Denise Van Outen: Betsy loves Glee!

Denise Van Outen: Betsy loves Glee!
Denise Van Outen: Betsy loves Glee! (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Denise Van Outen has told how her month-old daughter Betsy is following in her footsteps - as a fan of musical US TV hit Glee. The star told Hello! magazine: "She's a big Glee fan. I'll put my Glee CDs on and her eyes will go really wide and light up." Denise, 36, also told how husband Lee Mead looked like a "dashing doctor" as he attended the birth in a surgical gown. Denise had Betsy by Caesarean at London's private Portland Hospital a week-and-a-half early. The star revealed that just four hours later she was up and about, doing her hair and putting on make-up. And just four weeks later the baby weight is a thing of the past. "I think a lot of it is to do with how you prepare yourself mentally," she said. "And I always said I'd never be one of those women who sits around in a tracksuit all day, watching daytime TV." Denise met Lee, 28, who's currently starring in West End show Wicked, when she was a judge on BBC One talent show Any Dream Will Do, which he won. They married in the Seychelles in April last year. And she said that Betsy's arrival hasn't altered their relationship. "I do feel like we're a little unit now, but nothing's changed dramatically because we've only recently got married, so it's not like we're in that part of a relationship when things have maybe got a bit stale and we need to inject some magic into it." She went on: "The magic is still very much there. Marriage, to me, is a wonderful bond and Betsy is an extension of that and the vows Lee and I took." The full interview is in the new edition of Hello! on sale from Monday.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.