Arabella:
Comedian Arabella Weir reveals her thoughts on the A-list star and how she fought her way in a man’s world
“Johnny Depp is very sweet and charming”
She’s been a famed comedian since catapulting on to the comedy scene in The Fast Show 26 years ago, and has gone on to star in hit shows Posh Nosh and Two Doors Down.
But Arabella Weir, 62, admits it was much harder to break into the industry as a woman back then than it is now, despite her strong character.
“One of the things I’ve always said in life is that no one’s ever used the term ambitious as an insult for a man,” she muses from the kitchen of her north London home.
CHANGING
“You never say that a bloke’s a bit bossy, do you? It’s always used for a woman, and if she’s ambitious, it’s never a compliment, like it is for a man.
“I was Harry Enfield’s, Lenny Henry’s, and Alexei Sayle’s ‘woman’ for their sketch shows. I was always called ‘the woman’ or ‘mum’ in the script, which wouldn’t even bother to give her a name. I didn’t even question it at the time, I’m afraid to say, and
I can’t blame them – they were the ones who had their shows commissioned and I felt lucky to be there. But TV was more of a boys’ world back then and I think that’s only just changing now.”
Although one of only two women, alongside the late Caroline Aherne, in The Fast Show, her phrase, “Does my bum look big in this?” has become one of the most recited from comedy history, and has also led to a book and stand-up show.
The mum of two has a host of celebrity mates, including actor David Tennant, who was a former lodger and is godfather to her son, and with whom she had regular Zoom catch-ups over lockdown.
But she was truly starstruck when she met Johnny Depp – who has recently been embroiled in a public and bitter court battle with ex Amber Heard – when he was a guest star on The Fast Show in 2000.
Despite being a Hollywood hotshot and starring in the likes of Donnie Brasco and Edward Scissorhands, Johnny, now 57, asked for a cameo on his “favourite show” and recently claimed it’s “absolutely one of my proudest achievements”, as he uttered the show’s famous catchphrase, “Ooh, suit you!”
Arabella says, “He was just unbelievably charming, mind-blowingly goodlooking and very at ease with himself. There was no team around him and it wasn’t like you couldn’t talk to him or look at him. There was no movie star nonsense
– it was like, ‘Oh, here’s this guy who’s a big fan of the show and he’s come to do it’ and we were all a bit, ‘Oh my God!’ But he was very sweet and I know nothing about his troubles now.”
Arabella grew up living around the world with her three siblings, as her father was a diplomat – she was born in California and lived in Egypt, Bahrain and Washington. But she still considers herself “culturally Scottish”, after spending a lot of time in her parents’ home country in Dunfermline.
AGGRESSIVE
When her mother and father separated, she was brought up by her mum in London, but they never had a good relationship, with Arabella saying, “There was lots that was great about my mum as a person, but none that was great about her as a mother. To be entirely fair to her, she more or less admitted that herself.”
And the disparaging comments she made have given Arabella a lot of writing material. “She was much more aggressive with me than she was with my siblings,” she reveals. “She’d say things like, ‘You
can’t eat that – you’re fat.’”
Yet Arabella’s gone on to have huge success, as well as become a much more loving mother herself. Her children Isabella, 22, and Archie, 21 – who she had with ex-husband Jeremy Norton – are both at university and she’s grateful neither of them want to follow in her footsteps.
“No – thank God!” she laughs, when asked if they are interested in appearing on television. “My son wants to be a DJ, but what boy doesn’t? And my daughter is about to start training to be a lawyer. She stayed at university for lockdown, thinking that it would only be a few weeks, so that was a bit heartbreaking because I didn’t see her for about four months. And my son slightly regretted saying he’d come home from university as he had weeks of me shouting at him with lockdown craziness!”
Arabella hopes her career lasts a good while yet . She’s certainly not scared to grow old gracefully – and has no desire to go under the knife like many of her peers.
“I exercise a lot, but that’s because I want to stave off heart disease, arthritis and everything else,” she says. “You don’t look at anyone who’s had all the plastic surgery like Goldie Hawn and think she’s 32. You just think she looks weird. You’re also saying to other women that your age isn’t OK, but I’m lucky to be here – my stepmother and best friend died at 63, which is so young.
“I’m not going to waste my time trying to pretend I’m something that I’m not – there are better things to do in life.”
By Rachel Corcoran
● The Fast Show: Just A Load of Blooming Catchphrases is available on Gold catchup
‘If a woman’s ambitious, it’s never a compliment’