The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
Liz Jones meets the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS
JUNE WHITFIELD
Fashion is an elitist, ridiculous world, peopled by the humourless. But when PR guru Edina Monsoon and fashion editor Patsy Stone, aka Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, gatecrashed the British Fashion Awards last November, even those with foreheads full of Botox managed to crack a wrinkle. The appearance of Eddie, in a giant feather hat, and Patsy, in sheer red lace (she repeated the only sartorial advice she knows: ‘You can never have enough hats, gloves and shoes’), made me yearn for the long-awaited Absolutely Fabulous movie, finally slated for release this Friday.
Written by Jennifer Saunders, the plot is as follows: the pair are blamed for a major incident at a fashion launch party (they accidentally knock Kate Moss into the Thames), become engulfed in a Twitter avalanche and flee, penniless, to the French Riviera, where they come up with a plan to live the high life for ever more.
I’m a bit worried about the cast relocating to the South of France – look what happened in the second Sex and the City movie, where the girls decamped to Abu Dhabi: disaster. But on the strength of the trailer (at the time of writing, the film wasn’t finished), it is hilarious. ‘I am now officially fatter sideways than I am front-on. How do I look?’ asks Eddie, panda-eyed after an all-nighter. ‘Fabulous,’ says Patsy, clearly blind, as she proceeds to walk into a door. ‘I’ve been trollied on Twitter,’ says Eddie. ‘A woman told me I was a pariah.’ ‘Do you know what a pariah is?’ asks Saffy. ‘Yes, it’s a fish.’
Reprising their roles are Jane Horrocks as hapless PA Bubble, Julia Sawalha as Eddie’s uptight daughter Saffy and, of course, June Whitfield as Mother, the ever-present voice of (relative) sanity. ‘We all have names beginning with J!’ observes June, when we meet in a West London photo studio.
She is in hair and make-up for the YOU shoot, being made over in the style of Iris Apfel, the 90-something New York fashion maven, whose flamboyant style is the polar opposite of June’s. But ever the pro, June takes the makeover in her stride (she has never heard of the street-style star). I suggest that it’s hard to know where Mother ends and June begins… ‘Well, Mother is a kleptomaniac,’ June says, deadpan. While Eddie is often rude to her, June says she always gets her own back: ‘There was a scene in the TV series where Eddie was trying to slim. She says, “Inside of me there is a thin person just screaming to get out!” And I say, “Just the one, dear?”’
What was it like, getting the team back together again? ‘They are all delightful company; Jennifer is such fun to work with. The movie had been in the background for a long time. We were always asking, “When is it going to happen?”’ And filming in the South of France? ‘They let Mother go abroad. I was put up in a very smart hotel in Nice.’ Does June get into a bikini? ‘I don’t want to frighten the public. Mother always remains clothed.’
When I ask whether the reports that the cast were asked to stop drinking on set are true, June assures me that she ‘still got the odd vodka’. How on earth did she keep a straight face? ‘Of course we laughed, but we got it out during rehearsal.’
Numerous celebrities have cameos in the film: Kate Moss is seen quaffing champagne and smoking a fag; Kim Kardashian turns up, as do Harry Styles and Rebel Wilson. Did June get to meet any of them? ‘I haven’t heard of Rebel. I know Kim is a model. I don’t want to name anyone else as they’re supposed to be a surprise.’ What about Vogue cover star Alexa Chung, who is also rumoured to appear? ‘Alexa who?’ she says.
It’s hard to believe that the TV series of Ab Fab very nearly didn’t happen: TV bosses initially thought the premise of two drunk women would not be funny. It first aired in 1992 and ran for five series, with several specials. Three episodes were made to celebrate the show’s 20th birthday the same year as the London Olympics, against which one of the episodes was set. Didn’t June’s agent initially tell her to turn the part down? ‘No, that’s not right,’ she says. ‘I thought the script was so funny, and Jennifer promised that if the pilot became a series, Mother would be in it.’
It is refreshing to see an elderly woman on screen who is having fun, rather than the way they are often portrayed in the media: frail, vulnerable, lonely. At least Mother is still in the bosom of her (dysfunctional) family. ‘She’s determined to be there. You can’t get rid of her. I think most of what happens goes over Mother’s head. We are cartoons, really.’
I tell June that the reason I’ve always loved Ab Fab is that unlike Sex and the City, which persuaded young women that it was normal to want a £1,200 Fendi croissant bag, Jennifer never bought into the world of fashion and PR – she skewered it. The scene that made me howl with mortified recognition was when, in series one, episode one, Eddie storms into her PR company’s office bellowing into her mobile phone: ‘Darling, it’s me, I’m coming into the office now. Don’t panic, I’m here!’ When I was editor of Marie Claire in the late 90s, I did the same thing every morning to my long-suffering PA.
And as for Patsy! She’s a dipsomaniac, but then the fashion world is lubricated by Bolly. I remember seeing one fashion editor en route to the shows collecting miniatures from the in-flight trolley, just as Patsy does in season one, episode three: ‘France’. ‘Mademoiselle!’ she corrects the air hostess crossly when addressed as madam, ‘Mademoiselle!’ (That same editor used to trawl the party before each fashion show as people took their seats, downing the dregs of all the champagne flutes.)
June, who has always been very astute with money and would ‘never dream’ of spending more than £50 on a pair of shoes, agrees that Ab Fab does a brilliant job of satirising ridiculous designer spending: the Lacroix, the champagne fridge never seem to make Eddie happy. ‘I think television inspires envy. People see a designer kitchen and they want it. Everyone wants everything right away; pay later.’
Did June talk to Jennifer about her recovery from breast cancer? ‘I knew about it, of course, but we didn’t talk about it. We are friends, yes, but I am closest to Jo [Lumley]. She is such a dear person, so helpful and kind. She came