lesliegrantham

Lucky lady Jane Grantham the happiest lady alive when she woke up in may 2004.27 years of an "Den and Angie" like marriage ,Les and Jane were going to celebrate his birthday as they were falling in love over again.
Leslie back on the screens as Dirty Den watts on Eastenders BBC1 him and his lucky wife Jane Grantham immersed in charity work and family life.Things were getting better for the Granthams and they had never felt happier.Les and Jane got done up with there three sons waiting to celeabrate with there friends and family.Then a bastard decided to take there happiness away and take Den Watts of the screens with the coffin nailed shut for good.The report came with a newspaper telling Leslies wife Amandas twisted story of Leslie and the webcam.Janes shock from what she just got told. The lies that Amanda had said and the truth she "forgot" to mention coursed the Granthams heartbreak.Amanda had notmention the words she had said.She acted as the sweet innocent 23 year old blonde reporter.The news papers never told the world the truth only parts of it which corsed horror in the Grantham house.
The memory brings emotion to Jame.

"I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. I didn’t know I could feel pain like it. Leslie was in a terrible state, crying and begging forgiveness, but I felt so betrayed, angry and humiliated." Jane said.

Jane Grantham speaks out for the first time

Decades in the spotlight, she wants to tell the public what it has started. heartache, the public humiliations,3 suicide attempts and separation - and how a little boy with Down’s syndrome finally pulled a broken couple back together again.Many people would find it hard to forgive and forget even Jane did at one point.The couple did separate for 6 months.

It is clearly a painful admission. Jane says: "I thought, 'How could you have been so stupid?' I still think that sometimes - what a silly old fool."

"What on earth is a 60-year-old man doing thinking that this attractive blonde 23-year-old is really interested in him? I can’t understand that he didn’t see she was just cashing in on him."

"Leslie had such a shock and he was in a terrible state. He completely unravelled, and one little part of me actually felt sorry for him."

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"I was also trying to protect our two teenage boys.They had to get up, go to school and face the world."

"They did it and they were so brave and mature."

"They learned who their real friends were, but they were bitterly angry with their father."

Public humiliation and the splite made Grantham over the edge.A couple of nights later he tried to slit his wrists.At first he tied elastic bands around his arms and tried to hack his way to the vains.

"I walked in and found him covered in blood. It was everywhere. It was the most terrifying sight I have ever seen."

"But Leslie was beyond reach. There was nothing I could do or say. I tried to clean it up and, once I had checked he was OK, tried to persuade him to come to bed."

Just hours later Les went into the garden and found a childs skipping rope and tied it to a tree and tried to hang himself

But suddenly the noose snaped. Jane found out about this only when he told her later that night.

Jane says: "I was worried sick. I realised he felt so terrible that he couldn’t even face living any more. For a week, I found myself waking up in the night - we were sleeping in the same bed - to check that he was OK. My fear for him just took over."

Straight away, the couple decided to split up.

Jane says: "To begin with, Leslie stayed at home because he wasn’t well. I don't know how he even managed to force himself to work, but he did."

"As he slowly started to cope, we decided it was best for him to move out. It wasn’t me kicking him out: it was a mutual decision. We'd both had such a terrible shock. It was an awkward and horrible time, and we just needed space on our own."

"After he left, it was just me and the boys and it was actually easier. We didn’t have reporters on our doorstep and life just carried on as normal. I didn’t honestly know if we would get back together again - and I don’t think Leslie knew either."

"He came over at weekends to take the boys out and to spend time with Danny, our Down's son, then aged nine, who was really devastated by the split."

In the end there son, who bought them back together.

Jane says: "One night, Danny’s godmother was reading him a bedtime story and Danny turned to her and said: 'My Daddy broke Mummy’s heart, but he’s still my Daddy'."

"When I heard that, I nearly wept. I just thought, 'Well, that’s the beginning and the end of it really' and it made me realise just how important it was to all of us that Leslie and I were together."

"Could I throw away everything we had together - let a stupid mistake destroy our whole family?"

