DAWN FRENCH: I'VE BEEN SO NAUGHTY

REVEALING: Dawn French

Friday October 10,2008

COMEDIENNE Dawn French has used her new autobiography to admit that both she and husband Lenny Henry have enjoyed “much naughtiness” with other people during their 25-year marriage.

Fellow comic Lenny, 50, was notoriously exposed as spending the night in a hotel room in York with a slim young blonde in 1999 and he later underwent therapy in The Priory. The woman denied any affair.

But in her tome Dear Fatty, published yesterday, Dawn – in a loving and forgiving chapter addressed to Lenny – says that both of them have been tempted to stray over the years.

“Ironically, I think you and I have always shared a kind of unspoken misbehaviour gauge below which much naughtiness is excusable and fairly harmless,” she writes.

“We work apart, we meet interesting, attractive people and they are interested in and attracted to us. Some stuff’s gonna happen and mostly, so long as no one is hurt or embarrassed, it’s unimportant and ignorable. I genuinely believe that. We are, none of us, robots or perfect people. We are flawed and weak and tempted. Often.”

While admitting that Lenny made “grave errors of judgment”, Dawn recalls how they talked through “every single incident, harmless or otherwise” during their marriage.

They soon realised that “our natural instinct was to pull tighter, hold each other, unite, hold hands and walk through the storm together”.

There was never a time when they considered splitting up, she says. “We needed to remind each other what was worth fighting for and, my darling, you really are worth fighting for.”

Though their marriage now seems stronger than ever, Dawn, 51 tomorrow, goes on to list and name some of her most memorable kisses, including ones with former co-star Stephen Tompkinson (“skilled, heartfelt”), her Vicar Of Dibley co-star Clive Mantle (“strong, savouring, powerful with occasional slurping”) and, bizarrely, DJ Jamie Theakston, whom she calls the “second best kisser in the world”.