Amanda’s got the airbrush out again

AMANDA HOLDEN has written her biography, No Holding Back. It appears to be more of a damage-limitation exercise than a life story. For a start, the Britain’s Got Talent star dismisses her eight-year marriage to comedian Les Dennis and her very public affair with actor Neil Morrissey as mere trifles.

‘I felt that it was a shallow, awful part of my life,’ she says, axing them right out of her existence. Chop, chop! Poor old Les. Felled like a diseased oak.

She feels her life only really began when she met second husband Chris Hughes and had daughters Lexi, seven, and Hollie (nearly two) — and they certainly seem to be a very happy family unit. Holden hasn’t published this book for profit or to enhance her showbiz profile — oh dear me, no. She has done it, she says, for her children. She wants them to hear her story in her own words.

So why doesn’t she just tell them? Well, the girls are probably too young to absorb some of the more difficult aspects of Amanda’s life. Particularly the abuse she received on Mumsnet after going back to work so quickly following the birth of Hollie, in January 2012. It was a very difficult labour, in which Amanda nearly died.

The previous year she had suffered the loss of a son when she was seven months pregnant. None of this stopped the online venom.

‘Spending time with your newborn is way more important than some sh***y talent show,’ she was told. That’s nice and supportive! Well done, you lovely mums.

In her book, Amanda claims she went back to work because she wanted to stop thinking about dying.

Maybe so. But she also has steely ambition flowing through her veins — and I mean that as a compliment.

Amanda Holden might risk some things — but losing her plum job sitting next to Simon Cowell on the BGT panel isn’t one of them.