The thing that this one has going for it is that I am really quite old. I have also met quite a few celebs, which is always a good sales point. I was told to stuff it with celebs and royalty and a touch of sadness.
If you’ve had cancer, then milk it. You don’t hit the best-seller lists by holding back. Don’t spend too much time talkin’ ’bout your family. Nobody except you is interested in the old grannyparents. If you’ve touched the skin of royals, then make those two seconds last a chapter or two.
OK, I have met the Queen once and Princess Anne. I also met Prince Charles and praised his chutney. Camilla laughed, but he didn’t hang around.
There are thousands of books out there, dear reader. Thousands of books. Mis mems, happy mems, chick lits, chick knits, cookbooks, diet books, cookbooks, cookbooks, food, diet, food, food …
Gwyneth Paltrow, for God’s sake.
‘Recipes that make you look good and feel great.’
I actually bought Gwynnie’s book, thinking it would be funny and a good tome for fun-poking, but ended up loving the pictures, buying chimichurri sauce and stocking the fridge with cilantro. Which is actually just coriander. Who knew?
Special thanks to:
Ade, for marrying me
Ella, Beattie and Freya, for being my children
My mother, Jane, and father, Tom, for giving me a childhood full of freedom and laughter
My brothers Tim and Simon
My brother Peter, whose life was far too short
Dawn French, for years of friendship and fun
Betty, Harriet, Tanya, Christine and Abi, the girls who helped and supported me through my ‘brave time’
Very special mention to Freya, for actually being very brave JoBo, for the stories
Maureen Vincent, for her patience and all the work
Abi Wilson, for all the extraordinary help and sharing so many adventures
Joel Rickett, my editor, for persuading me and holding his nerve
Chloe Fox, for steering me through
Gemma Feeney
Mary Lou North and Cindy Cull, for making Devon possible
Mr Gui and Professor Paul Ellis, whose great care got me through the ‘mis’
Joel, my nurse
Jon Plowman
Bob Spiers
Jo Sargent
Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron
Jack Lumley, June Whitfield, Julia Sawalha and Jane Horrocks
Ruby Wax
Jan Sewell, Christine Cant, Sarah Burns and Rebecca Hale, for all the face paint and dressing up
Peter Richardson, for the break
All the Comic Strippers
All the Jam and Jerusalemers
All the Vivienne Vylers
The two Sallys in New Zealand
Goldie Hawn
Judy Craymer
Jayne Astrop and Kay Perry
Olive
Illustrations
1. Podge.
2. Happy Podge.
3. Who was cutting my hair?
4. Just before I drowned.
5. My mother, brother Tim and me, on the golden sands of Littlehampton beach.
6. Picnic in Cyprus. My brother Peter is in the white carrycot.
7. Tim and me with Daddy, watching Doctor Who.
8. Test driving a very early eco-car. My brother Tim is on the bonnet.
9. All my heroes were cowboys or horses.
10. Two whippets, my great-aunt Mary, my grandmother Mooma and my posture.
11. Smart new mac and gloves. Riding school on a pony called Badger.
12. My mother looking slightly unhappy as the borrowed pony had just stepped on her toe.
13. Christmas morning. I wanted a tommy gun.
14. First year at big school.
15. Northwich Grammar School for Girls. I once volunteered to stand in for the goalie and made the mistake of being quite good at it and never got out. Helen Newman, who I was in Italy with, is back row, third from left.
16. Twelve years old and off to do some snaps with my snazzy Instamatic in my snazzy hat.
17. Mummy in the kitchen in Cheshire.
18. My parents in the swinging sixties.
19. I loved the martini shirt! My twenty-first birthday party in the cellar in Cheshire. Dawn and me, lookin’ a bit pie-eyed.
20. Theatre in Education. Peter (one of the only two boys on the course at the college), JoBo, me and Dawn. We performed to some poor schoolchildren. The opening number was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.
21. Dressed up to go out and stare at people on the Tube.
22. Very early Comic Strip club days. Yes, those were our stage outfits.
23. 1980s live show. A sketch that was based on my old headmistress Miss Dines.
24. The sublime Raw Sex: Rowland Rivron and Simon Brint, aka Duane and Ken Bishop.
25. Rik Mayall, Dawn and Alexei Sayle in a charming dressing room in Glasgow on the first Comic Strip tour.
26. Rik, Nigel Planer and Ade having a break during the filming of A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques.
27. Ade and me in Australia with the Comic Strip. We’re not actually going out at this point.
28. Cheer up! In the Caribbean on holiday with Ade while our wedding is being organized.
29. 11 May 1985. Wedded.
30. The reception. My father actin’ the fool with a make-up brush, with Dawn over-actin’ the fool behind.
31. Rik, my god-daughter Cordelia, me, Ade and Robbie Coltrane on the ground.
32. My agent Maureen Vincent at our wedding.
33. At the wedding. Robbie Coltrane and Jools Holland. What a lovely couple they made.
34. Honeymoon. Photo taken by camera on timer, not by chambermaid.
35. Ade and me with Ella when she was just one year old.
36. Dawn and me as Anne and George in Five Go Mad in Dorset.
37. Peter Richardson, the man behind the Comic Strip.
38. Girls on Top: Dawn, Joan Greenwood, Ruby Wax, Tracey Ullman and me. I’ve got my Mr Bean face on.
39. Now that’s what I call lighting!
40. The Menopazzi Sisters. Please note tassels on back of leotards.
41. This photo needs no caption.
42. Live tour in 2000. Dressing room at Hammersmith Odeon, doing phone interviews.
43. On tour. Make-up removal on coach.
44. Madonna!
45. ‘Braveheart’. Never happier than when in a chest wig and beard.
