He has been everything from a classic comic to game show guru and a reality star. He was even killed by a serial killer in Corrie.
But when it comes to his 50 years in showbiz, Les Dennis is adamant about one thing: he has no regrets.
As he marks five decades this month since his first appearance on TV, the star opens up about his career highs and lows.
He says all the choices he has made have brought him to a happy place. “I’ve no regrets because I am where I am now,” says Les, 67. “And where I am in life right now I’m very happy.
“Whatever way it’s led me here, it’s been the right path.”
Married three times, he has had mixed family fortunes.
Les lost his comedy partner Dustin Gee, aged 43 in 1986.
He admitted making mistakes in his first marriage. As his second one to Amanda Holden crumbled, he had “an emotional crisis on live television” when he took part in Celebrity Big Brother.
The ups and downs all played out in the public eye as Les was one of our
best-loved entertainers.
But when he started out in social clubs around the northwest of England in the 1970s, fame was not the goal, he says.
“I used to watch Sunday Night at the London Palladium,” he recalls. “Jimmy Tarbuck was the host and he was from Liverpool too and I remember thinking, I want to do that.
“I didn’t think about fame. I don’t think any of us did. I just thought that’s the job I want to do – and I ended up working with Jimmy and following that path.”
Les appeared on iconic talent show Opportunity Knocks at the age of just 17 in July 1971.
“I was still trying to get my A-Levels and doing the working mens’ clubs. That was my first telly, and all my mates were having a go, saying, ‘You were rubbish!’ But that’s fine, we’re 50 years on and I’m still doing it!”
Next week Les is back on TV for new Channel 5 show Fishing Scotland’s Lochs and Rivers, starring alongside Fern Britton, Lord Ian Botham, Linford Christie and Rosemary Shrager.
“There was great chemistry with the group, I’ve made friends for life,” says Les.
“I’d never really fished before but there was one day when it poured all day and I thought, I want to keep casting. So I got a little bit addicted.”
It is his ability to turn his hand to anything that has made for such a long-lasting career. He became one of our biggest stars when he took over game show Family Fortunes from 1987.
Even after Celebrity Big Brother – where he looked like a broken man and found solace talking to chickens – Les says positive things followed.
“It didn’t seem like my finest moment, but if I hadn’t done it Ricky Gervais wouldn’t have called me and Extras wouldn’t have come along. I think of it like that, every cloud.”
His portrayal of an excruciating version of himself on the sitcom, dubbed “Sad Les”, was a huge hit.
“It was a great gift for me to be able to reinvent,” he says. Looking at his CV, he thrives on reinvention.
Les, who has showed up on everything from Brookside and Casualty to The Bill, won over Corrie fans as Michael Rodwell from 2014 to 2016.
“I’d done a lot of stage acting but I suppose with Coronation Street, the public had to believe in me,” he says. “I had two-and-a-half years of absolute joy. I couldn’t have gone in a better way than being left to die by [serial killer] Pat Phelan.”
Away from TV, Les is dad to Philip Heseltine, 41, from his first marriage to Lynne Webster, and Eleanor, 13, and 10-year-old Tom with his third wife Claire Nicholson.
He met life coach Claire, 18 years his junior, in 2005, and they married in 2009. She has been his rock as he shed more than two stones to reverse pre-diabetes, diagnosed in 2018.
His first marriage had ended in 1990 before he went on to wed Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda in 1995.
They briefly split in 2000 following her affair with Men Behaving Badly’s Neil Morrissey, and parted ways in 2002, the year he left Family Fortunes.
He made the decision to cut ties as he came second in 2002’s Celebrity Big Brother. When he left the house he discovered Amanda had sent a video message but wasn’t there in person.
“I came to the final decision that this charade of a marriage was over,” he later wrote in his autobiography.
Even during the pandemic, he has not stopped. He is starring in Hairspray at the London Coliseum with Michael Ball, and is lined up to star in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore with the English National Opera this year.
And it doesn’t sound as if Les is considering retirement any time soon.
“Somebody said to me you don’t retire from showbusiness, showbusiness retires you. At the moment, it isn’t. I just look forward to every day.”
*Fishing Scotland’s Lochs and Rivers, Channel 5, July 23, 7pm.
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