TALES , YOU LOSE
Star tackles scourge of nasty gossip as blabbering village busybody
SHE has first-hand experience of being the centre of nasty comments or gossip. Comedy legend Dawn French, 62, has been regularly body-shamed in the almost 40 years she’s been a household name. And her marriages to Lenny Henry and Mark Bignell have been picked over.
Recently, some online trolls have had to take a hard look at themselves in the wake of former Love Island host Caroline Flack’s suicide.
And Dawn stars in timely new series The Trouble with Maggie Cole about the damage gossip and unkind behaviour can do. Dawn – who pointed out she’s even had “unauthorised and inaccurate” books written about her – said: “Being misrepresented can feel very closely akin to bullying.
“That’s the feeling of being helpless and needy and all the things you hope you aren’t ordinarily. Certainly a big untruth or a big injustice about you out there publicly is a horrible thing to have to deal with.”
Everyone gossips – from social media to the office and pub. And while she’s been the butt of it, Dawn is the first to admit she’s not squeaky clean.
“I can be just like anyone else and be quick to condemn,” she said. “But I know we all know in our hearts that there is no future to anything unless you can forgive. It’s just some things are harder to forgive than others. Very personal things are very hard to forgive.”
Of course, we now know just how devastating that can be, with the anguish felt by Caroline in the wake of allegations she attacked her boyfriend.
Dawn, who as well as being one half of French and Saunders also starred in The Vicar of Dibley, gets to the heart of how damaging gossip can be with her new six-part series, which began as an idea for her next book.
Dawn plays Maggie, who works in the castle gift shop of the fictional coastal village of Thurlbury. When a radio journalist asks her about life in the village, she spills the beans – revealing secrets about her neighbours and repeats gossip that rips the community apart.
In the past, it would have stayed as a terrible town tiff but in the modern age, social media creates a whirlwind.
Dawn reckoned the story would have done a bit of damage but would have been mended if it had stayed in the village but “because of social media it starts to trend. It becomes more national and it’s more embarrassing for everybody involved.
“She wouldn’t have wished that and she wouldn’t have considered that. None of us know now what we’re getting into until you’re in it”.
Dawn, who lives in Fowey, Cornwall, is on social media. She mainly posts, ironically, about how dreadful the area is and argues about the best way to make a cream tea – jam first, she believes.
She said: “Jennifer (Saunders) encouraged me to go on Twitter. She said I’d have fun on it because there’s lots of good jokes. That’s really why I
do it. I’m also aware that there is some of my work that is hard to let people know about. There’s an in-built system (for TV or film). When you write a novel or do a play or a one-woman show, there is no such thing. “You need to let people know. To be able to tell the very people who have got an interest in you – that’s all it is, an immediate connection to people who are interested in you. I like that. “But I wouldn’t ever want to be just selling on social media. I think if you’re going to be on it, you need to entertain people a bit or connect properly.” Since the 80s, Dawn has been entertaining us, telling stories and even gently having a laugh at others, spoofing the likes of Bros, Bjork and Bananarama. Comedy is all about taking a truth and making it bigger or exaggerating it.
“All of us tell stories,” Dawn said. “You don’t need to tell stories to survive – it’s not food or water or shelter or clothing. And yet we’ve all done it because it intrigues us. It wakes our imagination up and it connects us.
“But the danger with the elaboration of stories is the damage you can cause by doing that. We live in a society where reputation is all. And Maggie carelessly throws people’s reputations down the toilet, because she’s had a few too many gins and because she’s been flattered.”
While Geraldine in Dibley was central to village life and the shoulder to cry on, Maggie is very different – a character who thinks she is important to the village but who isn’t.
Her husband Peter, played by Mark Heap, is the local headmaster and tells Maggie she needs to go round and make it right with everyone. The series follows Maggie as she makes a pilgrimage to the door of each person to apologise. Ex-Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh plays Maggie’s best friend Jill Wheadon.
For those long-term fans of Dawn who can forget her and Jennifer’s great music parodies, including Bananarama and their own trio Lananeeneenoonoo?
But Dawn admitted she can’t remember much of the decade.
She said: “I can’t remember anybody or anything I’ve ever done.
“All I can say is that when writer Mark Brotherhood wanted me to always have A-ha playing on the radio for Maggie that slightly rankled because that was not my taste particularly.
“I remember a lot of 80s music being awful and a lot of it being brilliant. I did go and see the Bananarama girls on tour last year when Siobhan (Fahey) was back and that was wonderful.” Back in the 80s, Dawn and Jennifer were two of very few successful female comedians. Nowadays they are everywhere, from writer and stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) and Ruth Jones (Gavin & Stacey) to Scots funny folk Doon Mackichan and Janey Godley.
Dawn said: “We are living in a very rich time for women in comedy. And for women generally in this trade.
“We are spoilt for choice. We, of course, need more. We need to come to a time where usually the men who are in charge of channels don’t say things like, ‘Well, we’ve got a double act that are women. We don’t need any more.’
“You don’t say that about the male double acts. There isn’t a quota for them. We need to stop being token and just be plentiful until we are ruling the world.”
● The Trouble with Maggie Cole starts on Wednesday, STV, at 9pm.