Denise Welch: 'Phone video made me quit drinking'

Denise Welch: 'Phone video made me quit drinking'
Denise Welch: 'Phone video made me quit drinking'

Denise Welch has said she quit drinking after watching a video of herself on a night out. The Loose Women presenter said her fiance Lincoln Townley filmed her during a drinking session with friends while she was starring in a play. Speaking to Piers Morgan on Friday's episode of Life Stories, she said she asked Lincoln at the start of the night to take her home if she looked like she might stay out too late. She said: "And he tried to do that, and I just kicked off. I went mad, or so I'm told. I don't remember very much. And Lincoln had made a request, observed by others, which was just, 'Darling, listen, the paps are trying to get you, you're doing your play, you need to go home. Come on sweetheart, let's go'. And I just kicked off. "I don't remember the rest of the night, but he taped me, on his phone, because he'd never seen anything like that before. And my behaviour was appalling and I don't want to be that person ever again. I wish I'd done it earlier." She said her marriage to Auf Wiedersehen, Pet actor Tim Healy was ruined by drink. She told Piers: "We didn't discuss things in a healthy, adult way. We chose to have a few drinks before we did so. We had some real humdingers, fuelled by excess." Watch the full interview on Piers Morgan's Life Stories: Denise Welch on ITV1 at 9pm.

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.