DENISE VAN OUTEN examines a lock of her ash-blonde hair and announces that at last she's the blonde she has always wanted to be. "This is my happiest blonde colour," says the newlywed, with a smile. If happiness were a colour, then it would be golden, just like the 35-year-old Essex girl, actress and TV and radio presenter. And it's not just her highlights that are looking good.
For Van Outen, who has starred on Broadway and in the West End, played a nurse in ITV1 drama Where the Heart Is, and who is bringing a new, one-woman show to the Edinburgh Fringe called Blondes, is clearly on cloud nine.
On 25 April, in a private ceremony on a beach in the Seychelles witnessed by 17 family members and close friends, she wed 28-year-old singer and actor Lee Mead.
"Since I was a small girl I'd always dreamt of a white wedding – and I got one. I wore a lovely white dress, designed by Jenny Packham. Of course, we were asked to do Hello! All the mags actually asked when we announced our engagement," she says. "I think people were surprised that we didn't 'sell' the wedding because I'm known for wearing my heart on my sleeve and for being open about my personal life, but there are some aspects of my life I do want to keep very private.
"I just don't think it sends a very nice message out, that you sold pictures of your wedding day. We'll do the big party for all our friends in September."
She and Mead met when she was a judge on the BBC talent show Any Dream Will Do, Andrew Lloyd Webber's search for a new Joseph to don the loincloth and star in the West End musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Fellow Essex native Mead won the dreamcoat – and Van Outen, her dreamboat, although they only began dating after the show. She had only recently been "dumped" by the actor James Lance and was seeing David Walliams off and on.
If Mead were here with us in London and not in New York, he would doubtless say that he also won his dreamgirl.
What often goes unmentioned about Van Outen – "a man-eating sybarite" or "the naughty former Big Breakfast presenter" or "the ladette who swept to TV stardom," according to which newspaper you read – is how pretty she is. She also comes across as a thoughtful and immensely likeable woman.
Sitting back on a huge sofa in a private room in the London media watering-hole where we meet, Van Outen talks about how all her own dreams have finally come true after a great deal of heartbreak in her private life, much of which has been fodder for the red-tops.
"Finally, finally!" she exclaims. "I've got my sparkle back!" despite the fact that she and Mead, who is seven years younger than her – a fact that doesn't bother either of them – are currently living apart.
Already?
"No, no," she replies, with a giggle. "Lee's studying film acting in New York until September."
Van Outen's using up her air miles commuting back and forth to Manhattan to see him every week or so. "It's tiring but it's worth it; it's a commitment to the strength of our love and our relationship. When this opportunity came up for Lee to do this film course we'd been married for about six weeks. He said, 'We've just got married, I can't go away now'. I just told him, 'Darling, go for it'. He's so talented I really wanted him to grab this."
So, here she is loving every moment of her long- distance marriage. "I am, yes, I'm totally loved-up," she confesses, adding that Mead is a real gentleman, a solid guy who, like her, comes from a working-class background, with parents who are still together and who love each other deeply. "We're both close to our families – I've an older brother and sister and I adore my mum and dad, who are now grandparents to three children and loving it. Having a separate life in this business is really important to both of us. When I go home to my parents I'm not Denise, the glamorous actress or whatever, I'm just their daughter.
"Of course Lee and I have dreams for the future and motherhood is definitely one of them. I'm a traditionalist – despite the naughty image people have of me – and I've always wanted a husband and 2.4 children. I'm maternal, which surprises many people, because I actually do enjoy cooking and ironing for those I love."
Yesterday, she kissed Mead goodbye as he went off to his studies and had a coffee in a cafe before catching her flight home to London, and thought about how life can change so quickly and so dramatically – and "so romantically" – almost in a heartbeat.
The last time she lived in New York, in 2001, she was starring on Broadway, winning rave reviews for her brilliant performance as a raunchy Roxie Hart in Chicago. And she was alone and miserable. "I was living on a diet of heartbreak," she admits. "But yesterday I sat there looking at New York through love eyes. It was amazing. The last time I lived there I was so sad."
She had recently broken off her engagement to Jay Kay, the Jamiroquai singer, who wrote You Give Me Something for her; then in the wake of the break-up, the hit song Little L. It was the wrong time, they were too young and they didn't see enough of each other, she says. She shed weight, her skin lost its glow and she suffered from insomnia and reckons that for a whole year she didn't get one proper night's sleep. "I was running on adrenaline. I didn't eat properly; I was just so unhappy.
"After I broke up with Jay, I threw myself into work because I honestly think I was attention-seeking since I hadn't been getting the attention I wanted at home," she says.
Yet she was the toast of Broadway.
"Yes, I was. But I was going home to my apartment and crying into my pillow, thinking, I'm starring on Broadway and it should be the happiest time of my life – and I'm so alone and so lonely." She went on to do Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tell Me On a Sunday, the one-woman musical about a girl who has her heart broken and goes to New York to get away from everything. She has various dates, then moves to LA – which is exactly what Van Outen did.
A string of broken romances trailed behind her – "I've done the 'he's-just-not-that-into-you' scenario," she says, joking that Lloyd Webber told her she really was turning into the character he'd created.
