Published in 2013
320 pages
Jennifer Saunders is a BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning English comedienne, screenwriter and actress. She first came into widespread attention in the 1980s and the early 1990s when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Along with her comedy partner Dawn French, she proceeded to write and star in their eponymous sketch show, French & Saunders, and received international acclaim for writing and playing the lead role of Edina Monsoon in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. In her other work, she has guest starred in the US-made sitcoms Roseanne and Friends, and won the American People’s Choice Award for voicing the wicked Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks’ animated Shrek 2. More recently, she has written and starred in Jam & Jerusalem and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle.
What is this book about?
Jennifer Saunders’ comic creations have brought joy to millions. From Comic Strip to Comic Relief, from Bolly-swilling Edina in Ab Fab to her takes on Madonna or Mamma Mia, her characters are household names.
But it’s Jennifer herself who has a place in all our hearts. This is her funny, moving and frankly bonkers memoir, filled with laughter, friends and occasional heartache – but never misery.
Bonkers is full of riotous adventures: accidentally enrolling on a teacher training course with a young Dawn French, bluffing her way to each BBC series, shooting Lulu, trading wild faxes with Joanna Lumley, touring India with Ruby Wax and Goldie Hawn.
There’s cancer, too, when she becomes ‘Brave Jen’. But her biggest battle is with the bane of her life: the Laws of Procrastination. As she admits, ‘There has never been a Plan. Everything has been fairly random, happened by accident or just fallen into place. I’m off now, to do some sweeping…’
