When we first started we could name every single woman in comedy... there were about
We’re just begging for work, so we blow smoke up their a**e DAWN FRENCH JOKES ABOUT TODAY’S STARS
sketch show. Even when they stopped doing the series in 1993, specials aired until 2005. They most famously did skits of movies such as Titanic, and Thelma & Louise.
They also attracted star guests including Lulu and the Spice Girls.
French and Saunders last performed together on the road, touring until 2009. They are thrilled by the number of women now dominating comedy.
They list big names such as Phoebe Waller-bridge, Aisling Bea and Roisin Conaty. “We are coming into the generation where we just want work from them. We’re just begging for work, so we blow smoke up their a**e,” Dawn quips. “We’re quite bitter about them,” Jennifer adds.
The pair say being back in the white room is just how it used to be.
“It’s always the same – being very funny in rehearsal then forgetting it all when we get on to set,” laughs Dawn.
Jennifer nods: “That’s always how it is. Always funnier in our heads. The second we got on set we reverted to being children.”
Sitting there in their pristine bubble they chuckle at favourite funnies from Joyce Grenfell, Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin in the 1970s, to contemporaries such as Jo Brand, and recent acts from Smack the Pony, to Rosie Jones and Sarah Millican.
Ruby Wax was a major influence. “She changed how we wrote and thought about jokes,” says Jennifer.
“Because I then went on to work with Ruby on Ab Fab, I know she never stops re-forming a thought in her head to make it funnier and funnier and funnier. She taught us to get off our a***s and think about gags, think about jokes. She was a really incredible person.”
They reveal they were also a little nervous about making a femalefocused documentary when women are now riding so high.
“Yes, because there’s no reason to make the show just about women,” explains Jennifer. “It could just be about comedy.
“But the reason you still sometimes do have to make it – and we have
suffered from it – is when people talk about the history of comedy, women often just get dumped.
“You don’t hear about them. That’s why we’ve included a lot of women we haven’t even historically heard of.”
Yet the pair have never been outspokenly feminist in their acts.
Their character-driven sketch comedy was not all that different from male-led ones such as Fry and Laurie or, in later years, Mitchell and Webb.
“Yes, and that’s a nice comparison,” agrees Jennifer.
She adds: “Honestly, we’re just desperate to be funny, get laughs, dress up and be silly. There is a place for just trying to be funny – whether you’re a man or a woman.
“You can get a bit po-faced in some comedy nowadays but I think you’ve just got to up the gag rate.”
Victoria Wood is still a lasting influence on that score.
“I was watching Dinnerladies the other day and I was shocked by how many jokes there were per minute, per second even,” Jennifer explains.
No room here for the age-old question, “Can women be funny?”, then?
“Jennifer, are women really funny?,” Dawn asks her partner.
“If you ever ask that question again, I will kick you up the ***** ***** , do you hear me?,” replies Jennifer.
French and Saunders: Funny Women is on Saturday on Gold.