Denise Van Outen and Johnny Vaughan have been busy planting the seed of a new TV show. Sadly, we may never see it.
It’s been almost 25 years since they both quit The Big Breakfast. Denise left first in 1999 but returned for Johnny’s final three months in 2001.
It’s well documented that their friendship has endured more turbulence than most. They didn’t talk for seven years over the pay row, which sparked Denise’s exit from The Big Breakfast.
They briefly revived their double act for a Capital Breakfast Radio Show in 2008, but Denise quit midway through her contract, claiming Johnny ‘wouldn’t let me speak’.
Jump to 2023, however, and TV’s missed anarchic duo made somewhat of a comeback, guest hosting Steph’s Packed Lunch together and becoming a Celebrity Gogglebox duo.
It feels like the stars have finally aligned for Denise and Johnny to reignite the chemistry that made them so special – and there’s an open goal for another chat show that thrives on unpredictability and chaos.
Speaking to Metro, Denise revealed they’ve been trying to ‘create something similar to The Big Breakfast’ but are struggling to get a channel to bite.
’It’s been hard to get off the ground because people are too nervous about taking any sort of risk,’ she says.
‘We’ve created a couple of things, and then it’s either two things: they haven’t got the funding to do it, or people are too nervous about it – but not particularly nervous about us.
‘That’s why we see the same shows rolled out every year, because that works that feels safe.’
Don’t count them out yet, though. ‘We’ll do it again next year,’ she promises. ‘We’ll do something at some point, for sure.’
For now, though, Denise has her new album and tour ahead of her. A Bit of Me is a collection of her favourite songs, an exhibition about the various stages of her life, as well as the titular track, an original new ballad she wrote during a low point.
‘I was single, not sure what my life was going to be like and how it’s all going to pan out,’ she says. ‘I was in a sad place, but I’m much happier now.’
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. After years of turning down West End shows and theatre runs that aren’t compatible with being a single mum, the pieces of her life have fit together to create the stage for Denise to essentially perform the soundtrack to her life, and reflect on her unique career as a rebel of breakfast television to Broadway darling in An Evening With… Denise Van Outen’ hitting the road in 2026.
Her daughter Betsy is now 15, and motherhood is suddenly a different ball game – one with more freedom and less ‘mum guilt’. I spotted Denise dancing with total abandonment as the sun rose over the hills of Worthy Farm at Glastonbury in June – totally immaculate while I and everyone I was with looked like beasts of the night.
‘I’ve just probably had the best summer of my life,’ she says. ‘I’ve realised because my daughter’s 15, being a mum to a 15-year-old who is actually cool with you going away and not clinging onto your leg when you’re leaving the house, going, “I don’t want you to go to work.” It’s very different, it’s like having a second wind.’
Among the standout moments on the record is a cover of George Michael’s A Different Corner – the song he called ’the most honest’ he ever did.
Denise was raised on Wham! and eventually became friends with her childhood hero. No wonder then she was petrified of actually putting her spin on a song which meant so much to him and his fans.
‘I think when he was alive, I probably wouldn’t have done this. Then I’d have been too nervous,’ she says.
A Different Corner sits alongside other eternal classics like Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind and Brother Beyond’s The Harder I Try. It rounds off with a duet of That’s What Friends Are For with Blue’s Duncan James, originally released as a tribute to their friend Sarah Harding, who died of cancer in 2022.
But perhaps this album, the tour and her West End success would never have happened without the TV show that saw her blacklisted from prime time television.
After The Big Breakfast, Denise stayed on brand as one of the pivotal ‘ladettes’ of the 90s, the now questionable term which was coined for female celebrities who drank pints and partied till dawn as if that was an accomplishment reserved for men. She presented late-night game show Something For The Weekend, which had many outrageous segments, including Private Dicks, which saw women identify their boyfriend’s penis from an identity parade of appendages.
She recalls: ‘I had a couple of primetime network shows that I was about to get signed up for, and they dropped me because it was like, “You’re only as good as your last job.” The job I had was this Friday night post-pub, cheeky, nudge-nudge, wink-wink eek show that went a little bit too far.
‘I think it was just so shocking at that time that a woman was hosting something like that. If you were a man, or a gay man, you could do it because it was really weird to see what young woman doing something like that.
‘I was just loving being sort of outspoken and having a lot of fun, but that did go against me, ultimately.’
Denise is among the star-studded alumni of the prestigious Sylvia Young school, which made stars out of its pupils, including Amy Winehouse, Dua Lipa, Emma Bunton, and Daniel Kaluuya, to name a few. Surely her dream was to perform on the West End – but instead, turning to theatre felt like a last resort when the TV offers dried up.
‘I just was left with little option,’ she says. ‘I needed to go back to the drawing board to salvage my career. I was thinking, “What can I do? Okay, I know I can sing and dance and act, as I’ve grown up doing it. I’ve done shows. I want to audition for a show.” And I asked my agent, get me an audition for Chicago. And he was like, “Do you think you can do it?”
Denise proved she could do it and then some. She won such huge acclaim for her stint as Roxie Hart on London’s West End, she was soon picked up by Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote her a one-woman show, and more than 20 years later, she’s back on stage, where – through several strange turns of events – she was always meant to be.
A Bit Of Me is available to download now. Tickets for An Evening with Denise Van Outen are available here.
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