him with it, shouting, ‘I can’t believe you’re so unprofessional! You farted, you farted!’ Su ran
in, topless and bottomless save for a pair of American Tan tights pulled up to her breasts, shouting, ‘Stop! Stop, Roy!’ She stood next to me and I came face to face with her beaver – she’d obviously forgotten to put her knickers on in her panic trying to break up the fight. It’s moments like this I wish I had my camera! Roy refused to talk to Les for a week and avoided eye contact with him on stage, before finally buying him a book to say sorry.
I loved being able to throw myself into my new role as Les’s wife, but the flip side was that the more time I spent fixing his life, the more I began to feel consumed by it. I was so happy that I didn’t notice it to begin with, but after a while I realised I was not only having to fight against other talent to get the roles I wanted – I was also having to battle the blonde bimbo persona the business had created for me after my marriage. As a result I had to prove myself more and had to fight even harder for all the roles I got auditions for. The irony is that being with Les didn’t give me the leg-up that people thought it did. It actually made it harder for me during the early days of our marriage. There was so much snobbery in the TV industry, I wanted to prove to myself and others who I really was and what I was really capable of.
Then, out of the blue, my Hamburg friend Philip Goodhew offered me a small part in a feature film – a black comedy – he’d written called Intimate Relations. He’d sent it to Julie Walters and, to his amazement, she had agreed to do it with him as director. I played a single girl named Pamela. I suggested Philip offer Les a part too. (Les wanted to do straight acting, and Patrick says I was always looking for opportunities and suggesting jobs for him.) He played Rupert Graves’ brother in a few scenes. We filmed it in Abergavenny, Wales, and Les was so keen not to miss out on his first feature film that he hired a helicopter to fly him to the location between his Blackpool shows.
Around then, Les suggested we buy our own little retreat in Norfolk. My reply was obviously ‘Yes!’, but with the stipulation we got something ‘really small and cosy’. I wanted us to have something homely, not overly grand. Finding the right place turned out to be less straightforward than I’d thought, but after some hopeless searching we were sent the details of a house near Burnham Market. Debbie and I went to see it at Easter, and as soon as we started driving down the track, past a big white farm, I knew it was the one. We rounded the bend to see a semi-detached red-brick workers’ cottage. ‘This is perfect!’ I took one look at the place and offered the asking price.
Our new next-door neighbours Bob and Pat were Norfolk born and bred and we loved them. They had cats and a coal fire and kept chickens (Pat even sounded a bit like a chicken when she talked). She was often stuck in a chair in their little kitchen with a bad hip but enjoyed making up rude songs about ‘bums and tits’ while Bob died of embarrassment. They treated us like royalty because they were huge fans of Family Fortunes and if she could, Pat would have virtually stood to attention every time she saw Les.
The cottage wasn’t at all fancy. It had three bedrooms with a downstairs bathroom and the tiniest kitchen with an old-fashioned oven and a butler’s sink. There was an outhouse complete with a toilet, sink and cobwebs. We loved that house so much that we drove up from London at least twice a month to stay there and always had breaks in it at Christmas and Easter. We’d take great long hikes across the fields and have picnics in the countryside or on the beach, and we’d even collect eggs from under the bushes in the garden laid by next-door’s chickens. My nan and Papa came to stay, and my parents and my sister. On our first New Year’s Eve we crammed fourteen people in. Les made lamb stew and we drunkenly let off fireworks at midnight. Sometimes I’d go on my own just to be alone. Other times I might take a girlfriend. Mostly, I’d go with Les. We were at that little cottage through good times and bad.
My career in theatre was now going strong, but I was desperate to do more TV so I changed agent after five years. I picked Amanda Howard, who got me five auditions in my first week (although to be fair Patrick had nominated me for two of them). After months of tumbleweed, it seemed suddenly every one I went for I seemed to get. I was on the phone to my mum constantly telling her, ‘I’m going to be in The Bill!’ or, ‘I landed a part in a show called Thief Takers!’ She was thrilled, as was I!
Les was encouraging, but I was conscious his own acting ambitions weren’t being fulfilled in the same way. As my job offers started to come in, he began to joke about the Judy Garland movie A Star is Born in which the young wife becomes famous while her husband’s star wanes. Again, his morbid obsession with the age difference between us surfaced and his mood became very black. ‘That’ll be us one day,’ he said glumly.
