Comedian Les Dennis said he ‘should have known’ his and Amanda Holden’s marriage wouldn’t last after hearing a tradesman’s off-handed comment.
Former Strictly Come Dancing star Les, 70, and Amanda, 53, struck up a relationship back in 1993 whilst performing in a stage production of The Sound of Music.
Despite their 18-year age gap, the pair connected behind the scenes at Bournemouth’s Pavilion Theatre and after two years of courting said ‘I do’ in a lavish ceremony.
But five years into their marriage, it was reported that the Britain’s Got Talent judge had been having an affair with her Happy Birthday Shakespeare co-star, Neil Morrissey, 62.
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Upon the 2000 affair going public, Les and Amanda temporarily put the breaks on their union - a moment the former presenter said everyone had been ‘waiting’ for in hindsight.
Despite the infidelity, the couple rekindled their relationship and elected to give their marriage another shot before ultimately divorcing in 2003.
Funnily enough, though, it turns out Amanda and Les’ local plumber could’ve saved the pair a lot of time and hassle after he made a jibe about their age gap.
Speaking to fellow comedian Richard Herring, the father-of-three admitted that ‘nobody told [him]’ that there could be trouble in his and Amanda’s futures.
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“I remember one day in our house in Highgate, it was Grand National Day and the plumber was there to fix the washing machine,” he recounted in an interview.
"And Amanda came running and said, ‘We need to put a bet on’, so [I gave her] ten quid and she went, ‘Oh we need to put more than that on’. So I went, ‘Twenty?’
"And the plumber went, ‘Kids, eh?’ Maybe I should have known then."
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Amanda has previously commented on the clip, writing in 2019: “I remember this,” followed by a string of laughing emojis.
In the 20 years following their divorce, Amanda has given various insights into her affair with Men Behaving Badly actor Morrissey as well as her relationship with Les.
She previously claimed that she ‘found the fall from grace incredibly hard to deal with', as she 'can't bear not to be liked' but had turned into 'an awful person overnight'.
In another interview, she explained: “I terribly want children but I didn't want to have them with Les.
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“That's a horribly brutal thing to say, but when you do, you know you have to move on."
She added that women don’t have affairs ‘for no reason’ and that they don’t seek out sex but ‘seek love and affirmation’.
Following the former couple’s divorce, the pair have both moved on - the Kiss Me Kate actress with Chris Hughes and Les with Claire Nicholson.
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The duo have previously claimed there is no bad blood between them, with Amanda stating she harbours ‘no hard feelings’ towards her ex-husband.
Topics: Celebrity, Amanda Holden, Strictly Come Dancing, Entertainment, Sex and Relationships
Ella Scott