Amanda and Les tied the knot back in 1995 after a whirlwind relationship
Amanda Holden has opened up her regrets following her divorce from her first husband Les Dennis. The TV star shared an emotional chat with her best friend Alan Carr, in which she admitted she’d “made mistakes” in the past but it shaped her to become the person she is today.
Amanda and Les tied the knot in 1995 before separating in 2002. The couple divorced the following year. The breakdown of their marriage came two years after her affair with co-star Neil Morrissey surfaced.
Speaking on the latest episode of their BBC One travel series, Amanda & Alan’s Greek Job, Amanda shared: “I mean, obviously we’ve both been through a divorce, we’ve both made mistakes and as much as I regret hurting people maybe, or causing chaos, it shapes you to who you are in this moment. And I think life is too short to have regrets.”
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Reflecting on his own regrets, Alan – who is currently single – admitted: “I mean it’s not decisions for me but knowing your worth and the amount of times I’ve been walked over and people have demeaned me.”
Amanda responded: “You are soft, you’re so lovely as he continued: “There’s time that I’d wished I’d said no, I wish I’d been a bit bolder and a bit stronger.”
She added: “After a divorce, what you do think is that you are never gonna find love again. Do you sort of trust yourself to fall in love and make a good decision about somebody for the rest of your life?”
Admitting he has trust issues, Alan replied: “Yeah, it’d be nice wouldn’t it? I don’t really trust anyone really, that’s the trouble. I think that is my main thing.”
Amanda is now happily married to Chris Hughes, with whom she shares two daughters – Lexi, born in 2006, and Hollie, born in 2012.
Meanwhile, Alan was in a 14-year relationship with Paul Drayton. After ten years together, the duo married in 2018, with Adele officiating the ceremony at her home in LA. But their relationship sadly suffered in lockdown and they divorced in 2022.
Amanda and Alan’s honest conversation comes after Amanda admitted she knew he did well on Celebrity Traitors, because she didn’t hear from him for two weeks.
The Britain’s Got Talent judge sussed her close friend’s success when Alan, 49, did not call her during the production of the show. The comedian usually rings Amanda every day so the actress quickly became suspicious during the spring, when filming took place at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands.
Alan went on to win The Celebrity Traitors but, though he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, Amanda, 54, had a hunch he at least “did well” on the programme. Speaking yesterday, she said: “I knew he must have done well because I didn’t speak to him for two weeks, normally we speak every day.
“He’s been around for so long, but everyone’s suddenly like, ‘Oh, I love Alan Carr’, and I think, ‘How is he a new thing to you? He’s always been this brilliant’.”
Mother-of-three Amanda added: “My daughter Holly, who’s always loved him, said to me, ‘Everyone’s asking me about Alan’, and I say to them, ‘You’ve met Alan, he was in the back garden at our party, and you weren’t bothered about him then’.
“Alan’s literally brought them a cup of tea in bed or been on holiday with them. But now they’re really into him, it’s brought a whole new generation because of all the TikToks and the memes, which is lovely.”
Alan recently said Amanda, who was in popular drama Wild at Heart, would be “great” on The Celebrity Traitors . Amanda hinted she would want to be a traitor if she was going to do the programme, which airs on the BBC .