THERE'S anotheR PERSONA THAT HAS loomed large in Denise Van Outen's life – that of the louche, loud-mouthed, lager-drinking ladette who found fame on The Big Breakfast in the mid-1990s. She became a Loaded cover star, an FHM honey and, with Jay Kay, was one half of a celebrity couple.
"I was really successful from a young age, so I did my growing up in public and on TV. We all make mistakes, but you do it publicly in this business," she says. Trained at Sylvia Young's theatre school, the alma mater of Emma Bunton, Billie Piper and the Appleton sisters, Van Outen paid for her studies herself, with TV commercials and modelling jobs. She'd get the 6am coach from Essex into London every day.
At 12, Van Outen was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Cosette in Les Miserables in the West End. By the time she was 18 she was the nation's favourite Essex girl, sharing a sofa and saucy banter with Johnny Vaughan.
Dare her to do something and she'd do it back then. "My gay friends were always egging me on," she grins. She flashed her bra at Prince Charles at a Royal Variety Show, she dyed her hair pink and she dressed like a Barbie doll. She even nicked an ashtray from Buckingham Palace.
Then she presented the bawdy, late-night show, Something For The Weekend, in which the weekly highlight was "the willy parade", where women identified their boyfriends by their genitals, which were dressed as pop stars. "It was Elton Schlong! I don't regret it although I got so much bad press for it and my parents hated it. At the time it was shocking for a young woman to be associated with that sort of show. Now no one would bat an eyelid. But it was all part of my rebellion and I don't regret it."
Soon she was, in the words of one newspaper columnist, "the nation's top telly vulgarian".
So, is it ladette to lady?
"Oh, I hate that word ladette! I was always in the list of ladettes of the Nineties, but I never swigged beer, watched football and hung out with the guys. I used to call myself a disco dolly bird. There was always more to me than a ladette. I've always liked to really dress up, very girlie – I mean, look at me!
"Never, never did I fall out of nightclubs at 4am dead drunk. I had to get up at four to do The Big Breakfast anyway. I couldn't have done that hungover. But, yeah, I partied; I had a good time, although I was asleep in bed most nights at 7pm. There's not one pap picture of me staggering out of a club."
WE TALK about the "blonde thing" and Blondes, which has been written for her by her friend – "another Essex bird" – the actress and writer Jackie Clune, who has been the toast of many a Fringe herself. It's a celebration of what it means to be blonde, so she'll tell a few stories about her own life, but she'll also reveal why gentlemen prefer blondes and address the vexed question of whether blondes have more fun ("Yes!" she exclaims emphatically. "All the blondes I know have had a really good time"). Oh, and she'll be singing, too.
"I love blondes who sing: Blondie of course! Bonnie Tyler, Kylie, Britney, who I'm completely fascinated by, having lived in LA for a couple of years when I presented the TV talent show, Grease: You're The One That I Want. I used to see Britney out all the time. So I've some stories to tell about her. I really want to ask why so many blondes like her have meltdowns and why so many iconic blondes' lives ended tragically.
"Why do blondes in the public eye have to be victims? I'm sure Kylie still gets all that 'poor Kylie' stuff for having had breast cancer. People have certainly wanted me to be the victim over the years, mainly because I've made no secret of the fact that I've been unhappy in my love life.
"There's a lot of pressure on you, being a blonde. You're expected to be the fun-girl, the good-time girl, the life and soul of the party. Those are always the days when I'm having a brunette moment – I can be a moody cow."
She pauses to drink a glass of water and exclaims: "But just look at all the fabulous blondes in history! They're the women who have shaped me, the women who've influenced me, made me who and what I am now. So we'll range from Mae West to Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. From Dusty Springfield to Olivia Newton-John and Dolly Parton . . ." Which brings us to the notion of the dumb blonde. "Yeah," sighs Van Outen. "All those tired old cliches about blonde moments and the fact that I'm always described as 'laugh-a-minute, bubbly blonde Denise'."
Yet Van Outen, who is clearly a smart cookie, echoes the divine Dolly: "Just because I'm blonde don't think I'm dumb, 'cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool." Unlike Dolly, who pronounced herself never offended by dumb blonde jokes, because "I know I'm not dumb; I'm also not blonde," and the marvellous Mae West, Van Outen did not make herself platinum. Her hair was so fair as a child it was almost white.
Since she's become something of a gay icon, despite the years as a lads mag lovely, Van Outen reckons the gays and the girls will love Blondes, which she and Clune hope will transfer to the West End post-Edinburgh.
"I love gay men. I'm such a fag hag," Van Outen says. "After all, my best friends are Julian Clary, Graham Norton and Paul O'Grady, who lives just 12 miles from the house that Lee and I have bought in Kent. We're going to have so much fun." Then she pauses, her face serious and says: "I really love being married. It changes your relationship in such a positive way. Lee and I were strong, but we're stronger than ever now. We believe in marriage – it's an awfully big adventure for both of us." sm
n Blondes, Udderbelly's Pasture, Bristo Square, previewing August 6-7; then August 8-31. Tickets cost £13.50 from
www.edfringe.com