In the quiet corner of Lincolnshire which was been Amanda Mealing’s home for decades, there is plain disbelief over the Casualty star’s conviction in court this week for driving while high on cocaine.
Neighbours had heard about the car accident which left both Mealing and the theatre nurse and local councillor she crashed into injured, but no one had realised their celebrity resident had been involved.
As one put it: ‘We all know Amanda and her family live in the village but had no idea until now that she was involved in that dreadful crash.’
Another said: ‘We had heard that a local councillor had been badly hurt but didn’t know she was the driver that caused it. It’s quite a shock and rather alarming because she was driving in the morning while high on drugs.’
And it’s not just locals who are astonished that the low-key actress should have ended up in this humiliating predicament.
One long-standing friend says: ‘It is shocking news. She is the last person you would have thought this of. I have known her for over ten years and she has always been particularly proud of her sobriety. She’s also been doing so well as a director recently. This is a real shame.’
Colleagues on Holby City and Casualty remember she would routinely show up for a 7am on set call having already done a ‘cleansing’ session of hot yoga at dawn.
And they recall that it was actually rather a joke that clean-living Amanda would bring her own cafetiere on set.
Amanda played consultant Connie Beauchamp from 2004 to 2021 in Holby City and Casualty
Yet one associate this week described the 57-year-old mother of two to me as ‘lovely but troubled’ and as her lawyer outlined at her court case, Mealing has being going through a particularly difficult period in an already turbulent life.
Indeed, while the character she played – consultant Connie Beauchamp from 2004 to 2021 – suffered trials including a helicopter crash and drug dependency, it seems that Mealing’s off-screen tribulations have been just as dramatic, and tragic.
Solicitor Lloyd Edwards explained to the court this week that Mealing had been battling through a divorce from her film producer husband Richard Sainsbury as well as grieving over the death of her father, her dog, and her best friend – believed to be comedian Paul O’Grady – at the time of the accident in January last year. She also has blood cancer and has been unable to work.
On the night before the incident she went to a friend’s house where she took cocaine.
After the accident the following morning, she was found to have 18mcg of cocaine in her blood, the legal limit being 10mcg. She also had in excess of 240mcg of benzoylecgonine (the chemical that cocaine is broken down into by the body) – almost five times over the legal limit of 50mcg.
Mr Edwards is clear that this is something which Mealing bitterly regrets.
He told the court emphatically: ‘She doesn’t take drugs and certainly will never take drugs again.’
He said: ‘My client pleaded guilty to drug driving at the very first opportunity. It’s something which she’s deeply ashamed of. She’s got no previous convictions.
‘She’s not somebody who takes drugs at all. She tells me her brother died of the drugs overdose when he was 18. And she says herself, “I should have known better”, but unfortunately it came at a terrible moment in her life.
‘She tells me she was undergoing divorce proceedings from her husband, which was extremely upsetting, and within a short space of time, her father died, she had to put her dog down, and her best friend had died. It was deeply, deeply upsetting.
‘She had gone round to her friend’s and she accepts that at that meeting, she took some cocaine. She doesn’t know why she did that.
‘It’s a matter of huge regret to her even now. And the next day, she drove home, so because she’s not experienced with drugs, she’d no idea that those drugs were still in her system. She certainly wouldn’t have driven if she’d known that.’
Shortly after 10am, her black Mini was on the wrong side of the carriageway on the A1175 at Hop Pole, near Stamford in Lincolnshire when it collided with a Skoda driven by nurse and local councillor Mark Le Sage who was on his way to work.
An ambulance was called for Mr Le Sage, who suffered cuts and bruises, but this was cancelled as it attended another emergency. He took himself to A&E for treatment.
An air ambulance was called for Mealing and paramedics worked for over two hours to try and stabilise her at the scene. She suffered a head injury, a broken wrist and a broken clavicle.
Mr Edwards said: ‘She suffered a significant head injury and a broken clavicle but most seriously of all, her blood sugar level was alarmingly low.
‘I’ve got the ambulance report from the paramedics. They attended within five minutes and what they say is that the BM [level of blood sugar] was taken as low, she was very drowsy throughout and proving only slightly responsive to medication.
Mr Le Sage said he was no longer able to continue in his job as a theatre nurse after the crash due to problems with his sight and hearing and pain in his legs, neck, shoulder, back and hip
‘In fact, they were so alarmed that the air ambulance was called. So, all the notes indicate that they thought she was suffering from a hypoglycaemic attack and there were references to that being the probable cause of the accident.
‘She was interviewed by the police three days later. She has very strong feelings about the way the officer conducted that. She doesn’t feel she should have been interviewed then. She had a big bang to the head and she was, she thinks, suffering from concussion. She was very remorseful about what happened in the accident. She still remains that, and so she was anxious to help.
