Bonkers: My Life in Laughs Read online

  Jennifer Saunders

  BONKERS

  My Life in Laughs

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER DIX

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Illustrations

  Follow Penguin

  For my father, who taught me the

  importance of laughter

  Dear Reader

  I have been told that publishers these days like a particular type of memoir. They like a little bit of misery. They like a ‘mis mem’.

  Well, I’m afraid I have had very little ‘mis’ in my life, and nowadays I have even less ‘mem’. So we can knock that one on the head.

  In fact my brain is a bit soupy overall re the past. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is an actual memory and what is simply a memory of a photograph.

  Was I really called ‘Podge’ as a child? Answer: yes.

  Was I really surly, apathetic and introverted at school? Apparently not. That is simply an image I invent for myself.

  The truth is, I was fairly friendly, sometimes hard-working, and quite good at things.

  My mother has kept all my school reports. I imagined these would be a rich source of hilarity and irony, but they turn out to be decidedly average. She has also stashed a good selection of my schoolbooks, clay models, posters from my teenage bedroom wall, a few Fab 208 magazines and a selection of diaries: the Pony Club diary, the Honey diary, a diary with a small elf on the cover that was a present from my friend Karen.

  All these diaries are written in remarkable detail for the first couple of weeks of January. Then nothing. So a lot of the incidents that I will write about in this book may all have occurred in January. I have scant info re summers and autumns.

  One of the teenage diaries contained a code so I could write really important secrets. Each letter of the alphabet was represented by a shape taken from the capital letter A. Quite complicated, but luckily I had written the code down in the diary itself. I’m no fool! It is just about decipherable, so I could now read my deepest, darkest teenage desires.

  This was thrilling in anticipation, but sadly not in practice. I knew it was going to be disappointing when the result of the first code-crack read: ‘I really want a velvet hacking jacket.’

  Memory is a liquid and strange thing. Researching my own life, I realize that there are major events I have totally forgotten, people I don’t remember meeting, shows I don’t remember being in and places I don’t remember going. And that can leave you vulnerable.

  Quite a few years ago, my agent Maureen rang me at home. Her normal voice said, ‘Hello, love, a couple of things to go through vis-à-vis availabilities and dates and so on.’

  We talked these things over and then she said, not in her normal voice, ‘Love, just wanted to check.’ Nervous laugh. ‘Have you ever been in a porn film?’

  Me. Not normal voice. ‘Pardon?’

  Maureen coughs. ‘Have you ever been, do you think, in a porn film? I’ll tell you why, love. The papers have been on to me to say they’ve seen your name on the credits of one such film and it looks like you in it.’

  My heart is now beating fast. I think, I know I have never been in a porn film, but something is making me doubt myself.

  ‘I don’t know, love, I mean, I just thought I’d run it past you. I thought perhaps when you were in Italy?’

  I spent seven months in Italy after I’d left school. Maureen knew this.

  Now I’m seriously considering the possibility. Was I in a porn film? My memory soup is working overtime. Was I drugged by some boyfriend? How could this have happened? I eventually resolved that the best thing was to say, ‘No.’

  Maureen, relieved voice. ‘No. I didn’t think so, love. I suspect they’re just fishing.’

  This happens quite a lot, apparently. The press go fishing and cast out into the celebrity pool with outrageous bait, just hoping to touch a nerve and get a nibble.

  I can honestly say to you, dear reader, that I have never been in such a film. However, there might well be a porn star out there with my name. Most people calculate their porn name by using the name of their first pet and their mother’s maiden name. That would make mine Suki Duminy. Just so there’s no confusion.

  Another time my memory was severely questioned was when my husband, Ade, and I were living in Richmond and our three daughters were very little. One morning, Ade got up before me and went upstairs to get the older girls out of bed and down for breakfast, and then I got up a few moments later to get the baby.

  I went into the tiny nursery and couldn’t see her. The cot was empty. Empty cot. I stared at it a while. No baby. Heart skipped a beat. I went back to our bedroom and looked about. No baby.

  It occurred to me that Ade had picked up the baby and taken her downstairs with the others.

  I went downstairs. I was now having palpitations.

  The other two were happily having breakfast with Ade. No baby.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I went back upstairs. Still empty cot. I’m now not just looking for the baby, but looking for evidence that we’ve even had a baby. Perhaps there simply was no baby, and if I asked Ade where the baby was, he would look at me the way they looked at Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight.

  I went back to our bedroom and sat on the bed. As I did so, I put my hand on the duvet at the very end of the bed and felt a small lump. I pulled the duvet away and there she was. Freya. Asleep. Perfectly alive and happy and asleep.

  I had been breastfeeding her the night before, and must have fallen asleep with her still in the bed. She had gradually kicked her way down to where our feet were.

  DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

  I KNOW!

  Please, Mumsnet, I realize that this is not recommended practice, but all was well. It wasn’t funny or clever, but Freya lives to this day. She has never given me any other reason to doubt her existence.

