No Holding Back

by Amanda Holden

  At the big old fuss of an after-show party, I was on a high. I was wearing a beautiful low-cut red dress by Valentino. I’d been taped within an inch of my life into the plunging neckline, and I felt like a million dollars. It was my night, and nothing was going to spoil it – or so I thought . . . As I leaned forward to shake hands with Iain Duncan Smith, MP, my boob sprang out of the tit tape. I was aware of it happening, of course, but to be honest it never occurred to me you’d be able to see anything (Mr Duncan Smith saw nothing from where he was standing, I hasten to add!) and nobody else noticed. It was only the next morning that I – along with the rest of the world – realised that from the photographers’ angle my right nipple could clearly be seen. (I’m considering getting my nipples their own agent, since one appeared on Britain’s Got Talent in 2013, as well as a bit of side boob at that year’s wrap party!)

  In the three months leading up to that opening night, my life had been a whirlwind of singing, dancing, and falling in love. I lived out of a bag of Lycra as I hurried back and forth to Waterloo for intensive rehearsals every day. I loved getting to know the cast and crew and I made some great friends – especially Vicky Hayward, a bubbly blonde in the chorus, and Pippa Jordan, a beautiful girl who ended up working with me later as a choreographer’s assistant. And of course, Divs. I kept the promise I’d made what felt like a hundred years earlier and she couldn’t wait to join me as my dresser.

  Whereas in television these days everyone has stylists – or what used to be known as ‘wardrobe’, who help choose clothes and put ‘looks’ together – in the theatre it’s customary for actors to have a dresser, kind of like an old-fashioned lady’s maid. Your dresser is essentially your personal assistant – they are responsible for your costumes and other PA duties like running errands, getting your lunch, dressing you and small but very important details like making sure your tights aren’t laddered. It’s very old school, but then theatre is like that – they are so old-fashioned that actors are addressed by their surname – I get called ‘Miss Holden’, which I love. But being a good dresser is a really skilled job. You need to be nimble and quick, and have nerves of steel. During Thoroughly Modern Millie I would have to do an entire costume change (including wig!) on stage behind the chorus in just nine seconds whilst they sang a song. The costumes are usually made traditionally – there is no Velcro – so you have to be able to do a hook and eye really fast! Divs has done it for years, and she’s the best.

  Because Chris is self-employed, my punishing schedule didn’t affect our time together too badly – in fact, we had a lot of fun with it. He’d pick me up after each show and take me out to dinner. Meeting me at the stage door took him straight back to the happiest days of his childhood when he used to go to shows with his father and stay up late. Every night we arrived home to our as-yet-unfurnished penthouse apartment where we’d stay up late, enjoying getting to know each other better.

  To begin with I made him come everywhere with me, because I didn’t want people to think our relationship was a flash in the pan or start speculating that we had split up. I still felt that people saw me as a marriage-wrecker and I desperately wanted to prove them wrong. I still cared so much about what people thought! What a waste of energy! But every time Chris came on the red carpet with me he broke out in a stress rash (he still does!). He also hated being my ‘plus one’ and I knew how demeaning that felt after my early years with Les. And after a while, I realised I didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. Instead, I’d take one of my girlfriends or my lovely friend Ben Cooke, who is tall, gay and handsome – the perfect ‘red carpet husband’.

  From the start of Millie, I’d been getting lots of fan mail, and letters from one person in particular, saying ‘I’m going to propose to you,’ ‘I love you’ and ‘I want you to be my wife.’ Kind of nice, harmless stuff, that made me and Divs laugh. But then bouquets of flowers started arriving for me at the stage door, with notes letting me know that he’d been sitting in the front row. Then one day he sent me a teddy bear with a note saying how happy he was that I was going to marry him. That’s when it started to feel more menacing, like I was being stalked, and I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’

  I’d not responded to him at all, and as soon as it felt like it was something more sinister we reported it to the police. Almost immediately, it was leaked and appeared in the papers. I felt awful because it turned out he had mental health issues, and his family were absolutely mortified that it went public. I did release a statement saying I was glad he was getting help, but it was a scary time.

