Backstage Pass

Les Dennis is a showbusiness veteran and has the stories to prove it. He talks to TARA BRADY

THERE'S A MOMENT in Ricky Gervais's show Extraswhen show-business trooper Les Dennis, on learning that his glamorous younger fiancée is cheating with a stagehand, breaks down mid-panto, into a monologue lamenting the futility of his life.

“Where do you want to go from?” asks Gervais, in an attempt to get the show back on track.

“About 1992,” replies Dennis.

Gervais has described it as his favourite episode of the meta-fictional show but its excruciating comic power owes less to The Officecreator's writing than to Dennis's willingness to play along. "I got a text from Ricky afterwards saying your arse is on a billboard on the Hollywood strip," laughs Dennis. "It was very cathartic because I had full range to ad lib as this twisted, demented version of myself. I love it that Ricky says it's his favourite episode."

Les Dennis ought to be best known for his decades of service in light entertainment, for his teatime telly stints on Family Fortunes, for his recent theatrical work. But his name is just as likely to evoke a mess of tabloid headlines about his ex-wife Amanda Holden, her very public extra-marital affair with Neil Morrissey, or the lonely, poignant image of Les Dennis, in the aftermath, talking to chickens on Celebrity Big Brother.

“I didn’t plan for my life to be as public as it was,” he says. “I think of myself as being in celebrity rehab now. I don’t do that thing of turning up at the opening of an envelope any more. But you can’t know that’s how things are going to go. I became half of a celebrity couple. So suddenly my life was very public. I know for a fact my phone was tapped. But the moment has passed. I’m not going to join the queue of people lining up to sue. You accept it and move on. The headlines were about a marriage breakdown and an affair and the affair was on the other person’s side. But I felt like I’d killed somebody. I felt like it would go on forever. And that fascination did go on for a long time.”

It wasn’t like this when Les Heseltine, as it says on his birth certificate, started out. A bright Liverpudlian kid, he attended the same school as John Lennon and can well recall the city’s vibrant scene from a time when Scouse was something to be.

"It was a brilliant time but my main man was Jimmy Tarbuck," says Dennis. "John Lennon was funny but Jimmy Tarbuck was brilliant. As a kid I remember watching Sunday Night at the [London] Palladiumand thinking, that's what I'd like to do. Then I got confused because my mum bought me a piano and I loved Victor Borge, the piano comedian. But at some point, taking 20 minutes to get through the Minute Waltz, I realised I liked the entertainer part more than the musicianship."

A quiet kid, Dennis put on shows in the back garden and soon enjoyed hiding behind impersonations of Dick Van Dyke. His mother Winnie, who in other circumstances might have been a headliner, was encouraging.

"When she was young she used to sing solo in Liverpool Cathedral," says Dennis. "She had a chance to audition for Carroll Levis Discoveries, a sort of pre- Opportunity Knocks. And she ran three and a half miles home to tell her mum she'd be singing for Carroll Levis the following day. And her mum said 'No. You start in the bottling plant tomorrow.' She was 14."

His careers officer suggested he might like to give the merchant navy a try and his dad pointed him towards “a proper bloody job”, but Dennis instead took to the tough working-mans comedy circuit. “People say it was a brilliant training ground and it was in many ways,” he recalls. “But you were competing with the bingo, competing with people who’d waited all week to meet up. You needed to be a bit more aggressive and that didn’t suit me. Theatre and television was a better training ground for me.”

He soon found regular telly work on The Russ Abbot Showand formed a comedy partnership with the late Dustin Gee. But comedy was changing. As newer, brasher alternative comics stormed the barricades, the old-school variety acts were increasingly left out in the cold.

"I remember going to the light-entertainment party at the BBC and in one corner there's me and Little and Large and the variety acts, and in the other there was Ben Elton and Rik Mayall and all The Young Onesguys. Lenny Henry used to be with us but by marrying Dawn French he had successfully defected to the other side. He had gone from The Black and White Minstrel Showto being cool. And in the middle of it all you had Barry Cryer – who was able to talk to everyone. But once we all had a drink together, we knew we were on the same side. And I think Ben does look back and think he was a bit harsh on Tarby. Tarby in particular had a tough time. In Liverpool for a long time he and Cilla were regarded as not proper Scouse because they aligned themselves with Margaret Thatcher that time. But whatever his political persuasions are, that doesn't stop you from being a good comedian."

One generation on and comedy has swung right back. Old-school Saturday evening family programming has never attracted higher viewing figures and Family Fortunesis always on satellite television.

“I think I realised things had changed again the day I saw Keith Allen wearing golf trousers,” he laughs. “It is strange. One minute you have to be banging on about Thatcher and being very PC. Then people like Ricky Gervais come along and realise you can get away with anything if you just keep that knowing, postmodern edge. It’s like Victoria Wood always says, there’s no good taste or bad taste if it’s funny.”

These days Les Dennis is a contented-looking fellow. He met wife Claire Nicholson in 2005 and has since settled into domesticity and fatherhood: the couple have two children, three-year-old Eleanor and new arrival Thomas.

On the back of his career rehabilitation, Dennis is more likely to be found treading the boards than on the seaside pier. Today, he's gearing up for a stint as Mr Smee in a new high-tech musical based on JM Barrie's Peter Pan.The newest show from the creators of West End blockbuster Chitty Chitty Bang Bangwill make its premiere at Dublin's Grand Canal Theatre next month.

“I prefer acting nowadays,” says Dennis. “Because I can immerse myself and disappear. I’m nervous about this because it’s a world premiere. Everybody knows the JM Barrie story. This is a musical version not a panto so it’s the same story that my daughter loves to hear at night and you want to do justice to her Never Never Land. Everything on paper works. The script is great. The production values are great. The music is great. The cast is great. But I’m still going to wonder how can I do this until I’m right in the middle of it. It’s always the same. I’m Leslie Heseltine off stage and I’m Les Dennis on it. They’re two very different people. And only one of them makes the papers.”

The world premiere of Peter Panis at Dublin's Grand Canal Theatre from July 15th to August 6th