  So, dear reader, I will tell you all I remember, and embellish all that I don’t. For my publisher’s sake I shall name-drop regularly and mention royalty as much as possible. Press on.

  ONE

  I am inside an egg.

  Everyone on my course at the Central School of Speech and Drama is inside an egg. These are eggs that we have made from newspaper and Sellotape. All sixteen of us are inside our own eggs on the floor of one of the studios.

  We are told to remain inside the egg until we feel ready to hatch. When we hatch, it will be into an unknown world where we can be anything we like. We may have to learn new methods of communication. We may be frightened. We may be aggressive. We must take our time and do it as it comes naturally.

  The lights are dimmed.

  There is silence.

  Nobody wants to be the first to come out of the egg. It’s quite nice in the egg. I think I may have a little sleep.

  I am trying to study for a BEd in Drama and English, and, I think, Speech as well. We do have speech training and have to move around a room, breathing from our buttocks and rolling our voices along the floor and then saying, ‘Arr ay ee ay arr, bar bay be bay bar, car cay cee cay car’ (continued for whole alphabet), in order to get some mouth movement and find our embouchure. Mine is still missing.

  I
have an immobile top lip. I blame it on playing the flute, but it could just be my reluctance to move my mouth at all when speaking. (I took up the flute as it was the grown-up instrument to play after the recorder, and I had been excellent at the recorder. I mean, really excellent: I could even play the treble! But the flute is a very different kettle of fish, and I was found out when I had to join the school orchestra. It was a pretty scratchy old orchestra, but you were required to read music, which I could, and keep time, which has never been my strong point. So I would mime, vaguely follow the other flute, and move my fingers up and down randomly. Unfortunately one day ‘lead flute’ was ill and there was only me. Let’s just say that during the flute solos there was silence, and a lot of tutting from the oboes.)

  So, I’m on a teacher training course. Yes, I’m surprised too. This has never been part of my Plan – if indeed there has ever been a Plan. Plan or not, this was certainly not part of it. Everything in my life has been fairly random, happened by accident or just fallen into place.

  That I am at college at all is something of a miracle. I left the Northwich Grammar School for Girls in Cheshire with three very average A levels in Geography, Biology and English, with no idea of anything that I particularly wanted to do, and no sense of having to do anything at all particularly urgently. The school careers officer (who was actually just the RE teacher earning a bit on the side) told me, in no uncertain terms, that I had chosen a strange mix of subjects and should apply immediately to become a dental nurse.

  I, however, thought I should apply to some universities. Both of my parents had been to university, and my older brother, Tim, who was full of brains, was about to go to Cambridge to study Engineering.* Thankfully, this had taken the pressure off me a bit. My two younger brothers, Peter and Simon, were still at school.

  I went to quite a few interviews at various universities – Leicester, Nottingham, Coventry – but wasn’t accepted at any of them. Reluctance to open my mouth when talking, or even to talk at all, could have been a contributing factor. I couldn’t really raise any enthusiasm about myself, so they didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘Why do you want to do Combined Studies here in Nottingham?’

  ‘Er … because … (Damn, I should have prepared this) … erm … because I … like them?’

  ‘Why do you want to come here to Leicester?’

  The truth was, I didn’t.

  ‘What makes you particularly suited to Archaeology and Anthropology?’

  Nothing. Nothing at all. I just liked the sound of it and imagined digging about in ancient tombs wearing khaki. And they knew it too. For them, it must have been like interviewing a bowl of porridge.

  I have always thought I’d quite like to be an archaeologist. Actually, I’d still quite like to be an archaeologist. Or a psychiatrist. Or a casting agent. Did drama or performing feature in my life as a schoolgirl? Not really. Apparently, I once did quite a funny turn as a fortune teller in a school revue when I was in the sixth form, but I don’t remember much about it.

  The thing that Central had to recommend it over and above all of the others was that it was in London, and I wanted to go to London. I didn’t particularly mind what I studied, I just wanted to study it in London. I had been to London only a handful of times in my life – mainly to attend the Horse of the Year Show, so only really to Wembley – but the thought of it excited me.

  When I returned from my seven months in Italy not making a porn film, they asked me for an interview. I was instructed to bring a black leotard with me. A leotard!

  On arrival, all us candidates were ushered into one of the studios and the girls were told to go off to put on our leotards. The horror! We didn’t know each other and were having to strip down to bra and pants and put these things on. Mind you, I was glad of my tan. The boys had to wear T-shirts and tights and were confused about whether to wear the jockstrap outside or inside them. The results were not pretty.

  We then had to show we could move and were put through some exercises by a movement teacher (‘Swing your arms, touch the floor, skip about’). We were all lumpen and slightly confused, and luckily no one shone. I was still in with a chance, and after about fifteen minutes of sweaty hell and hitching up of jockstraps, it was over. After that, it was all pretty simple: a short interview, during which I actually spoke. They asked what theatre I had seen recently, and I told them I had seen Dostoyevsky’s The Rivals at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. It was an obvious lie, but they didn’t question it. The truth was that I had only ever seen Charlie’s Aunt at a rep theatre in Worthing, but they must have been desperate to fill the course. We then had to sit near a piano and show we had an ‘ear’ by recognizing whether notes were higher or lower as they were played.