  During the first few months of Millie, Frank wrote to me out of the blue to tell me that he and his partner Pauline were coming to a matinee. I invited them backstage, but the atmosphere was awkward and our conversation was stilted even though I did my usual and annoying thing of talking too much to make everyone feel less nervous – that time, it definitely didn’t work.

  But those were two blips in an otherwise magical time. Millie had some great reviews and I was later nominated for an Olivier Award, which was the icing on the cake. Being in that show and living with my new man felt like a fairy-tale ending to what had been such a horrible few years – I was unbelievably happy.

  By February, however, five months of performing eight shows a week with hardly a day off had taken their toll and I was physically and mentally exhausted. Chris and I flew to Venice for a romantic break, but it didn’t turn out to be quite the holiday we’d hoped for. From day one, I suffered with a painful back, so I assumed I must have pulled something from doing all those high kicks. I could only hobble, so we had to abandon all our plans for romantic strolls around Venice. I was in so much pain I had to sleep in a hot bath! Chris, meanwhile, was determined not to miss out on Venice, and went for a walk on his own – however, he got completely lost and it took him hours to find his way back to our hotel. I had made him watch the famous horror movie classic ‘Don’t Look Now’ before we left, so he was shitting himself, endlessly walking up dark alleys and wondering if he would bump into a red-coated dwarf!

  In our room, heat and rest hadn’t improved my back, so we called the hotel doctor. He gave me a quick once-over, marked a cross on my arse with a pen and handed Chris some syringes full of cortisone with instructions to ‘Stab this in the middle of the bottom!’ (I’m not that kind of girl – honest!)

  We flew home a few days later but the pain only got worse. I thought it must be a trapped nerve, but then I developed a fever. I was paralysed with pain. We called an ambulance and I was taken to hospital, where I was diagnosed with a serious kidney infection – something called pyelonephritis which, left to its own devices, could have killed me. I had never known pain like it, and it was clear to everyone that I wasn’t going back on stage any time soon. I thought, ‘I’m in so much pain why don’t I just die now.’

  I was in hospital for a week and had to take three weeks off the show, which I was in total panic about – I’d seen the repercussions after Martine McCutcheon had dropped out of My Fair Lady through illness in 2002 and everybody had called her unprofessional. Thankfully, that didn’t happen to me, but before I went back I had to totally retrain – I even had a reopening night.

  After my illness, Millie continued to do well until it finished – we had our Olivier nominations, had performed a medley of songs from the show in front of the Queen at a Royal Variety Performance and most importantly, we’d had a wonderful time doing it. It was time for the next adventure!

  And it turned out 2004 had lots of other lovely surprises in store for me. I have always loved animals and had, in the past, done work for PETA and other animal charities. That year I was invited to become a patron for the Born Free Foundation. I was delighted – what an honour! My first job was to help Virginia McKenna release seven tigers rescued from circuses, pet shops and zoos. We made a documentary about it, and flew to a reserve near Bangalore in India. (The tigers flew first class – eye masks, glass of champagne, the lot!) We then travelled for twelve hours ac
ross India, drinking beer in huts and peeing in fields – it was an amazing experience.

  To celebrate being free of my gruelling stage schedule, I took my friend Jane to Necker Island for a travel piece for the Daily Mail. We had an absolute ball with Richard Branson and the American actress Daryl Hannah. We all took a catamaran out together one day, then came back and played poker after dinner. Richard was unbeaten, apparently. But he hadn’t bargained for my poker face. He couldn’t believe it when he lost to me.

  Daryl was a lot of fun, too, and we stayed in touch after the holiday. We had a few dinners in LA, and then one time she called me up at home out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, honey, I’m in town – what are you doing?’ We were going out to our local Indian, so we sent a car for her and took her for a curry! They were quite used to us bringing people off the telly – we’d recommended it to Trevor McDonald, and taken Brian May, Anita Dobson and David Coulthard on other occasions – but even for us, a bone fide Hollywood actress was quite random!