Jane Grantham, who believes in life is 'it isn’t the mistakes you make that count, it is how you deal with them,' had already coped with the news that her husband had once served life for murder.
Les and Jane both met in drama school when she was only 21 and he was 32.She loved him straight away even when he told her he had killed a man over coffee she loved him.

She says simply: "I was so shocked. I did not have a clue that he had been in prison when we first started going out."

She pauses and adds with a sardonic smile:"‘Well, 'You haven't done a life sentence in jail, have you?' isn’t the usual sort of opener when you go on a first date, is it?"

"I realised it explained so much about Leslie. He was the tall, brooding, silent type - always slightly guarded, with an air of mystery which I found intriguing."

"Part of what I fell in love with was his incredible enthusiasm for life."

students would sit in a group and bitch about not having any cash, or the fact that it was crap weather, but Leslie would be thinking 'It’s fantastic, we’re actually sitting here having coffee - and the rain feels great'."

"Of course the rain felt good. It would feel good after being locked up in a prison cell. Everything did back then - and in small ways, it still does, too."

"Leslie still possesses that incredible joie de vivre and he gets such pleasure out of small, ordinary things."

"He loves to cook, and even after a long day filming, he’ll buy my favourite fresh fish on the way home and cook it because he wants to pamper me."

After that shocking lunchtime revelation that her sweetheart les had killed somebody, did Jane ever consider dumping her swaggering, charismatic, working-class boyfriend?

She shakes her head emphatically: "Not for one second. I reasoned that he had served his sentence, paid his price — and I just knew instinctively that he was not a bad man."

"Both my parents were extremely concerned then I told them, and I think they had their doubts until they met Leslie."

"But they could see how extremely happy he made me - and they liked him."

"Even by the time she had finished her coffee and walked out of the cafe, Jane had simply accepted that she would stand by her man."

"It has been a decision she was to repeatedly make over the next three decades, in a rollercoaster marriage that could come straight from the plotline of a television soap opera."

One of five children born to a actor and his wife in Adelaide, South Australia, she bought a one-way ticket to England, arrived with a backpack and an audition for the drama school -and never looked back.

It was a year before she noticed Leslie.

He’d served 12 years in jail for shooting a taxi driver during a bungled robbery as a young man in Germany, had recently been released and was relishing his freedom.

"We met when we started working on a college theatre show together," Jane recalls.

"Everyone went to the pub after rehearsals and we started talking. He just seemed different from everyone else — not just older, but slightly awkward, as if he wasn’t used to talking to girls."

"He was not sophisticated at all but he was terribly good fun."

Just two years later in 1980, they got married. They decided not to have children for abit so they could get on into their acting careers.

In the summer 85, Leslie was offered a small part as a barman in a forthcoming BBC drama to be called EastEnders.

Pregnant with their first child Jane had no idea that her husband was about to be national fame — and that their lives were about to change for ever..but for good?

She says: "It was only intended to be a very small role, but they gradually started writing more and more plotlines around the character of Dennis Watts."

"The cast had been working tirelessly in rehearsals for six months when the show was first aired and we just didn't have a clue what would happen next."

"We just expected our lives to go on as normal.

"When EastEnders was first aired in February 1985, Leslie and I lived in Fulham, West London, and we walked everywhere together or we would catch a bus."

"But suddenly more and more people started recognising Leslie, until it got to the stage that catching a bus became impossible."

Leslie - is happy to meet fans and likes to live life to the full and enjoys his freedom.

Jane says: "He loved signing autographs and meeting people. He still does. I was just so happy for him and I guess that life was really good."

August 1986, with the birth of their first baby just four weeks away, the Granthams' world got torn a part. Newspaper headlines screamed that the new darling of television soap was a convicted killer.

Leslie’s past had haunt him. Jane says: "It was Leslie’s deepest darkest secret coming out into the light for everybody to judge."

"He had always had his own dark place, but he was coping and doing a highly pressured job. Now, with the story out and the Press camping on our doorstep, it totally unravelled him."

