French & Saunders

Thwack! Halfway through our interview in the bar at the Bristol Hippodrome Theatre, ten shows into their first live tour for ten years, Jennifer Saunders leans back on the sofa and cracks her head on a particularly sharp mantelpiece. What happens next says much about the chemistry between Saunders and her longtime partner Dawn French. 'Please don't hurt your head,' soothes French with genuine concern. 'Notice how people aren't running around to help you,' she adds, before offering to 'punch you in the face to even it out' and then looking at the back of Jennifer's head and announcing, 'Oh no, all your comedy has dropped out.'

The duo prove to be a fascinating double act both on and off camera. Ask them about Mirrorball, Jennifer Saunders's long-awaited follow-up to Absolutely Fabulous which is due to hit our screens next March, and Dawn French instantly leaps in with 'You see, where Jen is being very clever is she's doing a pilot first, so she can change the whole show if she has to.' Mention the extraordinary success of Dawn French's The Vicar Of Dibley, which scored a Morecambe & Wise-sized audience of 14 million last Christmas (second only to EastEnders) and it is Jennifer Saunders who points out, 'The incredible thing is that it was a repeat.'

Since meeting at the Central School Of Drama in the late Seventies, where both were studying to become teachers, French and Saunders have worked through hit shows including The Comic Strip, the BBC's French & Saunders series, solo projects like Ab Fab and The Vic Of Dib, via the occasional less successful project such as Let Them Eat Cake, to become the most famous and best-loved female comedians of their generation. But not having taken their show on the road in over a decade means expectations are sky high as the duo arrive in London this week for a two-week stint at the Hammersmith Apollo. 'We've tried to bring a bit of theatre and bit of telly on stage, so we've got some state-of-the-art projection and we interact with screens,' says French. Without wanting to spoil the show for you, look out for big laughs during the PMTV and Big Brother sketches. But this begs the question: why has it taken ten years to get round to touring again?

'It's odd, but ten years goes really quickly,' explains Saunders. 'It's the first time we've had the chance to do it. To do a tour you have to put a lot of time aside, which is difficult.' Particularly now that both are mums, Jennifer having married Comic Strip/Bottom star Ade Edmondson, with whom she has three girls (Ella, Beatrice and Freya), while Dawn married fellow comic Lenny Henry and adopted a daughter, Billie. Why, I wonder, are they intent on populating the world solely with women? 'I know it is very female, our set-up. It's great. I love it,' chuckles French. While for Saunders the equation is more simple: 'I just didn't want any of my ornaments destroyed.'

Born in 1958 in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, Saunders is slightly the taller, with a snappy, angular haircut and model good looks. She is slightly, but only slightly, the quieter of the two. Born a year earlier in Holyhead, Wales, and dressed in a simple black tracksuit, Dawn French's mission to find a funny twist on virtually everything is impossible to resist. Such as when she complains that actresses like Pamela Anderson use Dawn as a body double in films and then morph their own head on. 'Barb Wire. That was me. And that film where I killed Michael Douglas with an ice pick where you saw my fanny. That was me... But with some other actress's head on.' Sharon Stone perhaps? 'Oh her, yes, she's always using my body.'

So it comes as a shock to find that when they first bumped into each other at college 20-odd years ago the most successful partnership in British comedy didn't quite get off on the right foot. 'First impressions were not good,' admits Saunders. 'We are very different, quite opposite people,' agrees French. 'I think that's probably the key to why we work together so well and are so well suited to be chums.' Of course, the fact that the duo constantly slag each other off on their shows has led many to wonder if there is any rivalry between the two women. But for French the answer is much simpler that that. 'We do it on stage and I can honestly say we don't really have it in our lives.' Saunders adds, 'And I'm sure if there was rivalry we wouldn't do it on stage because it would be too bloody embarrassing.'

So what are the differences between them? Well, take food. Saunders: 'I like salty, fishy things, and she likes sweet, chocolatey things.' While in terms of music, Saunders goes for country where as Dawn French namechecks the likes of Morcheeba and Badly Drawn Boy, adding, 'I'm sure our heroes Little and Large were different in their day.'

After college, French went into teaching, while Saunders remained unemployed ('I've never been gainfully employed in my life, I'm proud to say!') until one day she saw an advert in the back of The Stage. 'We'd done a few characters in cabaret in college so I phoned up Dawn and said here's something that we can do. It was never felt that urgent. Life was very laid back then.' As was the job, which turned out to be performing with a new collective of comedians known as The Comic Strip. The troupe did their stuff alongside the strip shows at the Raymond Revue bar and French and Saunders were paid the princely sum of £5 per show. 'We thought it would give us something to do in the evening. Get me out of the house,' laughs Saunders. 'And meet boys,' adds French. 'That was in the old days when saying "muesli" was about as funny as it got.'

The infamous Five Go Mad In Dorset TV special, which launched The Comic Strip on an unsuspecting telly audience on Channel 4's opening night in the early Eighties, came about a year and a half after French and Saunders started working with them. French remains shocked at the impact the show had. 'But it was a parody of the Famous Five, it wasn't like it was cutting edge. It was just a good laugh. Lots of time on bicycles in shorts, and lashings of ginger beer.' The duo clearly look back on the early days with affection, particularly the support they got from the rest of the all-male team, which of course included Saunders's husband-to-be, along with regulars Rik Mayall and Peter Richardson. 'People always ask us if it has been difficult breaking into comedy because we are women,' says French. 'Actually the boys were incredibly encouraging. They helped us get pay rises. We learned from them how to perform and how to be funny.'

But it was Saunders's first solo project Absolutely Fabulous that suggested the girls might actually be much funnier than the boys. Laying bare the insanity of the fashion, PR and magazine industries, Saunders created in Edina and Patsy two of the most memorable characters in recent TV history. Still, the reaction to the series was so hysterically positive I wondered if the experience had not actually been rather frightening? 'I once went to a big party in New York to launch it on cable,' says Saunders. 'It was just full of drag queens dressed up as Patsy and Edina and I walked in just as me. You feel like a tiny little real mouse going to Disneyland. You cannot be that big.' The long gestation period for Mirrorball suggests Saunders has struggled to pen a follow-up for Ab Fab. Saunders will not reveal much about the project yet but does admit, 'I think I was so conscious of wanting everything not to be Ab Fab that I stripped it of too much stuff. It is the hardest thing to write after you have had a hit show because you can't remember what the hell it was that was ever funny. You start watching your own tapes going why, why are they laughing?'