  Chris and I were enjoying being a couple, having lots of nights out and weekends away – even going to football matches. Chris is a die-hard Everton fan and since I met him I have become an avid supporter too. My dad supported either Pompey (Portsmouth, where I was born) or Southampton, so I roughly followed them before I met Chris, but my heart wasn’t in it. Now, I joke to Chris that if anything ever happened to us I would still be a blue through and through. We are lucky enough to always be in the boardroom whenever we go, which makes it extra special. There is no feeling in the world like walking down the steps to my seat, listening to the crowd going mental and singing the Z Cars theme tune. I even did a breast cancer campaign for them wearing one of only twenty pink Everton tops! It was billboarded all over the city – God knows what the Liverpool fans drew on my forehead. The shirt became so popular it ended up being their away kit the following season.

  There was just one little niggle. Chris and I were in a wonderful place, and so very happy, but there had been no discussions about our long-term future. This worried me, and I’d creep up behind him when he was working or listening to music and make him jump by saying, ‘Yes!’ into his ear.

  ‘Yes what?’ he’d ask.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I’d say, innocently. ‘Just practising . . .’

  I sat him down and told him, ‘I am thirty-four and I have to say I have to start thinking about kids.’

  His face fell. ‘I’m not sure about all that yet, Amanda,’ he said. ‘We’re not even engaged.’

  I had to respect his decision – there’s nothing worse than forcing a man’s hand, and I was crazy about him. So instead we carried on like that for several months, until one day he called me into the bedroom and said he wanted to talk to me. I wandered in and found him sitting on the bed. He looked so serious that I thought he was going to end it between us and I immediately felt sick.

  Trying not to panic, I sat down in a chair and said, ‘Okay then. Come on. What do you want to talk to me about?’ I was terrified, until, still very serious, he said, ‘I think we should take our relationship to the next level.’

  I was gobsmacked.

  ‘I think we should get engaged.’

  I had no idea it would be so formal, and I was so not expecting it – Chris always keeps me on my toes! I couldn’t have been more delighted. We talked about what kind of ring I might like (a square emerald-cut diamond – not that I’d thought about it a lot or anything . . .).

  A few weeks later Chris drove me down to a jewellery shop to show me a ring he’d seen, but when he peered in the window he said, ‘Oh, it’s gone!’ We went inside to ask and the manager told him, ‘No, sir. We never had a ring like that.’ It turned out he’d taken me to the wrong shop – there was another jeweller’s next door! Eventually, we found the right store and there it was – beautiful, sparkly, simple, not too ostentatious and just perfect. After all that build-up, I had romantic visions of Chris putting it on my finger there and then but, to my disappointment, he said, ‘I’m glad you love it. Let’s have one made just like it.’

  ‘Okay then,’ I said brightly. ‘Whatever you think!’

  Weeks passed with no developments until one night when I was preparing dinner for our friends, the actor John Gordon Sinclair and his wife Shauna. I was stuffing a chicken – even though I’m a veggie I cook meat for other people – and my hands were covered in grease and garlic, when I heard Chris shriek from the bathroom, ‘Mandy! There’s a spider in the shower!’ (Chris is such a girl when it comes to spiders.) I grabbed a glass and a piece of card with my oily, chicken-slick hands and rushed in, ready for combat, to find Chris standing there, looking petrified.

  ‘In there!’ he shrieked, pointing to the shower cubicle.

  I opened the shower door, and instead of a big hairy spider, there on the tiled floor was a ring box. Again, I was so not expecting that! Once I’d washed my greasy hands, I opened the box to find the perfect ring. He’d bought it from the shop the next day. He placed it on my finger properly and then we kissed and it was wonderful. Chris told me not to tell our friends that night, because there were other people we needed to tell first. That was really hard for me – I wanted to share my happiness with everyone and show off my ring. Instead, I had to wait until the next day to call everyone.

  Chris and I were now engaged after two years, and I really couldn’t have felt happier that everyone now knew how serious and happy we were. I showed my ring off for the first time on Children in Need, after I had sung. It felt so special and such a buzz as I showed Terry Wogan (I have always been a huge fan!).