"I felt utterly helpless. I tried to reassure him that it really wasn’t the end of the world - but nothing I could do or say made any difference. He was unreachable."

One night, exhausted from filming and horrified by the stories now appearing daily about his past, Leslie swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.""Leslie did come round, but it was very hard because I knew he was only still alive because the pills hadn’t worked."

"And the thought that he could do it again was, of course, absolutely terrifying."

"He was still terribly down when Spike [their first son] was born in September 1986. There wasn't an immediate moment when he snapped out of the depression, but he held our baby, we started life as a family and I think that gradually he made a determined effort just to keep going."

With her son just a few weeks old, the BBC received death threats against Jane and the baby.

"That day, when I took the baby for a walk in his pram, I didn’t realise that a police patrol car was following my every move."

"When Leslie came home that night, he told me exactly where I had strolled that day. As I looked at him in astonishment, he produced the police report and told me about the death threats."

"They didn’t know if it was a deranged fan but the police were taking it seriously."

"Was I scared? Of course. The next day, there was a temptation to just cuddle the baby and stay in the safety of the house. But it was sunny and I remember looking out of the window and thinking that no one was going to keep me away from such a beautiful day."

"So I put my new baby into his pram and went for a gloruious walk. For the next few weeks I would have police cars following me everywhere, but nothing ever happened."

By the time the couple’s second son, Jake, was born in September 1988, Grantham’s screen character Dirty Den had become a television legend - making incognito family outings an impossibility.

Jane says: "Everywhere we went, Leslie was stopped. It just became part of day-to-day life. We’d enjoy long, exotic holidays in faraway places where Leslie would be unrecognised and we could just play at normal families - but that didn’t always work."

"We were in Disney in Florida and we paid to have a 'character' breakfast where the boys could meet Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck."

"We'd barely sat down when a huge coach tour from England arrived."

"They spotted Leslie and we spent the rest of the breakfast with Mickey Mouse waffles in one hand, Leslie signing autographs with another, and a long winding queue of people around our table."

Then, in June 1994, at the age of 39, Jane discovered she was pregnant with their third child.

She'd flown to Australia for a camping and trekking holiday with Spike and Jake and her parents, leaving Leslie back in England.

"One evening, I looked out of our little tent to the river below and in that split second I suddenly knew that I was pregnant and that the baby would have Down’s Syndrome."

"It was a moment of total revelation and I just felt strangely calm. I knew without question that my gut instinct was right, and that we would simply cope."

"I decided not to ring Leslie and tell him. He would have wanted me to return home straight away. Instead, I waited until we were home and took Leslie out to dinner."

Then I told him I was expecting another baby - and that I was sure it had Down’s Syndrome.

"He was shocked, because a third child had simply never been on the agenda, but when I suggested perhaps we should have a test to find out about the Down’s Syndrome, Leslie shook his head and said firmly: 'Whatever we get, it’s our baby'."

"He was so sure, and I needed the reassurance because I did have a bit of a panic when I arrived back in London and back to the real world. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be all right and I worried if I could love the baby."

Leslie with Danny

"I deliberately didn't even have a scan until I was four-and-a-half months pregnant because I didn’t want anyone to put any pressure on me or even to discuss the option of an abortion."

"I didn’t want to know. The lady who did my scan placed it on my tummy and suddenly I saw his dear little face on the screen - and it was obvious that he had Down’s Syndrome."

"I started howling and the lady doing the scan started crying too."

"I got into the car and thought: 'I’ll go and see a girlfriend' but then I suddenly pulled myself together and thought 'Why do I need to talk this through? Just get on with it'."

"So I just drove home and got on with life."

Danny was born in March 1995. Jane says: "Any fears I may have had about not being able to love him went in a split second. I just looked into his eyes and saw a bottomless pool of endless love."

"I could swaddle him in his blanket and he would be happy to lie in my arms, gazing up at me."

"When he was just a few days old, Leslie looked down at the baby and said: 'You know, there are some hard things in life, but this isn’t one of them'."

