Amanda Holden's 'brutal' confession about why she ended relationship with ex Les Dennis

Amanda Holden’s ‘brutal’ confession about why she ended things with ex Les Dennis has resurfaced, saying there was something in particular that impacted how she knew when to 'move on'.

Amanda, 52, and Les, 69, were married between 1995 and 2003, having met on a stage show production of The Sound of Music.

They tied the knot when he was 40 and she was 23, but broke up in 2000 after it was revealed she’d been having an affair with Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey.

The pair officially separated in 2002, before divorcing a year later.

Amanda has since spoken candidly about the breakdown of her marriage, telling the Express back in 2009 that she found the ‘fall from grace’ incredibly ‘hard to deal with’.

“I can’t bear not to be liked,” she said.

“Then I had an affair and overnight turned into this awful person.

“There are no hard feelings with Les. I wish him the best but we’ve both moved on.”

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In another interview with the Mirror in 2003 – the same year she split from Les – Amanda admitted she was feeling really broody and was ready to have kids, but had realised he wasn’t the one she wanted to raise a family with.

"I am very broody,” she said at the time.

“Maybe I'll have children - wham bam - in a couple of years and have about four.

"I terribly want children but I didn't want to have them with Les. That's a horribly brutal thing to say, but when you do, you know you have to move on."

She went on to talk about her then-new relationship, having been dating music industry boss Chris Hughes – who just so happens to now be her husband.

"I've never been so happy,” Amanda gushed.

“My dad said: 'You're like a little girl again'."

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Amanda married her second husband Chris Hughes in 2008, and now has two kids with the record producer.

In another 2013 interview with Good Housekeeping, she also defended her former lover, who she says ‘got loads of stick’ at the time.

She said: “Women don’t seek sex - we seek love and affirmation. If a woman has an affair, there is normally a problem in their marriage. Neil rightly or wrongly got loads of stick.

“I feel like it was my fault - I was the one who was married.

“I want to change the general perception of him, as he was very caring and very loving and very worried about me because I lost so much weight. He used to cook for me and look after me and babysit the dogs.

“We were thrown together when I ended the marriage, or at least moved out.

"Our relationship continued longer than it would have done had we not been so in the public eye, because we had no one else to turn to.”