Funny for the Money

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are back on tour together for the first time in ten years and they claim they're only doing it for the money.

"We have conservatories to pay for," explains Dawn.

It's more likely that the comedy duo have been concentrating on their equally successful individual projects as well as bringing up their families.

Dawn is married to comedian Lenny Henry and they have an adopted daughter called Billie, and Jennifer is married to Young Ones and Bottom star Adrian Edmonson with whom she has three children.

Dawn is currently appearing on TV as the Vicar of Dibley, where she is the hilarious long-suffering, chocolate-munching parish vicar with an astonishingly vacuous side-kick, Alice, played by Emma Chambers.

Jennifer is about to hit the small screen again in a series called Mirrorball, the follow-up to Absolutely Fabulous, in which she starred as glamorous PR Edina along with Joanna Lumley as her cocaine-snorting, Champagne-swigging pal, Patsy.

Good friends for over 20 years, this tour is the first time Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have had the opportunity to get together for quite a while, as Dawn says: "If we are not working together we can go whole months and not talk to each other at all. But that's because we are very secure in our friendship.

"We have spent weeks just talking to each other in depth again, learning each other's views on life, love, death, grief, politics, whatever."

The duo met while training as teachers at the Central School of Drama and they reckon they disliked each other on sight.

"We didn't hit it off at all when we first met," admits Dawn. "Jen was the epitome of the upper middle-class girl, whereas I was upper working class . . . she frightened me a bit!"

It was their shared sense of humour that brought them together, as Dawn recalls.

"The first time I can remember seeing her was in a movement class and we were all horribly embarrassed because we had to wear black leotards and tights. Jen was out of control with laughter at how preposterous it all was and I liked the look of her."

Jennifer remembers how she felt when she first met Dawn who, she says, was "very grown-up and organised."

"When I first met Dawn at Central she had a serious boyfriend and seemed very settled. I felt useless beside her," she recalls.

"Our friendship changed when we shared a flat together in our final year at college. Dawn made me laugh so much. We played the cruellest jokes on everybody in the flat which we thought were hilarious, but must have driven them all mad!"

It was there, in front of friends in their living room, that French and Saunders' first comedy creation evolved. The Menopatsy Sisters were a pair of middle-aged Italian circus performers wearing leotards and red latex swimming hats (menopatsy means "half mad").

"It was really bad," says Jennifer.

"Our big joke was that they had their costumes on the wrong way round with two tassels dangling down the back. It was pathetic."

After that they were asked to do a stint at the Comic Strip club, along with Adrian Edmonson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle.

"We auditioned and got in and thought we were quite clever, but it was only because we were women and the boys felt it didn't look politically correct not having any women. As long as we had breasts the job was ours - and boy, did we have breasts," says Dawn.

They got paid the princely sum of £5 a night until they found out the men were earning a lot more.

"It was Rik Mayall who confessed they got £300 a week!

"That was when we first thought we might make a living out of it," she says.

Catch French & Saunders earning a crust in Portsmouth on Monday or in Bournemouth on Wednesday, where their show features a string of new comic creations including a Casualty-style drama and a hilarious send-up of Chris Tarrant in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

* For tickets call Portsmouth Guildhall box office on 023 9282 4355, or the BIC on 01202 456456.