Leslie Michael Grantham (30 April 1947 – 15 June 2018) was an English actor, best known for his role as "Dirty" Den Watts in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. He was a convicted murderer, having served 10 years for the killing of a West German taxi driver, and had significant press coverage resulting from an online sex scandal in 2004. Early and personal life Grantham was born in Camberwell, London, the son of Adelaide (née Flinders) and Walter William Grantham (1915–1998). He enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers regiment of the British Army in 1965, at the age of 18. Grantham married Australian Jane Laurie in 1981. The couple had three sons and divorced in 2013. His son Daniel Laurie is also an actor, and plays Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife. Murder conviction Having joined the Army (The Royal Fusiliers), Grantham was soon posted to West Germany, where he quickly found himself in debt to army colleagues. He resorted to criminal activities in his attempt to clear the debt. On 3 December 1966, Grantham attempted to rob a taxi driver, Felix Reese, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, by threatening him at gunpoint and demanding money. In a struggle between the two men, Reese died after being shot in the head. Grantham was arrested soon after, and charged with murder. In his statement to the police following his arrest, Grantham said that he did not know the gun was loaded and it had gone off during the struggle, which would have resulted in a conviction for manslaughter had a jury believed this version of events. However, at his trial in April 1967, he was subsequently convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although he had committed the murder in West Germany, he served the entirety of his sentence in British prisons. This was because soldiers and officers convicted of any criminal offence that warrants a sentence of over two years are automatically transferred to His Majesty's Prison Service, since they are also automatically dishonourably discharged. Grantham was released in 1977, having served 10 years. While he was in Leyhill Prison in Gloucestershire, he performed in several plays for inmates and members of the public, and edited the prison newspaper. He was encouraged to get more involved in acting professionally by the convicted disgraced Labour Party politician T. Dan Smith, who was also an inmate at Leyhill in the mid-1970s. He also