Judi Dench posting a rat is not a phrase many fans expected to see today, but Dame Judi Dench has now told the story herself.
The acting legend, 91, opened up on the BBC’s This Natural Life podcast with Martha Kearney. She warned listeners from the start that it was a “terrible story”.
Dench said the memory goes back to her childhood in York. It involved her two older brothers, Jeffery and Peter, and a neighbour who would not return their cricket balls.
The Judi Dench rat story started with a petty cricket feud
According to Dench, the boys often played cricket in the garden. They kept hitting balls into nearby gardens.
One neighbour, Miss Lazenby, refused to hand them back. That small row soon turned into a very strange prank.
Dench said: “The boys used to play cricket in the garden, and they used to be always batting the balls over into the other gardens, and there was a lady called Miss Lazenby, and she never ever would throw the ball back, or give us the balls back.”
Then came the part that stopped listeners in their tracks. Dench said her brothers found a dead rat in the barn and wrapped it up.
She recalled: “And once the boys found a dead rat in the barn, and they parcelled it up, and they said to me: ‘Judi, will you just go round and put this through Miss Lazenby’s door?'”
Dench admitted she did exactly that. She also revealed the parcel came with a pointed message attached.
She said: “So I did go and squeeze it through Miss Lazenby’s door. Miss Lazenby was rather red about it saying, ‘please give us our balls back’. We wrote that message, it was tied on the dead rat.”
Did Judi Dench’s rat prank actually work?
Kearney asked the obvious question after hearing the story. Did the stunt get the cricket balls back?
Dench answered with perfect timing. She simply said: “probably not”.
The Judi Dench rat anecdote has grabbed attention because it clashes so sharply with her public image. Most fans know her as one of Britain’s most respected stars.
She built that reputation across stage and screen. Many viewers know her as M in the James Bond films and as Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice.
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