When Leslie Ash successfully sued the NHS in 2008, her huge £5million payout raised more than a few eyebrows.
The Men Behaving badly star, 65, received the payout after contracting a near fatal superbug while in hospital for broken ribs. The incident left Leslie with severe mobility issues and she even suffered a period of paralysis.
She faced some backlash for taking the NHS to court and winning the mammoth compensation, but Leslie has now hit back at those criticising her decision to sue.
‘They totally messed my life up,’ Leslie said, as she admitted she really needed the millions in taxpayers’ money because they she’d run out of cash.
‘I had to sue the NHS, they totally messed up life up, it was preventative, and I needed the bl***y money,’ she said.
‘Otherwise, we would have lost our London flat we would have lost everything, I had to.
When Leslie Ash successfully sued the NHS in 2008, her huge £5million payout raised more than a few eyebrows – but she has now hit back at those criticising her decision to sue (Seen in 2023)
‘I know a lot of people dislike me for suing the NHS, but while the NHS is brilliant, they do make mistakes, I’m not the only one they made a mistake on, and they pay a fortune in compensation every year.
‘I didn’t take any joy out of suing them, but when they make a mistake, they have to hold their hands up.’
After the success of 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly, Leslie became a household name and much of her life, including her marriage to former footballer Arsenal and West Ham footballer, Lee Chapman, was firmly in the public eye.
The couple, who have been married for 39 years, were at the epicentre of the 90s showbiz elite as co-owners of the celebrity haunt Teatros in London’s West End.
But in 2004 Leslie was admitted to hospital after reportedly drunkenly falling out of bed, suffering a punctured lung and broken ribs.
Leslie said that she felt after as though her life had gone into freefall.
She said: ‘We had such a fantastic life, we had a lifestyle that was just really fantastic, we’d worked hard and I worked hard to send my boys to a really good school and I was feeling so successful as a parent and as an actress and I used to drive around thinking, “I am so lucky, I was so lucky”.
‘Then whack, it was like having the rug pulled from under your feet.’
The Men Behaving badly star received the payout after contracting a near fatal superbug while in hospital for broken ribs
Years before her hospital stay, mother-of-two Leslie hit the headlines after botched plastic surgery on her lips left her with a ‘trout pout’.
The surgery saw her ridiculed and made a ‘laughing stock’ in front of her peers.
She told the How Do You Cope podcast: ‘It was horrible, every day I woke up and it was all around me.
‘It was so hurtful and so upsetting, because you spend all this time building a career for yourself and getting people on your side and people know your name and people are sending you scripts and stuff and then suddenly, you’re made a laughing stock a complete and utter laughing stock.
‘It was just a horrible time in my life. But now it is totally normally to have lips or even bigger than what I had back then.’
Now in her mid-60s the actress admits that life is in a better place, after her triumphant return to acting, starring in a play, Artificially Yours, at the Riverside studios last year. The star says she enjoyed getting laughs again, having thought her career was all over.
‘I got offered a role in Hotel Babylon, but when the director saw me on two crutches he just said “I’m sorry” I couldn’t do that part. The opening scene was me in a pair of high heels, I couldn’t even wear high heels because I couldn’t feel my legs.
‘I was getting desperate for work and I couldn’t understand, after being so busy and speaking to my agent twice a day and there was nothing coming in and it was really scary and I didn’t want to lose my career, I’d worked so hard for it all. So that was like a grieving process in itself.’
But Lesley explains that she was fortunate enough to find a new agent who helped her to secure a part in a comedy.
‘I did this play last year, a new comedy, it was really fast and very very funny, it was a lot of words to learn and it worked, we sold out for two weeks and I made everyone laugh. It’s a great feeling when people actually laugh.’
Despite her tumultuous time, Lesley is blessed to have a solid family life with her husband of nearly 40 years and two grown up sons. These days, she is also a grandmother.
And having enjoyed a long and lucrative career as one of the enfants terribles of the nineties showbiz scene, Lesley insists that she doesn’t see herself as the ‘trout pout’ victim.
‘I don’t want people to pity me, I am not a victim, I was stupid, I did this thing and it backfired and I have to hold my hands up and say, ‘Yeah that was a stupid thing to do.’