‘She quite clearly didn’t know what happened. So she’s speculating that she must have done something to cause the accident… she suspects that she was unconscious.’
Mealing admitted driving with cocaine in her system and driving without due care and attention and was banned from driving for 22 months and ordered to pay a fine of £485.
Mr Le Sage said he had been ‘severely affected’ by the crash, and was no longer able to continue in his job as a theatre nurse due to problems with his sight and hearing and pain in his legs, neck, shoulder, back and hip. He said that he had ‘flashbacks and nightmares’ about the crash.
Mr Edwards said the actress didn’t accept he was injured ‘to that level’ and adds that she has collected a dossier of Facebook posts from Mr Le Sage to support her point.
For now, she isn’t speaking about the incident. It looks possible that the case will come to court again – this time perhaps in the form of a civil case for damages from Mr Le Sage.
Her estranged husband Richard Sainsbury was at their farmhouse this week and said: ‘If she wants to talk about it, that is up to her,’ but had nothing to add.
Neighbours in their quiet village say that they haven’t seen her for ‘many months’.
One local woman said: ‘The family are often seen out and about but no one has seen Amanda for many months. We believe she has split up from her husband but not sure if she has moved out of the house which they have been busy renovating.’
Amanda’s solicitor explained to the court this week that she had been going through a divorce from her film producer husband Richard Sainsbury at the time of the crash
Her many supporters in the London media world hope that she makes some sort of a comeback, when she is well enough and once she has put this difficult episode behind her.
She’s very close to TV producer and Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies and considers chef Andi Oliver as her ‘sister’.
Since leaving Casualty in 2021 she has been moving from acting into directing, including an episode of the BBC TV series Waterloo Road.
One recent great source of sorrow was the death of Paul O’Grady from sudden cardiac arrhythmia in March 2023 – he’s understood to be the ‘best friend’ her solicitor referred to in court. O’Grady was the godfather to both of her sons.
She called him ‘the gatekeeper of my secrets’, adding: ‘There was nothing Paul didn’t know – the deepest, darkest secrets about me, and he wouldn’t tell anyone else. I knew I wouldn’t get any kind of judgment from him. I still go to call him. Something funny or infuriating will happen, and I reach for my phone.’
After he died she adopted his dog Rufus Elvis O’Grady, who was part of the ‘doggy guard of honour’ at his funeral. This dog died in early 2024 after years of ill-health, shortly before her car accident. Heartbroken, Mealing wrote on Instagram: ‘RIP Rufus. Thank you for loving me.’
Mealing overcame the upheaval of discovering, aged 30, that she had been adopted as a baby, after a chance remark by a tipsy cousin at a family wedding.
She said: ‘I’d always felt I didn’t fit in, I looked different to the rest of my family. Suddenly it all made sense. I had no serious cause for complaint.
The actress’s black Mini was on the wrong side of the carriageway on the A1175 at Hop Pole, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, when it collided with a Skoda
‘My parents had given me this charmed life full of opportunities. I’ve certainly never felt unloved.’
Research led her to a birth sister, Claire, who had also been adopted, and eventually into contact with her birth mother, Joyce, who had moved to the US after having both girls. She telephoned her birth mother and discovered that she had been longing for that call.
She said: ‘Mum had avidly followed my career from the other side of the Atlantic – she had a big scrapbook full of newspaper cuttings on all the programmes I’d been in.
‘Legally she hadn’t been allowed to make contact – she said this was the call she’d waited for all her life.’ A model for Biba, Joyce had both girls with her poet and activist boyfriend. There were also three half-siblings from his subsequent relationships.
Four years later, Mealing was diagnosed with breast cancer, just 24 hours after giving birth to her second son, Otis. Her older son, Milo, was three at the time.
She had been aware of a small lump in her breast when pregnant, but ignored it. She said: ‘I definitely thought it could have been mastitis. But a large part of it was that ridiculous thing where I thought, “If I don’t go to the GP, they can’t tell me it’s breast cancer and therefore I can pretend it’s no”. But if I’d done something about it at the time, I may not have had to endure what I did. It’s ridiculous. I played with my life. I gambled.
‘It must have been three months. And it went from being a pea-sized lump to a mass. It was huge.
‘I remember seeing the mass when I had my ultrasound and I knew. It was like the air just went out of me. I got very angry at the cancer. I thought, “How dare you do this to me when my newborn baby is just hours old? I won’t let it happen”.’
She had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Five years after she had completed her treatment she was diagnosed with PTSD. Her sister in law and a close friend, both diagnosed with breast cancer at around the same time, did not survive. Mealing has needed therapy to cope with survivor’s guilt which led to panic attacks and depression.
The experience of cancer has given her a titanium self-reliance. In an interview a few months before the accident she remarked: ‘Life happens. It’s a journey and only you go through it. You can have all the love and support around you but you’re the only person that travels with it.’
Additional reporting: Tracey Kandohla
