Claire Skinner confirmed her romance with her Outnumbered co-star Hugh Dennis back in 2019 during a chat on ITV's Lorraine, describing their relationship as "a lovely little life surprise". The actress appeared on the morning talk show to promote her new play, A Day, and she touched upon her private life with Hugh.
Claire Dennis has spoken about her romance with Outnumbered co-star Hugh Dennis
"And of course, you two are together, I didn't even know that! That's brilliant, congratulations," Lorraine remarked to Claire at the time. "It's a lovely little life surprise, isn't it!" the star replied. The host then joked: "If you know somebody really well, it cuts down on all of that going out on the first date malarkey," adding: "You know what his favourite colour is, and you know whether they like brown sauce..." "Absolutely, we can just move on," Claire agreed. "It's been lovely."
MORE: Outnumbered: you won't believe how much the cast have changed
Claire and Hugh with their on-screen children
Claire and Hugh starred together in the hit BBC sitcom as couple Sue and Pete Brockman, who are parents to three children, Jake, Ben and Karen, from 2007 until 2014. It's thought that they started dating in 2017 after splitting from their respective partners. Not long before her interview on Lorraine, the 55-year-old spoke about her relationship with Dennis in an interview with The Times, and said that "nobody really noticed" when they first started dating. "People said to us that someone will notice soon but I kept telling them, 'We're both over 50. Why would anyone be interested in that?'" she said. "We've got families we wanted to protect, but everybody's pretty cool and happy with it."
MORE: ITV confirms sitcom Plebs to end with feature-length special
BBC is currently airing old episodes of Outnumbered
Hugh, meanwhile, previously confirmed their romance in a sweet statement to the Mail on Sunday: "I am very, very happy. We are so very happy. It's nice and yes, it's so lovely," he said. Hugh is a father to a son and a daughter from his marriage to Kate Abbot-Anderson, which came to an end in 2015. Claire has two sons with her ex-husband Charles Palmer. The former couple ended their marriage in 2016.
Like this story? Sign up to our newsletter to get other stories like this delivered straight to your inbox.