Bonkers: My Life in Laughs

by Saunders, Jennifer

  I would write the scripts in fear of having to show them eventually to Ruby. She was so brilliant, and I was afraid that they would be substandard. I didn’t give Ruby long with any of the scripts, but it was always worthwhile. She would take them, read them, and then we would meet. I would see that the scripts were covered in her scribble. She would go through them, scene by scene, giving alternative lines and possibilities, and at some points just saying, ‘I don’t understand the next two pages but I guess you know what you’re doing.’ She gave me all her thoughts and I could take ’em or leave ’em. Ruby is never precious and I owe her much, not least for some brilliant lines:

  ‘Skirts so high, the world is her gynaecologist!’

  ‘These women shop for lunch! Labels are their only sustenance! Their skeleton legs in Manolos have worn trenches down the pavement of Sloane Street. There are just enough muscles left in their sinewy arms to lift up a credit card!’

  Because of lines like these, Ab Fab took off.

  The other person, apart from Ruby, whom I credit with teaching me how to write a script is Ben Elton. Ruby taught me how to build a gag, how to keep it going until the line was an extreme, to never be satisfied with ‘quite funny’. Ben taught me that there is never a situation where a joke cannot be had: if you’re in a restaurant, don’t just write the dialogue, write all the jokes about restaurants as well. Never miss an opportunity. If you’re in a shop, write all the shop jokes you can think of. Jokes, jokes, jokes. They can be subtle, but never miss the chance to shove ’em in.

  Unwittingly, Ab Fab hit the zeitgeist head on, which was lucky really, on several counts. We were lucky that the fashion world seemed to be flattered to be insulted. We were lucky that audiences seemed to have as much fun watching it as we had had making it. And we were lucky that each and every one of the Js came with their own following: mine from French and Saunders, Julia’s from Press Gang, June’s from Terry and June, Jane’s from the theatre.

  Then, of course, there was Joanna. Every man of a certain age – any age, in fact – is in love with Joanna. And in the show she managed to look stylish and elegant, but simultaneously insane and debauched, without ever appearing less than beautiful.

  To this day, I have not been out for lunch or dinner with Joanna without several old boys in red trousers and/or panama hats sidling up to our table. Joanna is a magnet for a certain type of gentleman who is sure that they have met before.

  ‘Joanna.’ (He doffs his hat.)

  ‘Hello.’ (She smiles kindly.)

  ‘We’ve met before.’

  ‘Of course. How are you?’

  ‘Do you see very much of Ginny any more?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, how lovely to see you.’

  ‘And you. What a treat.’

  ‘Will we see you in October?’

  ‘I do hope so.’

  ‘Do give my love to Figgy.’

  ‘I will. How lovely.’

  He moves away. This has made his day.

  I say: ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Absolutely no idea …’

  ‘Who’s Ginny?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And Figgy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Joanna has this ability to make everyone she ever meets feel special. And it’s not put on. She is genuinely a good and kind person.

  So, Ab Fab was a success, and the great thing about success is it means you can do more of what you’re doing, make more of what you’ve been making. For that alone I couldn’t have been happier. We had all become a family. There is no better feeling than going into a rehearsal room knowing that people you love will be there. Apart from the fact that there sometimes wasn’t a script (small detail), it was incredible fun.

  June Whitfield was a lesson in professionalism. She is meticulous, razor sharp and unpretentious. She knows how to do her job so well, but will never tell you that. She is always questioning – never knowing best and yet always knowing best. She has a firm grip on what she does, but with the lightest of touches. I was always aware that I should make sure that June had enough lines, only to find in rehearsals that she would slowly trim them back.

  ‘Does Mother need to say this?’

  ‘Whatever you like, June.’

  A pencil line would be drawn neatly through the line. She always knew that she could do more with less, and was never wrong. (That was not something I ever learned, as I yabbered my way through series after series. There were occasions when someone should really have shut me up.)

  Jane Horrocks would brilliantly do anything she was told. I think that’s the sign of a great actress. She never questioned the lines, just how I wanted her to do them. If it was still unclear, she would ask me to do them, and then do them the same way. For me this was perfect, because I don’t really know how to schmooze actors into giving a performance. With less than a week to rehearse and record a whole show, we would have to accept that there wasn’t time for motivation. We just had to say the line quickly and move around the furniture efficiently.

  Some actors do find that hard. They can be thrown completely when they arrive in the studio sets, having before only had approximations in a rehearsal room. We had an actress in once who had to enter down the stairs and move around the kitchen table. On every rehearsal in the studio she would stop.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Is the table going to be there?’

  ‘Yes, it is there.’

  ‘It’s just … well, in rehearsals it wasn’t quite in that position.’

  ‘It is going to be there.’

  ‘So I’m going to have to walk all the way round it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when shall I say my line?’

  ‘When were you saying it before?’

  ‘When I got to the other side of the table.’

  ‘So say it then.’

  ‘You still want me to walk round the table? You can cope with that, can you?’

  ‘Yes. Just come in, walk round the table and say your line.’

  It took five tries. She would come down the stairs and stop as if the table were blocking her path. I could hear Bob swearing through the headphones of the stage manager.

