OK, Sweetie, I admit it – I’ve learnt to love Ab Fab’s Eddy
Why, 20 years on, I have finally come to terms with being the inspiration for Jennifer Saunders’s comic creation.
Jennifer Saunders used Lynne Franks as her inspiration for Eddy, pictured with Patsy, played by Joanna Lumley Photo: BBC
As the founder of one of Britain’s most iconic fashion PR companies, and a former contestant on I’m A Celebrity… who once had to climb into an ostrich enclosure covered in bird seed, it would be safe to say that there have been many extraordinary moments in my life. But of all the remarkable experiences I have had, there is one that stands head and shoulders above all others.
It was the early Nineties, and I had just sold the public relations company I had started from my kitchen table some 20 years earlier. Lynne Franks PR had, through my hard graft, become incredibly successful. We represented most of the British high street as well as leading designers such as Katharine Hamnett, Jasper Conran, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and I had been involved in getting London Fashion Week off the ground.
One night I was invited to a dinner by the editor of Vogue. The event was at San Lorenzo’s, a favourite haunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. I arrived to find a gaggle of fashionistas in the bar, huddled around a television set. You might think this bizarre – who watches the TV when asked to a dinner by the editor of Vogue? – but you cannot begin to imagine how peculiar it must have felt for me. Because, much like the rest of the country, they were watching a new comedy programme, and the lead character – the one everyone found so funny – had been based on me.
Her name was Edina Monsoon (or Eddy) and the show was Absolutely Fabulous (or Ab Fab, as we fondly call it now). Eddy, as played by Jennifer Saunders, was a larger-than-life Buddhist who ran a PR company – but it is there that the real-life comparisons end. Eddy had a cocaine-snorting sidekick in the shape of fashion editor Patsy (played by Joanna Lumley), a gay ex-husband, a studious daughter called Saffy who hated her, and a house Eddy claimed was in upmarket Holland Park, when in fact it was in less glamorous Shepherd’s Bush. She was permanently on a diet and walked around in ridiculous designer clothes that were several sizes too small, and goodness knows how many years too young, for her.
It was a hilarious – if not entirely accurate – portrayal, in a period when brilliant comedy by women, for women, was a rarity. And now, as Jennifer Saunders prepares to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary with a selection of Christmas specials – and possibly a film – I am reminded of that period of my life. And do you know what? I could not be more excited.
It was the early Nineties, and I had just sold the public relations company I had started from my kitchen table some 20 years earlier. Lynne Franks PR had, through my hard graft, become incredibly successful. We represented most of the British high street as well as leading designers such as Katharine Hamnett, Jasper Conran, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and I had been involved in getting London Fashion Week off the ground.
One night I was invited to a dinner by the editor of Vogue. The event was at San Lorenzo’s, a favourite haunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. I arrived to find a gaggle of fashionistas in the bar, huddled around a television set. You might think this bizarre – who watches the TV when asked to a dinner by the editor of Vogue? – but you cannot begin to imagine how peculiar it must have felt for me. Because, much like the rest of the country, they were watching a new comedy programme, and the lead character – the one everyone found so funny – had been based on me.
Her name was Edina Monsoon (or Eddy) and the show was Absolutely Fabulous (or Ab Fab, as we fondly call it now). Eddy, as played by Jennifer Saunders, was a larger-than-life Buddhist who ran a PR company – but it is there that the real-life comparisons end. Eddy had a cocaine-snorting sidekick in the shape of fashion editor Patsy (played by Joanna Lumley), a gay ex-husband, a studious daughter called Saffy who hated her, and a house Eddy claimed was in upmarket Holland Park, when in fact it was in less glamorous Shepherd’s Bush. She was permanently on a diet and walked around in ridiculous designer clothes that were several sizes too small, and goodness knows how many years too young, for her.
It was a hilarious – if not entirely accurate – portrayal, in a period when brilliant comedy by women, for women, was a rarity. And now, as Jennifer Saunders prepares to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary with a selection of Christmas specials – and possibly a film – I am reminded of that period of my life. And do you know what? I could not be more excited.
With time and hindsight, I have come to stop taking the programme so personally and I am dying to see the new show. But back when it started, that wasn’t the case. I had been friends with Ruby Wax (who edited it), not to mention Jennifer and Dawn French, who would come to my parties and visit my house. I was, like Eddy, a Buddhist and was very much into my meditation. They would turn up and chant “French and Saunders, French and Saunders” which became a great joke between us. When Eddy used to say “I’m chanting as I speak,” it really wasn’t that far from the truth.
But I was very sensitive about it in those days – probably far too sensitive. They did ask me to be in one of the episodes, but I said no, which was silly of me, and I certainly regret it. Of course I can accept now that I was a larger-than-life character, but you never see it at the time.
I remember the episode which saw Eddy and Patsy backstage at a fashion show. I know Jennifer had based it on the time she and Dawn presented a prize at the very first British Fashion Awards, which I organised, and when I saw the show I thought it was very funny and not that far from the truth. Admittedly, Patsy and Eddy were all over these half-naked male models backstage, which I would never have done. Of course in retrospect, I realise I would have had more fun if I had.
Unlike Eddy, I was never off my head on Bollinger all day and night, I worked terribly hard and I got on very well with my children, though my son Josh suspects that Saffy was based on him. Indeed, now I look back on it, I can see that my household could be even more eccentric. There was a time I went to the supermarket and loaded up on champagne and then just stood there waiting for an assistant to process everything for me, not realising you had to do it yourself.
My son, Josh, remembers me turning up to a parents’ evening in a Soul II Soul tracksuit and my daughter, who used to watch Ab Fab with her friends at boarding school, never told them that Eddy was based on me.
The irony was that, while I went around in denial, I knew of many women who boasted the opposite. Everyone in the industry liked to think that elements of Eddy and Patsy were based on them, and now I see it as flattering.
I imagine that in the new series Eddy will be tweeting (without really knowing what she is doing) and tapping away at her BlackBerry. She will probably have moved to the country, as I have, and as for all that new age stuff… well, now it’s positively mainstream. And in that respect, I suppose it’s me who is having the last laugh.
Lynne Franks is co-founder of B.Hive Women’s Business Clubs, www.bhive.co
The Telegraph
