Jennifer Saunders: ‘I have a kind of horror of red carpets events – all that having to dress up!’
Jennifer Saunders is best known for writing and co-starring in French and Saunders, originally broadcast from 1987 to 1993, and Absolutely Fabulous in the 1990s. She currently lives in London with her husband, Ade Edmondson, to whom she has been married for 36 years, but they raised their three daughters, now in their 30s, in their home in Devon.
The best...
... night out I’ve been on
I have a kind of horror of what most people would consider a great night out – a club, a huge party, a red-carpet or a Bafta event. Clubs are just horrible, aren’t they? All that noise, all that having to dress up and wear heels and you can’t take a coat because there’s nowhere to put it. The red carpets, again, it’s the dressing up and it’s endless – you’ve got to start getting ready at three o’clock and someone’s got to do your hair and then your shoes hurt because they’re new and then you sit somewhere and it’s miles to the loo. It’s an absolute f------ nightmare. I can’t think of anything worse.
I think the best nights out I’ve had have been on family holidays on the Amalfi Coast in Italy with all the kids and grandkids. We go to a local restaurant, sit and drink local wine and eat fish, then wander back across the pebbly peach. That for me is heaven. Absolute heaven.
...friend in the business
I guess it’s Dawn French. We were at college together and then we shared a flat together. You have to trust someone quite a lot to do comedy in front of them for the first time, and I think that helped build friendship. You also have to be non-competitive – we weren’t competitive. Our thing was just to kill time, make other people laugh, make ourselves laugh and get away with it.
...career decision I ever made
Well, there were two. The first one was to ring up Dawn and say, “Shall we audition for the Comic Strip?” We’d left college and Dawn was doing teacher training. I wasn’t doing anything. I was sitting on a step somewhere, trying to do a crossword, and living with some friends from college in a beautifully run-down place. I’d seen the advert in The Stage looking for female acts and I thought, I wonder if Dawn would fancy that? And thank God she did.
And the other best decision was to write Ab Fab.
...moment on Absolutely Fabulous
The one I enjoyed the most, the one I still laugh at now, is when they’re very, very old and Patsy gets a bee stuck up her nose and her pants fall down. That, to me, is pure genius comedy from Joanna Lumley. It makes me howl, it is just so beautifully done.
The worst...
...thing in my house
Tech. Printers that don’t work. Sky boxes that switch off. And you just go, “Oh, God! Why can’t everything just work?” The printer’s flashing a light at you and you go, “I don’t know what any of these buttons mean.” I just want it to print – print in black and white. I don’t care about the colours. Oh god, I hate it.
...habit
Procrastination – putting things off, pressing snooze endlessly on the alarm, leaving mail unopened. It’s almost like your body is daring itself not to do anything. This is why I like having a writing partner – it makes you get on and do it. On my own, I am my own worst enemy.
...childhood memory
I went to a lot of schools – about nine, I suppose [Saunders’s father served in the Royal Air Force]. There was that awful sick feeling when you go into a new school and often it wasn’t the first day of term. I’m quite a good “fitter-inner” but I was quite shy and I don’t think I knew how to be social. I don’t know when I learnt – in my 30s, probably. Even now you still learn a lot. If you’re sitting next to someone, you should just ask them questions. Once I realised that was the way to go – to approach everything with curiosity rather than dread – life became a lot easier.
...recent trend
Can I just say… what is happening with eyebrows? Perfectly lovely-looking girls want to paint these massive black eyebrows on and I just don’t understand. It doesn’t seem, to me, to be attractive. I find them extraordinary. I can’t stop looking at them.
...the absolute worst…
Cookies. “Will you accept these cookies?” I spend my life now going, “no, I won’t accept them” and then six bloody windows later I’m given something where I find there’s nowhere to click to say I don’t want cookies, so I just go, “Oh, accept cookies then!” Also you buy something online and then you get 12 emails saying, “How is it? How was your delivery?” and you go, “f--- off!” It’s just junk. Constant junk.
Interview by Katie Russell
Jennifer Saunders stars in Noël Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, from Sept 16. www.atgtickets.com
