Jennifer Saunders

Profile Jennifer Saunders Jennifer Saunders with Joanna Lumley in a scene from the Absolutely Fabulous film “Turning can’t be that bad” Home is where the heart is for this 6versatile0 comedienne. By Simon Evans T IS the winter of 1980 and replacement. An impatient Alexei Sayle backstage at The Comic Strip, did it for them: “Ladies and gentlemen, London’s trendiest hang-out, French and Saunders”, he told the The Menopause Sisters are boisterous, baying audience. waiting to make their entrance. On this, their first night at the IThe setting is the Boulevard Theatre, Comedy Strip, the previous act had above Soho’s Raymond Revuebar strip been interrupted by a racist heckler. club, an unlikely host for what would Bottles were thrown, a fight broke out turn out to be a comedy revolution. The and the police were called, but Comic Strip had been running at French and Saunders ploughed on. the venue since October, and The “We were complete novices, we’d Menopause Sisters, better known to you come straight from college and had never and me as Dawn come across anything French and “I don’t need to know like this before,” Jennifer Saunders, recalled Saunders had breezed about everything many years later. through the club that’s happening all The profile of both audition largely performers and because of their the time.” audience at The gender. In those Comic Strip in those days female comedians were distinctly days was very male-dominated, but on thin on the ground. that night, and on many more to follow, Getting through the audition was the duo held their own and found an just the start of it, however. The club’s effective way of dealing with the compere Alexei Sayle could be inevitable hecklers. merciless with anyone who was less On one occasion, after being asked to than talented, and the trick was to last display part of her female anatomy by a the full eight minutes on stage member of the audience, Dawn French allocated to each act and not get strode to the front of the stage and, using ‘gonged off’. her best teacherly voice, told the yobs to Waiting to make their entrance at shut up. They didn’t make a sound for the start of the evening the two former the rest of the evening. trainee teachers had already decided Jennifer Saunders had met her future to ditch the Menopause Sisters name partner and lifelong friend Dawn French but had not decided on a at the Central School of Speech and t V T I 20 CHOICE OCTOBER 2016 OCTOBER 2016 CHOICE © 21 Profile Jennifer Saunders t Drama. Dawn was on a drama teaching down the chance to try for Oxford or Devon for a charming portrait of village course, as was Saunders, much to her Cambridge University, preferring to life centred on the fictional Clatterford chagrin – she thought she had been apply for drama school after working for WI. The brilliant cast included Dawn enlisted as a performer. a year in Italy as an au pair. French, Sue Johnston, David Mitchell, The two did not get on at all, Jennifer At drama school, having bonded with Pauline McLynn and Sally Phillips and regarding Dawn as a “cocky little upstart”, Dawn over their similar family the off-screen chemistry between the while Dawn regarded Jennifer as a snob. upbringing and love of performing, she actors was evident on-screen. Gradually the relationship thawed, ended up sharing a flat with her future “It’s about a community where people however, especially when the girls comedy partner. care about each other,” Saunders said. discovered they had more in common than Dawn recalled those early days: “We “That’s what we mostly do. We don’t they thought, in particular that both their lived together in Chalk Farm and mostly deal drugs and stab each other.” O T O H P fathers had served in the RAF. Jennifer had a room at the top of the She put the success of the show down K C O Jennifer’s father , house. We got broken to the fact that it appealed to an older T O S T Y O H Tom, actually into once and the police audience, one often ignored by TV M P A “It’s still easier for a L K A / C reached the rank of said, ‘Well, it is quite executives, which is perhaps why it was C O T N I S Jennifer Saunders gang of boys to get S Y Air Marshall, and bad, but the worst is that inexplicably cancelled by the BBC in S M E A R L with long-time pal P A as the family was room at the top’. And, of / 2010, despite consistently high ratings, A a show on than it is N M O Dawn French Jennifer Saunders U D Z constantly moving course, nobody had prompting Saunders to temporarily part N © O L for a gang of girls” with her husband around, she been in there.” Y company with the Corporation. M Ade Edmondson M attended a number After establishing O “Now, television is so executive-led overcome recent setbacks, the closure of T of boarding schools, including St Paul’s themselves at the Comic Strip, Jennifer and © that you really have to jump through her Spice Girls musical and her independent school in London. Although Dawn were cast in a spin-off TV film, Five self-regarding. A more direct relation was hoops to get anything done,” she told the diagnosis with breast cancer in 2009. Jennifer was born in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, Go Mad In Dorset , which also featured self-contained Comic Strip TV films, and a French and Saunders sketch about a Guardian . “In our day it was, like: ‘Oh, She underwent chemotherapy and her father having being posted at nearby many of the other performers who had cut several more over the next few years. mother who acted like a teenager and her you seem to be doing quite well in the was put on the drug Tamoxifen, which RAF Cranwell, the family eventually settled their teeth at the club, including Rik Jennifer continued to perform with the daughter, who behaved like an adult, and clubs, we’re going to give you a TV show triggered the menopause, but insists she in rural Acton Bridge in Cheshire, when Mayall, Peter Richardson and Jennifer’s team right up until 2012, but it is her this would prove to be the central dynamic and then we’ll give you two seasons to see is now over the cancer, at least as much Tom left the air force to take up a job with future husband Adrian Edmondson. collaboration with Dawn French on the of Absolutely Fabulous , along with Edina’s if you get better.’” as you ever can be. British Aerospace. Screened as part of Channel 4’s first night TV sketch show French and Saunders friendship with the monstrous Patsy, played Jennifer and Ade Edmondson, who have “You’re never quite over it, because Jennifer’s mother, Jane, taught biology of broadcasting, in November 1982, it was a that is perhaps most fondly remembered, with obvious relish by Joanna Lumley. been married for 31 years, were friends for I’m going back on Tamoxifen. I came off at a local private day school so, yes, brilliant spoof of the Enid Blyton Famous at least until a certain blowsy PR diva Although intended as a satire of the six years before they became romantically it after five years for a break. I wanted to Jennifer was a bit posh, although she Five books and an instant hit, being swiftly burst onto our screens in 1992. fashion and PR industries, the series was involved. “We’re not too complicated know what was age and what was disappointed her mother by turning followed immediately by five more French and Saunders ran from 1987 until soon co-opted by the very people it about it,” Jennifer says. “I think often side-effect. If I go back on it, I’ll know 2004 and its mix of naturalistic, was taking aim at. Although the series people over-analyse things. Ade and I argue what’s the drug and what’s me.” observational comedy and parody was an eventually lost its edge, perhaps for this very little. I think it’s to do with the fact that, Now cited as an influence by just Jennifer Saunders instant hit, spinning off into a series of very reason, the success of the recent if you know you’re heading for one, you about every high-profile female comic with the Comic lucrative tours. The pair were eventually feature film suggested there were still avoid it and you compromise.” on the planet, Jennifer is still angered Strip team in Five rewarded with a Bafta fellowship in 2009, plenty of laughs to be wrought from the Having lived in Devon for many years, by the boys’ club mentality that still Go Mad In Dorset the first double act since Morecambe and essential absurdity of Patsy and Edina’s raising their three, now grown-up, exists in the TV world. Wise to receive the honour. rarefied lifestyle. daughters, Ella, Beattie and Freya, the “It’s still easier for a gang of boys to get Successful though it was, there was Jennifer herself is more accepting of couple eventually moved back to a show on than it is for a gang of girls, always creative space within the her age than Edina is in the film.

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