Peeping Tom, exposing himself on a webcam and sex addict… How Dirty Den Watts actor Leslie Grantham was even dirtier off screen
Leslie Grantham wrote about a series of trysts during his time inside for murder
WATCHING his prison teacher undo her coat to reveal her underwear, Leslie Grantham got used to life behind bars quicker than most convicts.
This was just one of the secret trysts EastEnders’ Dirty Den enjoyed while serving time for murder as a troubled teen.
In extracts from his autobiography, Grantham — who died on Friday, aged 71 — recalls his romps with jail staff, being propositioned on day release and his sex sessions while working at a college.
Weeks after being jailed for life in 1967, Grantham began the affair with his English teacher at Kingston Prison, Portsmouth.
Looking back on the early days of the romance, the dad of three wrote: “Our conversation always turned to sex, not directly, but in general chit-chat.
“She wanted me to go through my fantasies with her. So after a few rather good stuttering starts, I told her how she had invaded my night thoughts . . . how I dreamed she had arrived at our lesson wearing nothing underneath her coat.
“She then told me how she’d had naughty thoughts too and asked if I would write all this stuff down.
“I refused in case it was found and got us into trouble.”
When his tutor arrived the following week, Grantham recalled: “After the usual pleasantries and an analysis of my last week’s work, she suddenly opened her coat and revealed that she was naked, apart from bra and panties.
“She had travelled on a bus dressed like that!
“When I commented on this, she said she was really self-conscious and at the gate of the prison panicked and nearly turned back. Thank God she didn’t.”
Grantham was jailed for the killing of taxi driver Felix Reece, 30, during a bungled robbery while he was a 19-year-old squaddie in West Germany.
As a soldier, he was allowed to serve his time in British prisons.
It was not just in Portsmouth where he attracted female attention.
Soon after a transfer to Wormwood Scrubs in London, Lothario Grantham had a fling with an education officer after she declared her love for him one day in the classroom.
He said: “After this revelation from my teacher, I made sure that I was picked up early from lunch so we could have a clandestine meeting in the stock room or in an empty classroom.
“Mind you, I was spending a fortune on mints and toothpaste. We nearly got caught once by the art teacher, although he never mentioned it.”
From his cell in Wing D of Wormwood, Grantham was able to spy on nurses from Hammersmith hospital as they showered.
He said: “I saw a young lady take her clothes off, grab a towel and leave the room. It was the nurses’ quarters for Hammersmith hospital. They would go through the motions of trying on clothes, sometimes they waved, and even those who didn’t mean to ended up inadvertently providing entertainment.
“I later found out that the previous occupant had paid £15 for the privilege of having that cell.”
Grantham also claimed he turned down the advances of a female prison welfare officer on a day-release trip.
He recalled: “We didn’t return to the prison straight away, but to her flat, where she needed to pick something up.
“She made me a cup of tea and disappeared, and when she reappeared she was wearing stockings and suspenders, bra and knickers, but the stocking tops were so tight they were cutting into her thighs.
“She looked ridiculous. I said, ‘I think we should be getting back’.”
Grantham served ten years of his sentence and landed a job working at the library in Filton College in Gloucestershire. Again, he used it to meet women.
Remembering how he once seduced an American art teacher, he said: “One day, she showed us some pictures of her back in the States, and one, I saw, was of her naked, taken by her ex.
“You could see everything but I noticed no one else had seen the picture.
“As I was helping her clear up, I asked if she wanted to meet for a drink. She agreed and we did.
“At college I told the tutor I was going to do some research in the library.
“I slipped out and met her at a pub. After a drink, we went for a stroll and ended up having sex on Clifton Downs.”
Grantham, who attended drama school after leaving prison, finally settled down and married Jane Laurie in 1981.
He landed the role of “Dirty Den” Watts on a new BBC1 soap four years later and went on to be one of TV’s biggest stars as EastEnders took off. But his memories of attending a screening of the launch episode were not all positive. He wrote: “It looked good but I cringed every time I appeared.
“I was sitting next to a man about my age, who looked important, but I hadn’t seen him on the show.
“The episode finished and the man shook my hand and said, ‘Fantastic. Well done. What do you think of it?’
“‘It’s all right, but I hate that music.’
“He laughed. ‘By the way, I’m Simon May, the composer.’”
A record 30million people watched on Christmas Day 1986 when Den served his wife divorce papers with the immortal line: “Happy Christmas, Ange.”
But Grantham’s popularity as Den brought added pressure and he struggled to handle the fame. It led to the first of several suicide attempts.
He said: “EastEnders was a runaway success and it seemed like we were pushing back the boundaries all the time. Around this time the pressures were taking their toll. I had trouble sleeping and was prescribed tablets.
“One day, I was so depressed I just rolled up on the floor and cried.
“I couldn’t go on. I went to the bathroom, grabbed a bottle of pills and swallowed the lot. Jane found me on the floor and phoned an ambulance.”
Grantham endured more heartache when his mum Adelaide told him his brother Philip was suffering from “some sort of cancer”. Grantham later found out Philip was in fact dying of Aids.
Philip had requested Grantham not attend his funeral as he “did not want it to turn into a media circus”.
Reluctantly, the actor agreed.
His first stint on the soap ended in 1989 but he returned unexpectedly to the show in 2003.
The following year, sordid pictures of him pleasuring himself naked on the internet hit the headlines.
Writing about the scandal, he said: “I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. I was as depressed as I had ever been. I let everyone down. Life didn’t seem worth living.”
The actor, who lived in Wimbledon, Southwest London, made a series of further suicide attempts and said: “I opened my eyes and, finding myself in Wimbledon rather than heaven or hell, accepted that even at suicide, I was crap.”
He blamed getting hooked on seedy porn and chat websites on the boredom of life on-set.
His downfall began when he started messaging a 23-year-old dancer from Sheffield, calling herself Amanda.
He said: “She sent me photos of herself and asked if I had a webcam. I said I didn’t, although the laptop did have an in-built camera.
“Little by little she cranked up the intimacy. Crazier and crazier, I complied.”
When web pictures of him exposing his private parts first appeared in newspapers, he admitted he “was in denial and couldn’t admit my behaviour fully”.
Grantham, whose marriage to Jane ended in 2013, said the incident caused bad blood with his co-stars and “certain members demanded I be punished”. It led to his suspension and eventual axing in 2005.
He said: “No one actually said anything to my face . . . I never found out for sure who complained, but I have a fair idea.
“It was probably the same actress who sent pictures of her large breasts to male members of the cast.”
- Leslie Grantham: Life And Other Times: My Autobiography is out now.