  ‘Just tell her to fucking walk round the fucking table!’

  ‘Bob’s asking if you would mind terribly just walking round the table.’

  Five times. She eventually managed it, but with a small headshake of disbelief.

  I like actors but prefer to have comediennes. Comic actors and comediennes know if they have been good. I once had an actor come up to me after a show looking really down.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Was I really awful? I mean, I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, you were actually brilliant.’

  He was shocked. ‘But you didn’t say anything!’

  ‘That’s because you were brilliant. Didn’t you hear the laughs? If you were shit, I would have told you.’

  Julia was always quiet in rehearsal. While I would be flapping away, enjoying Edina, thinking up new lines and messing about (working), she would wait. And wait. She would quietly read a book, sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room, waiting until we had finished, and then join the scene with devastating efficiency and effect. She could judge a scene perfectly and always had the right tone and energy. She knew precisely how to counteract the Eddie/Patsy cruelty.

  There was one scene we shot in which Patsy was being particularly vicious to Saffy. She should have been aborted, she said. When she was little, they had tied her to the central reservation of a motorway to try and get rid of her. Suddenly, as we were speaking, I was struck by the sense that this might not be acceptable, that it might actually be too cruel. But Julia was adamant. She pointed out that it would only be unacceptable if Saffy was affected by it, and she wasn’t. It didn’t hurt Saff. It was just words. And the more they tried to hurt her, the stronger she became. This observation gave us free rein, and we never
held back the viciousness again.

  Every series we were allowed one trip away.

  Our first trip in the first series was to the south of France, where Patsy and Eddie had a disastrous holiday in a gîte. Patsy’s misery was compounded by the discovery that what she thought was cocaine was in fact talcum powder and that, while she imagined she was having a good time playing ping-pong only because she had sniffed ‘the coke’, that was actually a lie. She must have actually enjoyed the ping-pong. Which was a horrific idea to her.

  By the time the second series came along, we had Morocco in our sights. It was the perfect place for old sixties birds to hang out. They would have spent some time there in their youth, taking drugs and sleeping with anyone who crossed their paths and still had a pulse. Joanna said she remembered parties where people would get so out of it they would end up just humping the furniture. It was for this trip that we came up with the idea that Patsy might once have been a man. She might have had a dodgy sex change op in Morocco that lasted only a couple of months before it fell off. Patsy could be any sex and any age.

  In the next series, we went to America.

  The Comedy Channel had bought Absolutely Fabulous. The deal had almost floundered when they proposed subtitles, just in case the Americans didn’t understand what we were saying. This never happened, thank God. We signed the contract and, from that moment on, the Comedy Channel put the show out pretty much on a loop. At first, it was only the East and West Coasters who ‘got it’, but then we started getting fan letters from Ohio and Omaha. We were the crazy broads!

  When it came to our attention that Eddie and Patsy had had their own float at the Sydney Mardi Gras, we realized that the show was becoming bigger than us. The characters became more famous than we were. And with every series I wrote, I felt less and less in charge of the characters’ destinies. It was less an exercise in which I decided what happened, more a case of pleasing those who loved the characters and satisfying their expectations. It was very weird.

  Once the show became a hit in America, we naturally decided to go and film there. ‘Door Handle’ was the first episode in Series Three, in which Patsy and Eddie fly to America on Concorde in pursuit of the perfect door handle. During filming, we had to have bodyguards. Bodyguards! We didn’t actually need them, but they were lovely.

  For ‘The End’, the last episode in Series Three, we found ourselves back there again. At this point, Patsy has gone to work for a magazine in New York, and a lonely Eddie has gone to find herself on a retreat. Soon they realize that life without each other is pointless, and Eddie hires a helicopter to track her best mate down.

  This was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I am not great when it comes to flying and was put off ever going in a helicopter by Robbie Coltrane, who once informed me that there are seventy-two moving parts within the rotor blade system alone. That’s seventy-two moving things that could go wrong.

  So, as I got into the small chopper that was taking me to the building close to Central Park that Patsy was standing on the roof of, I was not filled with confidence. In fact, I was shitting it. It was a small, lightweight thing – a two-man copter – and at my feet there were clear panels, so I could clearly see the ground below.

  WHY?

  Added to the drama was the fact that the News of the World had sent out a journalist and a photographer to follow us. They wanted to follow us in a helicopter. Thankfully this was deemed dangerous and Jon Plowman reached a deal with them: if he gave them some exclusive photos, they wouldn’t follow us. We wanted to avoid a mid-air chase at all costs.

  We flew over Manhattan to the building where the film crew and Joanna were stationed on the roof. We were so close to the building that I could see the panicked faces of office workers inside. In order to get the shot, we had to hover close to the building – but just below the top – until the pilot heard ‘Action!’ over his radio, at which point he would rise up level with the rooftop, where I had to wave and mouth lines to Joanna.

  It took so many takes.

  Each time we dipped down again, out of shot, we would see people in the offices close to the windows, screaming and gesturing to us to ‘Move back!’

  ‘We are making a TV show!’ I would mouth back to them, as if that would actually make any difference. Surely they wouldn’t mind dying if it was on TV?

