Dench Calls Critic A Naughty Word

judi-dench_1396080cShe’s played Queen Victoria and won an Oscar for doing the first Queen Elizabeth. So it’s not surprised that she (Judi Dench) or, rather, we were not amused when Telegraph critic Charles Spencer insulted Dench in a recent review of “Madame De Sade” in London and she shot back. Spencer described Dame Judi as appearing “sour and cross” in the production – a play he labelled “deeply dodgy” and “fit only for pretentious masochists”; her response was less cheerful. “I’ve always rather admired you but now I realise you’re an absolute shit,” she wrote. The dust-up comes less than a month after Spencer similarly invoked the wrath of another doyenne of the West End, Maureen Lipman. When he suggested that Miss Lipman might lack the required sex appeal to play a femme fatale who seduced a succession of aristocrats and royalty in Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” she sent in a photographic montage which included the horsey-looking Duchess of Cornwall and a severe-looking Wallis Simpson with a note remarking: “What about this lot, Mr Spencer?”

Leave a Comment