Les Dennis revealed that his plumber somewhat predicted the demise of his high-profile marriage to Amanda Holden.
The TV star, 70, said he ‘should have known’ that their romance was never going to last after the handyman fixing his washing machine at his Highgate home made a hilarious offhand comment.
Dennis wed the Britain’s Got Talent judge, 53, way back in 1995 after they met during a stage show production of The Sound of Music, despite receiving backlash due to their huge age gap.
The pair weren’t phased by the criticism at the time, however, they both later admitted that they were somewhat uncertain about their future together after they got hitched and settled into married life.
They became one of showbiz’s most prominent couples in the UK, but their relationship was dead in the water five years later after Holden‘s extramarital activities came to light.
It was revealed that the Brit starlet had been having an affair with Line of Duty star Neil Morrissey, so she and Dennis officially separated in 2002 before divorcing the following year.
Les Dennis and Amanda Holden got divorced after her affair came to light. (Dave Hogan/Getty Images)
Holden said 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’.
Discussing their split previously, she said: “There are no hard feelings with Les. I wish him the best, but we’ve both moved on. I don’t believe women have affairs for no reason. Women don’t seek sex – we seek love and affirmation.”
Shortly after their break-up, Holden then made a ‘brutal’ confession about her feelings towards Dennis while explaining that she was the one who spearheaded their divorce.
She said: “I terribly want children but I didn’t want to have them with Les. That’s a horribly brutal thing to say, but when you do, you know you have to move on.”
It turns out that their local plumber could have saved them both a lot of time, money and bother, as he made a comment about their relationship which should have made it clear it would never last.
The pair had an 18-year age gap. (Dave Hogan/Getty Images)
In a chat with Richard Herring, Dennis explained that he everyone was ‘waiting’ for their marriage to go wrong, but joked that ‘nobody told [him]’ that they saw trouble looming.
He continued: “I remember one day in our house in Highgate, it was Grand National Day, and the plumber was there to fix the washing machine.
“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.”
It turns out the short statement also firmly lodged itself in Holden’s memory.
Replying to a fan in June 2019 who shared the clip of Dennis, that has since been recirculated, she wrote: “I remember this.”
Holden added three laughing emojis as well as a heart at the end of her tweet, suggesting there is no hard feelings between the pair.