  Over the last two years I had started to rebuild myself and my reputation, both personally and professionally. I felt I could hold my head up and be proud of who I was and was determined not to let any bad press or the odd stupid comment from the likes of Jonathan Ross hurt my feelings any more. I still have no excuses for my behaviour during my marriage but find it totally unacceptable that women like me can be victims of a witch-hunt for having an affair. Even thirteen years, three children and loads of other newsworthy stories later, it still gets brought up by the occasional comedian or newspaper. It is never the same for men in the public eye who have done far worse!

  The arrival of the beautiful diamond meant the issue of babies came creeping up on me again. To be fair, until I met Chris I had no real maternal instincts. I adored kids but never felt that womb-ache that some women do, and I’m so glad Les and I didn’t have them together. It clearly wasn’t right. But now, approaching thirty-five, I realised I’d have to face it, and so I asked Chris if we could try. A life without children wasn’t for me, I knew that much. When I brought the subject up, Chris asked if we could continue having a fab time for another year or so, but I knew that then age could become a problem. We had both already agreed we wouldn’t be going down the whole IVF route if we couldn’t conceive and I realised that to get pregnant we had to give it a fighting chance and start practising now. It was scary having the whole conversation – it’s really grown-up stuff – and however much I loved him, I didn’t know if I would be able to continue in our relationship if Chris had flatly said no. Luckily for me, he agreed!

  Meanwhile, Jane – who had met The One, Joe, three years earlier – was planning her wedding. She had this beautiful pink-lace cocktail dress, which she thought she might wear on the day. It was very pretty but I was certain it wasn’t what she really wanted for her big day. So I suggested that we should meet around the King’s Road one morning. She knew I had some plans and I could tell she was intrigued but, to her credit, she didn’t ask too much. We got in a cab to Catherine Walker, a super-stylish and posh boutique, where we were sat down, given a glass of champagne and Jane was asked what styles of dresses she liked. The assistant looked at her body type, led us upstairs to a carpeted dressing room and brought in this amazing, beautiful, sleek dress – I could tell from Jane’s face that she loved it already. When she appeared out of the dressing room wearing it, though, I burst into tears. She looked
so beautiful. Then she did too, and there we both were, crying in Catherine Walker’s changing room. It was such a precious moment – I’ll never forget it. On the big day itself, I was her bridesmaid, and as her surname was Wall, we all sang Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’ as we walked into the church.

  Early in 2005 I got a call for a new TV show called Wild at Heart, with Stephen Tompkinson playing a vet named Danny who relocated with his family from Bristol to the African bush to help restore a game reserve. I was auditioning to play his wife Sarah, but the producers initially thought I was too young for the part. I took along the photographs of me releasing the Born Free lions and tigers into the wild, and that helped. That first contract tied me to three months of filming in South Africa, and they hoped the show would run for three years (it ended up running for much longer). It was a long time to be away from home, but this was a big prime-time show on ITV. It was an amazing opportunity. Chris told me, ‘You have to do it!’ So I said yes.

  My African adventure was about to begin – and with it, one of the best experiences of my whole life.

  Chapter 14

  The Lex Files

  Before leaving for Africa, I realised I could be pregnant. We did the test and it came up positive. Chris and I were stunned – we’d only been trying for a month, and I was leaving the UK to film for months! As I handed him the pregnancy test stick, the phone rang and without thinking, I answered it and said, ‘Hello,’ as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do when I’d just discovered I was pregnant with my first child.

  Chris looked at me and said, ‘God, Mandy!’ He was in shock and he couldn’t believe I had just picked up the phone at such a crucial moment, but I guess I was in shock too. He expected me to put it straight back down again, but he reckons I then went out of the room and was on the phone for about twenty minutes while he sat there, holding the stick and trying to read the test instructions, all the while dying to talk to me himself. But bless Chris, once we had confirmed it, it still took him a little while to get his head around it. When we started trying, he thought he had bought himself six months or so – not just one!