Ab Fab? No sweetie darling, it very nearly destroyed me
The real-life fashion PR who inspired Ab Fab winces her way through the new film and says the truth was even crazier
Last Friday, I joined the cinema throngs to watch Jennifer saunders play fashion PR guru Edina Monsoon. the absolutely Fabulous film is undeniably fun, but I couldn’t help wincing as Edina accidentally stumbled onto the catwalk of a top London fashion show, wearing an excruciatingly tight smock and trousers, a gaudy designer necklace and a huge hat shaped like a bird’s nest. Minutes later, she and Patsy stumbled over to their seats — and selfishly shoved all the models and celebrities off the front row.
It’s a strange feeling watching someone who’s meant to be you on-screen. Even stranger when the person is based on the ‘young you’ that you barely recognise any more.
I was mesmerised as I sat among my local somerset audience and observed what could have been the ‘older me’ had I stayed running one of London’s biggest PR firms.
there they were, Patsy and Edina, now in their 60s, permanently drunk and chain-smoking
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough MAE WEST
their way around the South of France. It’s no secret that my once largerthan-life behaviour inspired the Ab Fab character Edina.
Jennifer Saunders was a friend and client in the Eighties. She and her comedy partner Dawn French (whose ex-husband, Lenny Henry, I also did PR for) would come to my parties and hang out at my house.
We even joined forces on holiday one year: Jennifer, her comedian husband Adrian ‘Ade’ Edmondson and daughters ended up at the same Seychelles hotel.
In her recent autobiography, Jennifer acknowledges how she drew on elements of my character for Edina. ‘Lynne was into everything that was new: clothes, music, clubs,’ she writes. ‘She was a whirlwind of Zeitgeist.’
It’s true. I really was at the epicentre of London life then. And it was absolutely fabulous. My agency Lynne Franks PR, which I started aged 21 from my kitchen table, organised the catwalk shows for the first-ever London Fashion Week in 1984 as well as representing many of the country’s top designers (Katharine Hamnett, Jasper Conran) and the buzziest clothes shops including Edina’s favourite store, Harvey Nicks.
The new film has cameos galore, including Jerry Hall, Alexa Chung, Jean Paul Gaultier and of course Kate Moss, but I’m not sure anything can match the excess and fun of the original party years.
The Eighties were a boom time for London fashion. Supermodels Linda, Naomi and Christy walked the catwalk. I made sure my clients’ shows were full of spectacle and theatre.
When I helped organise 1985’s Fashion Aid for Africa, with Bob Geldof and rock promoter Harvey Goldsmith, I appeared onstage in a Katharine Hamnett slogan T-shirt, alongside trapeze artists, Japanese dancers, yellow-robed Buddhist monks and a Margaret Thatcher lookalike.
A couple of years ago, I caught a clip of my 35-year-old self having a great time dancing at the event, screened as part of a V&A exhibition, Streetstyle. It really was the ultimate Ab Fab moment.
BEHIND the scenes, it was exhausting and often hysterically funny. My PA was the spitting image of Bubble, Edina’s flaky blonde PA played by Jane Horrocks, though in real life she was incredibly efficient.
I had one of the earliest clunky mobiles, on which I would speak constantly in the back of my chauffeur-driven Jag and continue using as I walked through the office, even if the people I was speaking to were just ahead of me.
And, yes, everyone partied a lot back then. At the end of each year we had a Lynne Franks Christmas do. One of these was a ‘White Party’ based on designer Rifat Ozbek’s white and silver collection.
Ade and Lenny DJ-ed and I got so drunk I ended up in the loos sobbing about nothing in particular. I’ll admit I was sometimes in awe of my celebrity clients, and I occasionally drank a little too much just to calm my nerves.
In 1989, I invited Jennifer and Dawn to give out an award at the first-ever British Fashion Awards. It was a riotous evening. I suspect it went on to inspire the episode of Ab Fab where Edina puts on a catwalk show only to have several celebrities drop out. She’s particularly upset when Princess Anne turns up instead of Princess Diana.
Today, I genuinely can’t recall if I saw Jennifer and Dawn laughing away backstage with Jerry Hall and Marie Helvin at the actual awards, or if it was a scene from the TV show!
Ab Fab started out as a comedy sketch for Dawn and Jennifer’s TV show, French and Saunders.
At the time I was obsessed with acid house music — I wore a primary-coloured tracksuit and cap and had very short orange hair — despite being 40. The girls created a rave character who wouldn’t grow up based on me, which I totally deserved. She was an ex-hippie mother with a sad, straight daughter, who went on to become the infamous Saffy.
I do know that the Saffy relationship wasn’t based on me and my daughter Jessica, but on Dawn’s visit to the studios of fashion label Ghost.
It was there she witnessed flamboyant designer Tanya Sarne’s volatile relationship with her daughter end in a screaming match. Jennifer wasn’t that interested in fashion when I met her, but she got my/Edina’s look spot on.
Soon after meeting me, she made friends with a number of designers and noticed that when they gave out clothes samples, they were usually a tiny size 10. As a result, while Edina is always wearing the latest thing, it never quite fits.
The look is fabulous, overthe-top and directional, but horribly small. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I had my moments of squeezing into inappropriate outfits, especially during London Fashion Week when I wanted to support my designer clients.
Ironically, the fashion world ended up adoring Absolutely Fabulous. I remember being invited to dinner by the editor of Vogue to find a gaggle of fashionistas huddled around a TV set giggling at the new comedy. It was rather strange listening to them laugh at the lead character — supposedly based on me — when I was sitting only yards away.