  It was dangerous, and the thermals can be strong close to buildings. They had every reason to be screaming at the windows.

  With just a whoof of hot air from below, we could all have died at any moment. Luckily, there was no such whoof. Even Trump Tower refrained from trumping, and we were safe. It almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed to happen today. Oh no. Health and Safety, the ripples from 9/11 and just common sense would rule it out entirely.

  Back then, near death was one of the perks of the job. And it has to be said that, when it came to the perks of Ab Fabbin, the slot machine kept paying out.

  During those years, Joanna and I came to an agreement: if we were asked to do anything – anything at all – which involved a free flight and a guaranteed laugh, we would automatically say yes. Parties, promotional trips, flights on Concorde, chat shows, you name it. We’d meet at the airport, and from that moment on the fun would commence. An all-expenses-paid trip to the US was the best of perks. I mean, a business-class flight and five days in New York or LA? Only an idiot would turn these down.

  ‘Not paid by the licence payers, I hope!’ I hear you cry.

  No, dear reader. No. Paid for by Americans!

  We were never happier than when on a lovely flight to America. When you have a partner in crime, even work is fun. In Joanna I had found another double-act partner and, like Dawn, she was the best I could have hoped for. They might not look the slightest bit like each other, but, in reality, Dawn and Joanna are not at all dissimilar. They are both extremely nice to people and are endlessly making up for my grumpy sullenness.

  When Dawn and I started out, appearing on chat shows was far from my forte. I had no idea what to do at all. They were basically my idea of hell. Didn’t know what to wear, how to sit, how to be. Looked fat. Always wore a dress that was made of wool and far too hot. Couldn’t think of a single interesting word to say. Wanted the ground to swallow me up. Stared at interviewer with beady, seemingly disapproving eyes. Inwardly panicked. Wanted to be liked. Ended up being immensely weird-looking and leaving comedy partner to compensate.

  Knowing that I wouldn’t – or actually physically couldn’t – Dawn set an early precedent of doing all the talking. And she has been talking ever since. Actually, as I’ve got a bit older and a bit more confident, I’ve got a bit better at talking and being a real functioning person and things. I can even smile occasionally, so the pressure has been taken off her a little bit. We now do the radio occasionally, and I have to talk. And do you know what? I find it easier and easier. Sometimes I can honestly say I’m on a roll.

  But during promotional trips to America, Joanna – like Dawn – often had to protect me from myself. She became a master in the art of taking over in interviews and not letting me say the one thing I shouldn’t say.

  ‘Jennifer Saunders, what do you feel about the success of Ab Fab in America?’

  ‘Um. I really don’t care.’

  Here, Joanna would intercept, hand on my knee.

  ‘She doesn’t really mean that. What she actually means is …’

  All the time looking me hard in the eyes and silently saying, Speak no more, you idiot fool.

  Like Dawn, Joanna is also acutely aware of people’s feelings. When we filmed ‘Door Handle’, the Four Seasons hotel gave us a green room – a base, as it were – in a two-bedroomed penthouse apartment. As the filming day progressed, it became clear that this room was up for grabs for the night, and Joanna and I were offered it.

  It was spectacular and, much as we had affection for the Algonquin, where the Beeb had put us up, it was nothing, I mean nothing, compared to this. We took the offer. What ha
ppened next is an example of how similar Dawn and Joanna actually are. We had to check out of the Algonquin. We had to move hotel. Slightly embarrassing, but not really. Not really, if you don’t engage personally with the transaction.

  Not possible for Joanna, who, like Dawn, will compensate with presents and money, if all else fails. She tipped the guy on the desk so much money that he could have bought the hotel the next day. And probably did.

  Dawn is incapable of leaving a room without saying goodbye to every single person in it. On the first rehearsal day of every series, she would make me sit down with her and compile a list of everybody we would have to buy presents for on the last day. It became a joke between us that, by the last series, Dawn would not be happy unless she had bought everyone a car.

  DAWN: Jen, what shall we get the cameraman?

  ME: A car?

  DAWN: Yes. The producer?

  ME: A house?

  DAWN: Yes. The make-up department?

  ME: Holiday to the Seychelles?

  DAWN: Yes. And everybody else in the whole of the BBC?

  ME: A nice bottle of Champagne?

  DAWN: Marvellous.

  We are incredibly similar in many ways, but different in even more.

  Dawn is happy when her diary is full. She carries a big diary in her handbag and it is well used. She refers to it all the time. She remembers birthdays and anniversaries and notes down all her appointments for the year ahead.

  I am happy when my diary is empty. I don’t carry a diary, but put things into my laptop calendar if they are important and hope they transfer via the iCloud. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, usually depending on how much money I have paid to Apple to update my nearly-new-but-obviously-out-of-date software.

  I am bad at remembering dates of birthdays, even those of my own children. But then I don’t expect them to remember mine.

  I begin to feel slightly claustrophobic if I have more than two or three things noted down per week. I like it clear. I don’t ever really want to know what I’m doing next year. Or even next month.

  Unless, of course, it’s a ceremony honouring me at the New York Senate. That I quite like.