  That was it.

  A few days later, much to my surprise and my mother’s joy, I got a letter of acceptance. I moved to London in the autumn of 1977.

  Back in the egg.

  I can hear someone inside their egg, crying with laughter, and I know this must be Joanna Bowen. JoBo.

  JoBo and I had quite quickly become friends at college. She was tall and dark with extraordinary legs; legs that, she told us, featured in the Pretty Polly posters that were all over Tube stations. We never knew if she was telling the truth. About anything, really. JoBo even had us believing, at one point, that she had been raised by wolves in Africa. (It was entirely possible, although I have since discovered that she was raised by a very nice family in Hertfordshire, whom I have got to know quite well over the years.)

  JoBo had a car. This was the greatest thing. JoBo drove me everywhere, at breakneck speed.

  Up until then, my preferred mode of transport had been my shiny red bicycle. It was a solid, postbox red – I painted it myself – and shiny because I used thick gloss paint. There were a few drip marks here and there, and marks where my trousers had stuck to it before it had fully dried, but otherwise I was very pleased with the result. It had a basket on the front for my bag and was the picture of a good, old-fashioned bike. But it was a tough pedal: the gears often crunched into each other without any notice and, if I wasn’t careful, my trousers would get stuck in the chain. Or the chain would fall off altogether.

  Thanks to my bicycle, I arrived late every single day for my first term at college. Quite regularly I would arrive just as everyone was packing up their folders to go home. My problem has always been (and still is) that I believe I can get anywhere in London in twenty minutes. This has simply never been the case.

  An awful lot of my life has been spent thinking up excuses for my lateness. My husband, Ade, has taken to giving me false timings, usually subtracting an hour, in the hope that I will be ready to leave the house on time.

  JoBo made it her mission to shock me, or make me laugh, at every given opportunity. In those days, I generally appeared quite serious. Apparently it could be intimidating. I was the girl who never got wolf-whistled when passing building sites. Instead, they would stop and look puzzled and shout, ‘Cheer up!’ Even now, I get the odd ‘It may never happen, love!’, which fixes my face into an even grimmer state. People often think I’m frightening, when the truth is, I’m just really quite frightened myself.

  A journalist once commented in an article, ‘Why doesn’t Jennifer Saunders smile more? She’s got a lovely smile when she tries.’ There is nothing more designed to make you not smile than someone telling you that you should. Just as there’s nothing more likely to stop meaningful conversation than someone saying, ‘I’m so glad we’re talking.’

  JoBo’s favourite trick was to take her top off while driving. Next to her, I would be wracked with embarrassment and nervous laughter, panicking if we stopped too long at traffic lights and keeping an eye out for the police. She once pulled the car up next to a man and a woman who were walking along the pavement, got out and ran up to the man, kissed him, and then said, ‘Darling, darling. Listen, I don’t want you to worry about what happened last night. I asked the doctor and he said it’s perfectly normal
.’

  We drove off, while the couple were left standing confused and slightly unsettled. It was JoBo’s nerve that made me laugh.

  Another time, she pulled the car up next to a pedestrian, pretended to be blind, and asked for directions. And could they be specific, please, because she was driving using only her Braille A–Z.

  JoBo’s fearlessness once almost killed us both. The novelty of the tits out was obviously wearing off and she needed more laughter from me. So she decided to steer the car with her legs. I laughed, so she went one near-fatal step further and pushed one of her legs through the steering wheel. This meant that she couldn’t steer at all. She had to try madly to find the brake pedal with her accelerator foot while extracting her leg from the wheel, as we hurtled out of Hyde Park towards Queen’s Gate, missing the Royal Geographical Society by inches before she finally regained control.

  Back in the egg, nothing much is happening. I’m not aware of any hatchings. I can hear some whisperings and some chick noises, but no ripping paper.

  Dawn French is in one of the eggs. Dawn French, later to be ‘off the teleovision’ and my comedy partner.

  Much has been made (mainly by me, I suspect) of the fact that, when Dawn and I first met at college, we hated each other on sight. This isn’t true. We were indifferent. She had come with a purpose, which was to learn to be a teacher. She actually wanted to teach. I had arrived not really realizing that it was a teaching course at all. A few terms in, when they sent us all into schools, I was genuinely shocked. I was hanging with the posh girls, as far as she was concerned, and she had her own gang.

  To be fair, I was also actually living with posh girls. A friend of mine from Cheshire, Belinda Pritchard-Barrett (quite posh), was in London sharing an attic flat in Kensington with two other girls, Fiona Pelham-Burn (posh) and Charlotte Kennard (extremely posh).

  I got on well with Belinda, who has a big laugh and a great sense of humour. She had done a cordon bleu cookery course and was now cooking directors’ lunches for a firm in the City. The other two were secretaries.