I was torn between wanting to make him feel better and realising my long-held ambitions. A fulfilled wife would be better placed to help him fight his demons, I reasoned. As always, I found a one-liner to diffuse his mood. ‘Well, please don’t run into the sea the way James Mason did in the end, okay? Apart from anything else, I’ll freeze my bloody tits off trying to save you!’
Chapter 9
Les Misérables
I’m not sure why buzzers have played such a huge part in my life. Now, of course, there are the Britain’s Got Talent buzzers which I love but one of the things that started off making me laugh but then really got on my nerves the whole time I was married to Les was that, wherever we went, we were followed round by the Family Fortunes buzzer noise. People would make that noise whenever they saw Les – it’s actually quite a negative noise and it made him depressed. Throughout our relationship the spectre of the life he had before we met – his wife Lynne, his son, his career – loomed large, and it always seemed that our relationship was of less importance to outsiders, as well as to Les himself. He’d been very under the thumb during his first marriage and this dynamic continued through the divorce and into our marriage, too.
At a celebration dinner for Russ Abbot’s This is Your Life show, for example, which many of our close friends were invited to, Les was placed on the ‘top table’ with his ex-wife Lynne whilst I was shoved on a table at the back with the kids, even though they had been divorced for nearly six years and we’d been together for three! It felt very pointed and deliberate, and made me feel very small, like I had been sidelined in favour of Lynne – especially when Les failed to stick up for me. If that happened now, Chris would make a point of saying, ‘Amanda should be with me’, but Les said nothing. In fact, if that happened now I would say something, but back then I was so young and gauche. I didn’t want to make a fuss, or upset Les. Instead, I made up a story that I had to leave early because my mole was hurting! (It was true – I had just had a mole removed – but mostly I was too humiliated to stay.)
As an isolated incident this might not have rankled so much, but right from the start Lynne’s presence infiltrated nearly every area of our marriage. She was a huge defining force and all too often my existence came a poor second to her wants and needs. Every week, Les and I would go to pick Phillip up from Lynne’s house. I wasn’t allowed in, so I stayed in the car. (I can see that it might have felt odd for her to begin with and I tried to be understanding, but I wasn’t the first woman Les had been with since they’d split and when Les and I met they had been divorced for two years. However the ban continued way into our marriage! I used to say to Les, ‘One day, she’ll come out and she’ll say I’m allowed in, and I hope I have the balls to say, “Bugger off, I’m quite happy sitting here, thanks.”’ Eventually, after about five years, I was finally allowed in – and no, I didn’t say it: I didn’t have the balls!)
Even after their divorce, Les felt he had to get her a lavish Christmas present. Everything had to be jewellery. As it had been this way throughout our relationship, I never questioned it, until one year, sick of seeing him stress out over it, I said to him, ‘Remember, it only has to be a token, Les,’ so he found her an attractive but unassuming watch. That was immediately sent back; it wasn’t good enough. But buoyed by feeling a little more in control of her, and determined to stick with it, the n
ext time he bought her a book or something. Not wanting to see him upset or make relations any worse between them, I naively tried to help out and for her birthday I found this pretty vanity mirror with two little drawers under it. Again, that came back. She said, ‘It’s very feminine, Les. I can tell that Amanda’s picked it, and it’s not for me.’ That time, Les himself said, ‘Okay, don’t have it then.’ And so he put it in our own house in Norfolk instead!
I managed to keep my next experience of This is Your Life fairly Lynne-free as I helped secretly organise Les’s show. We arranged for Michael Aspel to surprise Les during a Family Fortunes show. All of Les’s friends, family and colleagues, past and present, were there.
It was while I was organising this that I got my first big TV break (in a Channel 5 launch comedy sketch show We Know Where You Live). I was so excited, not only about the project but the people I’d be working with – Simon Pegg, Fiona Allen and Sanjeev Bhaskar. Simon Pegg and I became really close, partly because he came from Gloucester and his mum lived just up the road from my nan, but mainly because we had the same sense of humour.
This led to more auditions – like the part of Mel, Caroline Quentin’s receptionist in a new sitcom Kiss Me Kate, but they told my agent they were looking for someone who was more quirky than me. However they called me back, and after the initial disappointment of thinking that I wasn’t in the running, I started to think I might have a chance.
No Holding Back Page 9