Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Bolly good show
Sweetie, darling... MARION MCMULLEN celebrates the 30th anniversary of comedy favourite Absolutely Fabulous
BEST friends and partners in debauchery Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone led the way in making Absolutely Fabulous a success.
The sitcom launched on BBC2 on November 12, 1992, with Jennifer Saunders as self-absorbed PR Edina ‘Eddie’ and Dame Joanna Lumley as champagne-loving Patsy.
The inspired casting was completed by Julia Sawalha playing Eddie’s straight-laced daughter Saffy, sitcom royalty Dame June Whitfield as Gran and Jane Horrocks as empty-headed PR assistant Bubble.
The show quickly became known to one and all as Ab Fab and the misbehaving women soon made themselves at home on BBC 1.
Jennifer both wrote and starred in the sitcom which began life as a French and Saunders sketch about a needy, modern mother and her more sensible daughter.
Dawn French originally played the role of Saffy. Joanna had not previously been known for comedy, but she had appeared on The Full Wax being interviewed by Ruby Wax. She played a boozy, washed-up, has-been celeb who became the inspiration for Patsy. “The last mosquito that bit me had to check into the Berry Ford clinic,” Patsy once declared.
Jennifer said of her co-star: “She is a seriously funny person and the joy is she is not remotely precious. I love working with her. Just being Eddie and Patsy is, to me, like a kind of mindfulness. If I could just do Eddie and Patsy for 10 minutes a day, I’d probably be absolutely sorted.”
Her own character’s name of Eddie Monsoon was a play on the surname of her real-life husband Adrian Edmondson. He also used the name Eddie Monsoon himself for a character in TV’s The Comic Strip Presents.