Jennifer Saunders's daughter: I'm no Saffy

She may be the offspring of famous British comedians but Beattie Edmondson, daughter of Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmondson, was too scared to perform on the stage until her second year of university. It was only then that the 24-year-old finally mustered the courage to audition for a play with the university’s Drama Society.

“I sat on the bus and it got to my stop and I just didn’t get off. I was too f***ing terrified. The idea of auditioning in front of your peers is horrible. I was a nervous wreck,” she recalls.

However, the play’s loss was sketch comedy’s gain, as the fear of auditioning encouraged Edmondson to start writing her own material and form Lady Garden, a group of five female comedians who perform sketches that are both gloriously silly and darkly comical.

They made their debut at the Edinburgh Festival and are currently filming a BBC series and a Radio 4 sketch show. Eddie Izzard came to one of their shows, was impressed, and put them in touch with their current agent.

With her short, bleached blonde hair Edmondson looks a lot like Saunders, but she is not trading on her mother’s success. In fact, when she first arrived at university, she kept her parentage a secret. “Then they came to visit me, which might have been a giveaway. But once my friends knew, it wasn’t a big deal,” she adds with a smile.

The other Lady Garden girls make an appearance in the upcoming Olympics special episode of Absolutely Fabulous, but Saunders didn’t write a part for her daughter: “She was up late finishing writing the episode and didn’t have time to do me. I don’t mind. She was really sorry. At least she can’t be accused of nepotism. Positive discrimination, yeah! I also got a Burberry mac that was left over after filming, so that was all right.”

Life growing up in Devon was far from all Bolly and Pucci — and Edmondson laughs at being compared to Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous. She didn’t even know her mother was famous until she went to primary school. When pupils asked about her mum, she went home that afternoon and enquired: “Are you Jennifer Saunders?”

Saunders, 54, was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2009 and has since undergone surgery and months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy — but Edmondson says she is now “completely fine”.

She admits growing up with comedian parents has influenced her own career choice, if only by accident. “They must have because I’m doing exactly the same thing, but I never had a dream to become a comedian. I’ve never made a plan of what I want to do,” she says, “I need people to organise me and then life happens. Forming Lady Garden was mainly all my friend Eleanor Thom’s idea. We all got the call from her, like in Charlie’s Angels. She asked if we were free in August to go to the Edinburgh Festival, so I said ‘yeah, cool’. That’s how it works. The others make a plan and I go along with it.”

The other Lady Garden girls say this isn’t strictly true. Edmondson called fellow member Rose Johnson and asked her if they could write sketches together. “I chose her because she seemed organised,” says Edmondson, who, it must be said, appears very laid back.