But Jennifer’s satire has always been done with great fondness. Indeed, designer Christian Lacroix appeared in one episode and allowed Edina to fall at his feet and then walked away with her still attached.
And for the new film, fashion designers Giles Deacon,
Watching the film, I felt like taking Edina to one side and telling her to stop injecting Botox and start drinking green juice
vivienne Westwood and stella Mccartney queued up to create outfits for edina to wear.
One of my biggest regrets is turning down a cameo in an early episode — I was over-sensitive about it all in those days.
now, 24 years after the original series, I can recognise just how many details mirror my own life. It was almost like Jennifer could read my mind.
I suspect my dear friend Ruby Wax, who ended up as the ab Fab script editor, was another mole, although she’s always denied it. But back in the early nineties, Jennifer was clearly plugged into the Lynne Zeitgeist, like the episode when edina joins Menopause anonymous just as I was going through my own menopause.
Or when she wanted to call her eldest granddaughter Lola, which was the name of my eldest grandchild, born around the same time.
My grown-up children still get embarrassed when they watch scenes that could have come from our family history.
the kitchen in our West London house looked like edina’s. and I was always on a diet. My mother was known to make sardonic remarks in the background, much like the June Whitfield character.
However, it was my disapproving son Josh, now a comedian himself, who was more like straight-laced saffy, while my daughter Jessica was more of the wild child hanging out with me.
Perhaps the only thing that I still recognised when I watched the film is edina’s love of the spiritual. In the movie, she tries out the latest cult of mindfulness — or mindlessness as she calls it — and has a blue Buddha.
Jennifer loves parodying my efforts to find a calmer, healthier life — going on new age retreats, trying new therapies like colonic irrigation and, yes, hugging trees.
I was a well-known Buddhist — in the tv series edina chants enthusiastically for parking spaces. Guilty as charged, I fear. (But it worked!)
Repeating my Buddhist chant of ‘nam-Myo-Ho-Renge-Kyo’ with models, hairdressers and designers at the launch of London Fashion Week may not have been conventional work behaviour, but it created an atmosphere of positivity. the tents would almost take off with the powerful vibrations coming out of them.
I’m sure I didn’t invent edina’s catchphrase, ‘I’m chanting as I speak’. But I later heard it was adopted by american Buddhists.
In my defence, I’d argue I was merely ahead of the trend. these days, everyone meditates.
I never had a buddy like Patsy, but many deep friendships were formed that continue to this day. sadly my two closest friends, also PRs, passed away from cancer and I lost many people I knew to aids when the horrible disease swept the fashion business, in the late eighties.
the deaths of so many close friends made me take a fresh look at my life. I knew if I didn’t change, I would destroy myself on both a physical and spiritual level.
WORKInG so hard with a young family did take its toll on my energy and my marriage, and after being persuaded to sell my PR agency by my husband and business partner Paul Howie in 1992, I collapsed with exhaustion.
shortly after ab Fab first aired, Paul and I separated and I moved to california for a few years. not to escape from the series, but to start living healthily.
I also felt it was time to find a new purpose to my life, which wasn’t promoting the latest frock or trend. I adore clothes, but my love affair with the fashion business had come to an end and I was looking for more meaning.
While living in the U.s. for five years, I did start a new PR company with another team of bright young women. But this time round, I took it more gently, jogging on the sands of venice Beach, Los angeles, every morning and eating a healthy diet.
california was where I found the time and space to write the SEED Handbook, to help women start sustainable businesses, which went on to become the basis for workshops and training programmes that have helped thousands of women worldwide.
I’m now 68 and I don’t envy the older edina still slogging away in PR, chasing after Kate Moss as a client, and trying to keep up with snapchat and Instagram. these days, the fashion industry is for the young and thin.
and it clearly doesn’t make edina happy.
I laughed a lot watching the film. Joanna Lumley is brilliant as Patsy, and how wonderful to have something that can really cheer us up in these depressing times.
But, while I have a huge affection for edina and Patsy, I don’t identify with their selfish attitude. If I’m honest, all the hedonism made me slightly uncomfortable.
and the whole thing felt somewhat dated. My boyfriend Heinz, who is German and has never seen absolutely Fabulous the tv series, thought it hilarious, though he wasn’t sure in which decade it was meant to be set.
As THE film credits rolled, I felt like taking the two of them to one side and mentioning that maybe, at their age, they should have a healthier life — try my daily breakfast of green juice and stop injecting Botox and filler into their faces.
edina’s life in the film no longer resonated with my life today.
Instead of dressing head-to-foot in designer labels, I buy most of my clothes from the High street and vintage shops. I rarely wear make-up and I’m much happier with green tea than champagne.
My life is hardly slowing down. Far from it. I still run three businesses, advise many charities and give talks at conferences and festivals across the globe.
But like many of my contemporaries, I am searching for a quieter life rather than rushing round London to shows and product launches. the world of fashion PR in the film looks rather sad to me.
this year I moved with Heinz to my dream eco-house in somerset, where I intend to raise chickens and have my grandchildren come to stay for big family gatherings.
I hadn’t realised it was quite so fashionable, but nearby Bruton is home to many old chums from the fashion and media world. so yes, it seems, I’m still plugged into the Zeitgeist!
In the film, edina worries about her mortality, about being old and fat and selfish, and apologises to her daughter for her bad behaviour, but she and Patsy are soon back leading their crazy life.
In contrast to them, I never worry about my age. I haven’t weighed myself for years, I love my work and have never been happier. I’m so grateful for my new partner and all the wonderful people in my life, including my beautiful family. I’ve found a different, happier ending.