"I knew exactly what he meant. Somehow, this tiny baby who was so dependent on us just drew us closer together than ever."

But the early weeks and months were tough.

"Danny wouldn’t feed easily, so it took hours. And he would stop breathing at night - sometimes seven times a night, sometimes 27 times. I would lie awake, waiting for his monitors to go off, so that I could race in and gently massage his chest or tickle his feet to get him breathing again."

"He became so precious to me. I was so determined not to let him die."

She believes that her devotion to Danny came at a huge cost, though.

"It was really hard on Spike and Jake, because for four and a half years I really had to throw all my energies into Danny and I was totally and utterly exhausted."

"Leslie was fantastic. He took the eldest two boys firmly under his wing, and the three of them formed a special bond which they have to this day."

Jane learned sign language to help encourage her son to talk - and he was three years old when he took his first tottering steps.

She says: "I took him to a music class each week, and the other children would all run over to choose the instruments."

"But Danny was always too slow to get the instrument he wanted, and he minded that SO much."

"One day, when he was just over three, he wanted that wretched instrument so much that he stood up and he walked."

"He was walking so slowly, but he was actually walking, and the tears were just running down my face."

Jane's devotion to her son remained tireless. For ten years, she ran an early intervention group for children with Down’s Syndrome, offering friendship and practical advice to other mothers.

When Danny was five, Jane wanted to adopt a little girl with Down’s Syndrome - but Leslie’s criminal past caught up with them.

"I saw a little girl in the paper for whom they wanted adoptive parents. I wanted to be her mother so badly."

"I just knew I would love her. So I rang the number."

Jane pauses, then adds: "But Leslie doesn’t look good on paper, does he? We couldn’t adopt."

As a young girl, flushed with love and buoyed with confidence, she had accepted Leslie’s jail sentence as something that had been and gone.

A past which would no longer affect either of them. She says now: "I was so naive, because Leslie’s past did come back - time and time again."

"Even travelling on the Tube or being in crowded places was hard for Leslie. I think he was always worried in case trouble flared up and he would be unwittingly caught up in something."

But it wasn’t to be the shadows of the past which proved to be the couple’s greatest test.

It was an internet sex scandal which exploded on to the front pages and nearly cost Leslie his career, his marriage and his life.

In his new autobiography, Leslie admits to discovering the illicit and seedy world of internet sex.

During long, boring hours between takes on the EastEnders set, he scoured websites and struck up a flirtatious and sexually-charged relationship with a young blonde.

Blissfully unaware, Jane was happily planning a birthday dinner for Leslie in May 2004 when a reporter knocked on their front door.

"He asked me what I thought about the stuff in the paper and I asked what he meant. With that, he just handed me a newspaper."

The front page headline screamed: Den’s Web Lust.

Their marriage could so easily have crumbled - but for Danny.

"Danny really thinks about what he says, and he has an uncanny habit of cutting straight to the truth."

"When he said that Leslie would always be his Daddy, no matter what, he made me realise that this was the beginning and the end of the whole story. I realised then that I could forgive Leslie and we could carry on."

After six months apart, it was Leslie himself who took the decision to move back in.

Jane says: "He turned up in his car, all loaded up with his stuff, and said: "If you don’t let me back into the house I’m going to sleep outside."

"I remember saying 'I think we need to work out some strategies' - but we just carried on as before."

Jane now believes the whole humiliating episode has strengthened her marriage.

"It was absolutely terrible to see it all on the front pages - so shameful and so public - but it forced us to deal with the situation and to address the problem."

She pauses. "Everybody makes mistakes. I don’t think it is the mistakes themselves that matter as much as what you do afterwards."

So life in the Grantham household is pretty much business as usual.

Leslie has been filming for The Bill. Spike and Jake are on the cusp of new careers, though Jane won’t say what, and Jane is balancing school runs with charity events.

Meanwhile, she is taking Danny to a sleepover, and as she leaves she has one final apology.

"I’m sorry my story hasn’t been more interesting."

That really is the one thing that Jane Grantham doesn’t have to worry about.

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