Strange though it seems, Les Dennis’s life story is rather fascinating. Partly in that car-crash ‘I can’t believe I’m reading this’ way, and partly for the insight it gives into variety’s heyday, when the comedy circuit was dominated by legendary entertainers and the odd man in dubious drag.
After all, we grew up with Les. We watched as he stagnated on ‘Family Fortunes’ for 16 long years, got publicly cuckolded by his second wife and fought to save his crumbling career by going on, of all things, ‘Celebrity Big Brother’. Not the wisest of choices, he’s now realised.
It wasn’t always so bleak. Back in the ’80s, Les was one of British comedy’s bright young things. After years of hard graft in working men’s clubs, holiday camps and other hellholes, he bagged a coveted spot on ‘The Russ Abbott Show’. Things were looking up, and his double act with the more famous (and far funnier) comic Dustin Gee looked set to catapult him to stardom.
Not many people survive a life in the spotlight without suffering from ‘egotistical prick’ syndrome at some point. In the cathartic pages of this warts’n’all work, Dennis attempts to purge himself of his celebrity addiction. He thought his working-class family were beneath him, he mistreated his loyal first wife and toadied-up to anyone famous. Worst of all, when Gee died tragically of a heart attack in 1986, he thought only of himself.
We plod along with him through the ‘Family Fortunes’ years, the predictable mid-life crisis and the oblivion that followed. Endearing flashes of bitter honesty mingle with maddening moments of self-delusion. On the one hand, he admits he finally quit ‘Fortunes’ after being offered a humiliating 93 per cent pay cut, but on the other he maintains Amanda Holden was attracted to him because of his sparkling wit.
So do we feel sorry for Dennis? The book’s main redeeming feature is that it tries very hard not to ask us to. He admits he found solace for a while in being the ‘sad but likeable little victim’ while the tabloids picked over the wreckage of his marriage to Holden. But a new relationship and a new baby have apparently improved his state of mind. His new partner is not famous and he claims that people, not ‘the show’, now come first. Good luck with that, Les.
