The actress and Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden has said that her former husband, comedian Les Dennis, proved to be her saviour during her previously turbulent personal life. And she said that, ironically, the person she said she had hurt the most in the world was the one who had been there for her.
She also explained why she had married a man 17 years her senior, saying she had found a kind of safety in a relationship with an older man. The 52-year-old television and radio personality married Dennis, now aged 69, in 1995, when she was 23 years old and he was 40, having met during a theatre production of The Sound of Music.
The marriage lasted five years, and it later emerged the reason for their split was her affair with actor Neil Morrissey, 60, something that became a much publicised hot topic in the national newspapers. It apparently all began when they co-starred in Happy Birthday Shakespeare, a film made in 2000, also featuring Dennis. Holden admitted in later interviews that the relationship with Morrisey had been just about "sex".
