Double Trouble

YOU are the weakest link. Goodbye." The slightly nasal "voice of fear" isn't that of Anne Robinson, but issues instead from the blonder, but no less imposing, head of Jennifer Saunders.

You might imagine they had more pressing things on their mind - like the small matter of their first UK tour in 10 years, for instance - but, with typical lack of urgency, French and Saunders still find time to join in the current national craze of impersonating TV's favourite "queen of mean".

"She's smiling as she says it now, though, have you noticed?" says Dawn French.

Jennifer puts her in the picture. "It's because she's off to America to do it. She's going to be rolling in it. They can't find anyone American who's prepared to be that horrible."

After 20-odd years of comedy partnership, good old F&S - now as much of a national institution as M&S - are still delivering the goods like nobody else.

Even an informal backstage meeting with them has you laughing so much that even attempting to take shorthand notes is completely out of the question.

Back in the early Eighties, as the female face of the new, firebrand "alternative" comedy, French and Saunders were quirky and had a dangerous edge, but even then they were something of a square peg in a round hole.

They may have been fresh and very, very funny, but they were bigger on clowning and slapstick than Ben Elton-style Thatcher rants.

Today, the clowning is more refined, but they still clearly revel in each other's company.

Before the start of the new tour, which brings them to The Mayflower theatre in Southampton next week, gloomier commentators had speculated that, after a decade away from British theatres and with a regular F&S TV series now a thing of the past, they might have somehow "lost it".

Meeting them, though, you realise they could never NOT be funny together.

That's not to say they don't suffer their own, private moments of doubt, though.

"The response to the tour has been really heartening. It's been great to know we can still do it," says Dawn.

Self-doubt is something that plagues most performers, however established or adored they are.

"You only feel secure as long as you know something is coming up," says Jennifer, who started to explore the theme of failure in a new sitcom about actors, Mirrorball - before she gave up on it and began writing a new series of Ab Fab instead.

"Luckily for us, there haven't been quite enough new comedians coming up. And it seems to have dried up on the political and angry level, which I think is quite good for us but very bad for comedy, because no one seems to be willing to get angry about anything. A lot of stand-ups seem to be slightly wishy-washy.

"You just have to want to shout at something or somebody. Even your mother."

The duo's reputation for laziness, cemented by their own, self-deprecating jokes, probably has more to do with an unwillingness to write anything down until the last minute than a genuine contempt for conventional work practices.

"I think it seems like that, but I don't think it's actually true. We do a lot of thinking beforehand. We actually create on our feet," says Jennifer.

Dawn continues: "We meet up quite regularly, if we decide we're going to put that time aside for it. We'll meet up, usually at Jen's house, about 10am after we've taken the kids to school and we'll stay there till about 4pm.

"We'll go and have a pub lunch and sit about and sometimes we go to the pictures."

The pictures is by way of legitimate research, of course. F&S are renowned for their killingly accurate cinema and TV spoofs (you'll notice the Big Brother influence in their stage show). But even TV is less of an inspirational source than it used to be.

"There's so little original programming nowadays," laments Jennifer.

"TV is becoming less and less fertile ground for us.

"In last night's schedule there wasn't a single recorded show - they were all cooking shows, documentary shows and quiz shows."

But some things never change. Fans who haven't seen the show yet will be gladdened to hear it contains one or two familiar jokes and characters - including those infamous, scene-stealing extras, this time doing their best to upstage Clive Mantle in a Casualty take-off.

"We were at the opera when we saw The Extras," explains Jennifer.

"We noticed in some big, huge scene, two women trying to push their way to the front of the stage the whole time.

"They were simply extras with a lot of bust and shawl acting happening trying to push their way to the front."

This delight in the everyday absurd is typical of the F&S approach. At one point, they start discussing the relative merits of Stars in Their Eyes contestants.

Jennifer: "The worst one was Gabrielle. They'd given her an eyepatch half the size of her head."

Dawn: "Maybe they confused her with The Phantom of the Opera."

When you hear them talking like this, you suddenly realise why they don't bother writing anything down - they know all the lines already.

French and Saunders Live in 2001 is at The Mayflower, Southampton on January 26 and 27.

For tickets and information, call the box office on 023 8071 1811.