A PROPER VILLIAN:
A murderer at 19, romps with teachers behind bars and axed over webcam sex
EVERY chapter of the life and times of Leslie Grantham reads like a soap opera with murder, gangsters, fame, a scandalous sex expose and a fortune lost.
Rolled into one man’s story, it becomes clear why he became one of our most enigmatic, colourful and intriguing TV actors.
Leslie was most famous as Dirty Den in EastEnders but could have taught his screen alter ego a few things about villainy. His conviction for murdering taxi driver Felix Reese at 19 haunted him for life.
Yet decades later, he remained unapologetic for shooting the 30-yearold in the head, never seeking forgiveness from his widow and daughter.
“When you’ve done something as bad as I’ve done, you don’t forget about it,” Leslie once said.
“It’s shame that I have to carry forever. It haunts me to this day. I despise myself for what I did. But I don’t think apologising serves any purpose. I cannot alter history. I only wish I could.”
Born into a large family in Camberwell, South East London, in 1947, Leslie was interested in acting but enlisted in the Army and joined the Royal Fusiliers aged 18.
A year later, in 1966, he turned to crime while he was serving in Osnabruck, West Germany.
Leslie was trying to clear his beer debts with fellow soldiers, who had already attacked him by pressing an iron to his face.
He he had planned to rob a local man, once telling an interviewer: “Drunkenness was the order of the day at weekends and I did a lot of it. I was scared. I’d borrowed two months’ wages from various soldiers.
“So I decided to go for a solution many soldiers had used. ‘Rolling a German’, we called it.
“Having met a very drunk businessman, I walked with him for a while but couldn’t go through with it.
“I then caught a taxi back to the barracks and pulled out the gun, asking the driver for money. I only intended to use it as a threat. I didn’t know it was loaded.”
Leslie shot Felix in the head then, splattered with blood, ran back to his barracks. He was so terrified of being found out he said he was glad to be arrested by the Royal Military Police. But he lied about what he had done.
“At first I tried to deny all knowledge of what had taken place.
“But the guilt and remorse I would later experience were far worse than anything I had contemplated,” he said. In court, Leslie could not look Felix’s widow in the eye. “The enormity of what I’d done struck home,” he said. “I couldn’t look at her.”
The jury did not believe Leslie’s denials. He was given a life sentence and served 11 years in various British prisons, alongside feared gangsters like Krays’ sidekicks Tony and Chris Lambrianou, the Richardsons gang and Great Train Robbers.
Notorious Krays’ enforcer Freddie Foreman even threatened him once in the shower. Leslie said of the scare: “I thought, ‘S**t, it’s the end for me’.” He also claimed to have bedded art and English teachers while in jail, once saying: “I thought, ‘Why not?’. Better to have fun with the real thing while everyone else is looking at Penthouse.
“There was always a risk we would get caught. But, at the same time, what were they going to do if they did catch me? They could hardly bang me up, could they?”
During his time spent at Her Majesty’s pleasure, Leslie met actress Louise Jameson, who went on to play Rosa di Marco in EastEnders, while she was a volunteer at Leyhill Open Prison in South Gloucestershire. She encouraged him to rekindle his love of drama. And on his release, he was focused on an building an acting career.
He attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where actress Anita Dobson also trained.
She starred alongside him as longsuffering wife Angie after Leslie won his career-making role as adulterous pub landlord Den Watts in EastEnders in 1985. Den’s rocky marriage to alcoholic Angie captivated the nation and more than 30 million people – at the time over half of the UK population – tuned in for the 1986 Christmas special to watch Den hand her divorce papers with the words: “Happy Christmas, Ange.”
Den was killed off in 1989 but in 2003 sensationally returned from the grave – delivering the line “Hello, Princess” to stunned on-screen daughter Sharon, played by Letitia Dean.
But again, Leslie’s real-life drama eclipsed his soap scenes. In May 2004,
he was exposed after taking part in a sordid webcam sex session. Dressed as Captain Hook, he was seen in footage sucking his finger in a sexually suggestive way in his BBC dressing room. He also insulted Enders co-stars, including Shane Richie, Wendy Richard, Kim Medcalf and Jessie Wallace. Months later, the BBC said Leslie would be leaving the soap and on February 19, 2005 Dirty Den was killed off again for good.
Leslie later said he tried to take his own life three times in the wake of the scandal. While his career took a battering, he felt so low he did not notice job offers drying up.
Leslie said in an interview: “I was probably in such a mindset I wouldn’t have noticed even if I’d been run down by a lorry. It suddenly dawns on you that you’ve made a terrible mistake.
“Of course I have regrets but you can’t go round wearing a hair shirt all your life, otherwise you’ll never get out of bed in the morning. I f***ed up, now I’m going to move on.”
Leslie’s wife Jane Laurie – mother of his sons Spike, 31, Jake, 29, and Daniel, 23 – stood by him throughout the scandal. But their 31-year marriage ended in 2013 and Leslie resolved to stay single.
“I’ve messed up so many people’s lives, why mess up someone else’s?” he said of his decision. “I don’t get lonely because I have friends.”
Unlike many former soap stars, Leslie resisted appearing in reality TV shows to try to boost his profile and bank account. He once said: “It’s not reality TV, it’s humiliation TV. Why would I want to humiliate myself more than I already have?”
After his divorce, he led a quiet life in Bulgaria. Typically, Leslie kept his cancer diagnosis secret and looked for no sympathy.
Yesterday, hours after his death at the age of 71 was formally announced, Hollyoaks actor Joe Tracini tweeted: “Last week he could barely hold his head up or make a sound.
“I held his hand for a while, kissed his forehead and told him I loved him.
“As I left, he bellowed, ‘What am I f***ing dying or something?’.” Leslie accepted responsibility for his life’s extreme ups and downs and he seemed to have found some semblance of peace in his latter years, saying: “Life isn’t a straight line.
“It’s like travelling the motorway. Every now and then, you have to take a diversion.
“Unfortunately, some of my diversions have been quite catastrophic.
“But I’m safe in the knowledge that what I do now is good.”