46. ‘Star Wars’. Me with my girls Ella, Beattie and Freya as very cheap supporting artists. Note beard but no chest wig. What a howler!
47. Ab Fab, France. Joanna Lumley and me on a break from filming.
48. Ah, the sixties! Joanna, Zandra Rhodes, meself, Lulu and Britt Eckland.
49. In New York. Hideously overdressed to receive LGBT award.
50. With Graham Norton at the International Emmys. I’m sportin’ a huge flower given to me by Anita Pallenberg.
51. Edina with God (Marianne Faithfull) and the Devil (Anita Pallenberg). Both are actually goddesses.
52. In Varanasi with Ruby Wax.
53. Trying to amuse Goldie Hawn in Delhi.
54. With the divine Catherine Deneuve. Abberlofabberlo.
55. During L’Entente Cordiale. Serious face.
56. At Shrek screening in Cannes with the ridiculously tall Rupert Everett.
57. En route to baldness.
58. Bald.
59. Ella’s wedding. Dan, her husband, standing to my left.
60. With Ella, Beattie, Freya, Whisky and Beryl.
61. Ella and Beattie in the flat in the Fulham Road, 1988.
62. Olive hard at work writin’ a musical.
63. Edina and Patsy catch 2012 Olympic fever and muster up a semi-jog along the King’s Road.
64. Mid eighties fashion crisis. Hoping the bag contains new clothes.
THE BEGINNING
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VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2013
Copyright © Jennifer Saunders, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Illustrations by Tom Jennings. www.tomjennings.me
Quotation from ‘A Case of you’ from the album Blue by Joni Mitchell, reproduced by kind permission of Joni Mitchell and Alfred Publishing Co.
Jacket photography © Trevor Leighton
All rights reserved
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-0-241-96727-0
* Since leaving university, Tim has spent his life in fascinating places, building underground systems and overflow tunnels for dams. He has worked on projects in Sri Lanka, Baghdad and Jakarta. Without fail, a revolution or a war has broken out within weeks of his leaving these countries. Tim is currently tearing his hair out redesigning the luggage system at Gatwick airport, so if I were you, I wouldn’t be tempted to buy a home in the Gatwick area any time soon.
* For extra detail on most aspects of my life and character, please refer to Dear Fatty, a wonderful, best-selling book written by Dawn French. You may be wondering why her book is called Dear Fatty, and that is because it is what she calls me. When we had a writing office in the BBC, on the door we wrote ‘Fatty and Grumpy’, which I believe we have been called on occasion. Anyone coming in would always nervously laugh and say, ‘I think I can guess which is which.’ Dawn would look at them aghast. Point at me. ‘Well, she’s Fatty, obviously.’
* If you recognize those lines about a cruise, it’s because Dawn and I used them in a sketch once and I have tried to work them into nearly everything I’ve ever done. I never tire of them.
* People now seem to be engaged for decades and plan their weddings for years, at extortionate cost not just financially, but to their mental health. My advice is to keep it simple; it’s generally better just to make sure that it means something and that everybody has a good party. There you go. That’s what I think, and you can put it in yer pipe and smoke it. You don’t need monogrammed napkins or chairs with bows on or swans floating in a fake lake (now I’m talking to the weeping monster brides on reality shows). It isn’t just actually all about YOU. It’s everybody’s day and that’s the point. Feel free to puff away.
* Let me quickly regale you here, dear reader, with my Dolly Parton story.
I was taken by Roseanne to Morton’s in Los Angeles – a large restaurant beloved by the rich and the celebrated. Dolly Parton was there with her agent. I was jet-lagged and was being plied with wine by Roseanne, who was convinced that I should drink as much as Edina. I did. Was a little wobbly by the time we went over to Dolly’s table. Dolly’s agent left, so it was just the three of us.
I was impressed with Dolly and therefore fairly mute. At one point I went to the loo and sat there for quite a long time trying to think of any Dolly Parton song that I could sing to her. Luckily nothing came into my head, and I returned to the table.
By now we were the last left at the tables. Roseanne and Dolly had started discussing tattoos. Roseanne showed hers to Dolly: fairly basic shapes in black ink. Dolly said she had tattoos. First shock. Then she showed them to us. Second shock.
She opened her jacket. And there they were – not just her tits but her glorious tattoos. They were angels and flowers, shaded in pink and blue pastels.
I was gobsmacked. Her words, ‘This will go no further, right?’, were fully adhered to. Until I got back to the hotel. I had to tell someone, so I just about told everyone. I didn’t want to wake up the next morning and doubt my own story. I had seen Dolly Parton’s tits.
* I have had to cut down a bit on Twitter because I found myself spending more time in a day trying to think up funnies for Twitter than for actual scripts. It’s like having an audience that’s always there, always waiting. There’s always something more fun to do than write scripts.
† For the very young, a fax was like a printer, but the paper was on a roll and just kept coming and coming. Or, as Bubble would say, ‘Lots and lots of very important paper coming out of the answering machine.’
* I also can’t understand how they get the insurance. As an actor you pay over the odds for insurance. I once asked a broker why that was, and he said it was in case we were transporting famous people around in our cars. Like Laurence Olivier, for instance. I thought if I was transporting Laurence Olivier around in my car, I would probably be arrested, as he has been dead for some time.
* It’s probably not done to thank people before the end of the book, but I must insist.
Thank you, Joel, my nurse; Mr Gui and Professor Paul Ellis.
Thank you, Betty, Tanya, Christine and Abi, for your support throughout and asking all the right questions.
Thank you, Ade and the girls, for keeping it normal and helping with injections. Particularly Freya, who was living at home at the time and was the best friend and the bravest person of all.
Bonkers: My Life in Laughs Page 25
