But that's something he's absolutely fine with.

As Leslie says, Dennis Waterman can't shake off Minder. And John
Thaw couldn't shake off Regan - despite becoming Morse.

But Leslie has never seen Den as a millstone in any way.

"It's better to be known as a character who is firmly embedded in people's minds than have people say to you 'What do you do?'"

The Den mantle is one he's still delighted to carry, however dead the fictional Den might be: "It has opened up a lot of doors. I am now doing theatre which is what I love."

The latest play is the Francis Durbridge thriller Murder With Love at Worthing's Connaught Theatre from September 15-20.

He admits he was pleasantly surprised when he read the script. Too often people look down on thrillers, on writers such as Durbridge and Agatha Christie.

Leslie's response is that these are the writers people want to see.
There is no point being sniffy about commercial theatre when in this case commercial means popular.

In the piece, Leslie is playing the policeman called in to investigate when womaniser Larry Campbell is found murdered, with plenty of suspects around.

It's an interesting part to play, a kind of precursor to Colombo, Leslie says - the kind of policeman who will say 'thank you very much', make to leave and then drop a bizarre question.

"He's one of those policemen where you never quite know what he is up to because he asks the strangest questions."

Over the years, Leslie has done 'masses' of theatre despite being, as he puts it, 'hijacked' by TV, most famously of course by EastEnders, a show he looks back on with huge affection.

"We were very well served. They created a wonderful piece of work and it meant working with some lovely people. It is sad that TV has gone the way it has so that they are now doing four or five episodes a week,
where it is now about style over content.

"I think that's why audiences are not as good as they used to be. They can always dip into it now. When it was only two episodes a week it was something that they had to rush home for."

Den's return to the show a few years back was high-impact stuff, but sadly, with three or four episodes a week, it too soon became too cosy.

As Den says, audiences were soon confronted with Den at the kitchen table surrounded by a new family - which really wasn't what they wanted.
But it was right to bring Den back. Simply to kill him off.

"Louise, the producer, said to me 'The character is a monster, we can't move on."

Even in Den's absence, characters were still talking about him, wondering what Den would do: "There was always that throwback."

So Den had to die...

Even now, though, Leslie gets people telling him he ought to go back because the show isn't what it was: "I tell them that Den is dead!"

But Leslie is more than happy to live on in his shadow, not least because the profile has helped him back into the theatre.

"We are a terrible nation. We are always hopping on planes. But now as I travel around the country on tour, I am seeing some parts of Britain that I have never been to before. The countryside is lovely."