MY THREE SUICIDE BIDS
By Carole Aye Maung & James Weatherup
SHAMED Leslie Grantham secretly tried to kill himself THREE TIMES in the nightmare hours after he was exposed as an internet pervert. In his upcoming shocking new autobiography, the EastEnders legend reveals in dramatic graphic detail how he:
SLASHED his wrists and throat with a Stanley knife. HUNG himself from a tree with a skipping rope?only for the branch to break when he jumped. SANK into a lake weighed down with bricks in a backpack?but couldn't drown himself.
"I couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror?I was as depressed as I had ever been," says dad-of-three Leslie?who also reveals how he became HOOKED on internet porn and cavorted online for a mystery blonde dancer called Amanda. I let everyone down?my wife Jane, my children and the show. Life didn't seem worth living."
Leslie, 59, was just making a comeback as Dirty Den in May, 2004 when sordid pictures of him pleasuring himself naked on the internet hit the headlines. "I tried to lie my way out of the situation instead of facing up to it like a man," he writes. "Things got so bad I tried to kill myself. I got hold of a Stanley knife from my toolbox and started to hack at my arms, trying to get at the veins beneath the skin. In my pathetic stupor I didn't feel a thing. I only managed to make minor lacerations. I even tried to slash my throat?but I couldn't go through with it and gave up and went to bed."
Rope
Jane, 52?his loyal wife of 25 years?was horrified when she saw his wounds. Leslie says: "As she bandaged me up and put me to bed, she told me, ?Don't be stupid. We can sort this out'." But only a permanent sleep was on Leslie's mind that night. After a few hours of tossing and turning, he got up and went into the back garden of his Wimbledon home.
"I found an old skipping rope which I tied to a tree branch. I made a noose, and tried to hang myself. But as I jumped, the branch broke. Undeterred, I tied the rope to an overhanging pipe. I murmured a quick apology to all of those I'd hurt so badly and jumped." But the nylon rope simply stretched till his feet hit the ground. "What must I have looked like?" he asks. "The tragic hero, noose around his neck, ready to end it all, when I close my eyes and perform a perfect jump...straight onto the front lawn! I opened my eyes and, finding myself in Wimbledon rather than Heaven or Hell, accepted that, even at suicide, I was cr*p."
Yet he was still to have one more attempt just 24 hours later. "As I sat in the kitchen, learning my lines at 2am, I snapped. I couldn't go on," he writes. "I filled a backpack with bricks and a pair of dumbells and went to Wimbledon Common lake. "There I smoked a last cigarette and waded into the cold water until my feet no longer touched the bottom. The weight of the backpack dragged me under, but I simply couldn't make myself sink. I couldn't drown myself. So I tried to die of hypothermia. After two hours I realised it was hopeless and went home, soaked and freezing."
In his book, the star blames the boredom of life on the set of EastEnders for his getting hooked on seedy porn and chat websites. He reveals: "People assume you have a glamorous life?but we live in a waiting room most of the time. Actors kill the time in different ways. Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this new-fangled contraption called the internet. You could tap in these three letters?S-E-X?and a world of boundless, scary, fascinating, hilarious possibilities would open up. I'd absorb it all, watching the conversations on the screen. Before I knew it, this was the first thing I would do when I got to my changing room. Switch on my laptop. Log on. Watch. I was hooked. In between filming, I was emailing people, looking at the web and having sexy conversations with strangers. It became like the other member of my family."
Then one day he started swapping messages with a 23-year-old dancer from Sheffield calling herself Amanda. His downfall had begun. "She sent me photos of herself, and asked if I had a webcam. I said I didn't? although the laptop did have an inbuilt camera. Her pester power was admirable. She played me, targeting the vanity all actors try to hide. I should have seen the light but I was blinded by the flattery of a vivacious girl who wanted to have fun. Suddenly, those endless hours in the dressing room between scenes were not so dull. I had company?and I liked it. Little by little she cranked up the intimacy. Crazier and crazier, I complied."
He admits even when web images of him exposing his private parts appeared in the newspapers, he "was in denial and couldn't admit my behaviour fully". But he does concede: "She got me good. If I have any recriminations, they're mainly aimed at myself."
Speaking exlusively to the News of the World about his book, Leslie admits he nearly "destroyed" his family?and felt he had badly let down Jane and sons, Spike, 19, Jake, 17 and Danny, 10, who has Down Syndrome. Hanging his head in shame, Leslie says: "What I did was a stupid, stupid thing, and it should never have happened. And the sad thing is that I should have known better. But I just got caught up in the vanity of the whole thing. I got sucked in. Now I have to live with what I've done day by day. Luckily my wife Jane is a marvellous woman?and she has been kind enough and brave enough to take on my frailties. I'm so lucky to have her. She has kept the family together?through her strength, her loyalty and her love. And the same goes for my children. Obviously Jane was devastated by my actions. And, for a period of time, it could easily have gone the other way. But because she is such a fantastic person, we've managed to get our relationship back on track, and she has made the family a unit again."
Now Leslie claims his days of surfing the internet are over? temptation put into shutdown. "I deliberately don't access the internet any more. I have absolutely no desire to go on it at all," he says. "Thank God, I got caught. I don't have to lie about this any more. Now I'm just trying to get on with my life."
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