Dear Fatty Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Dear You

  2. Dear Dad

  3. Dear Dad

  4. Dear Gary

  5. Dear Mum

  6. Dear Dad

  7. Dear Hannah

  8. Dear the Monkees

  9. Dear B. F

  10. Dear Jack

  11. Dear Madonna

  12. Dear Sarah Walton

  13. Dear Dad

  14. Dear Billie

  15. Dear David Cassidy

  16. Dear Dad

  17. Dear David Eccles

  18. Dear Gary

  19. Dear Fatty

  20. Dear Madonna

  21. Dear Nigel

  22. Dear BF

  23. Dear Val Doonican

  24. Dear Fatty

  25. Dear Nick

  26. Dear Parents of everyone I ever babysat for

  27. Dear Madonna

  28. Dear Big Nikki, Little Nicky, Angie, Jane and Patsy

  29. Dear pioneering all-female US rock band FANNY

  30. Beloved Billie

  31. Dear Mum

  32. Dear David

  33. Dear Fatty

  34. Dear Mum

  35. Dear Liza Tarbuck

  36. Dear Dad

  37. Dear Dad

  38. Dear Fatty

  39. Dear Dad

  40. Dear Dad

  41. Dear BF

  42. Dear Fatty

  43. Dear Dad

  44. Dear Dad

  45. Dear Alla

  46. Calling all members of the Lazy Susans

  47. Dear Len

  48. Dear Fatty

  49. Dear Sarah

  50. Dear Richard

  51. Dear Madonna

  52. Dear Alfred

  53. Dear Dad

  54. Dear whomsoever it may concern

  55. Dear Scottie

  56. Dear Fatty

  57. Dear George Clooney

  58. Dear Dad

  59. Dear Fatty

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Section

  Copyright

  About the Book

  With a sharp eye for comic detail and wicked ear for the absurdities of life, Dawn French shows just how an RAF girl from the west country with dreams of becoming a ballerina/air hostess/bridesmaid rose to be one of the best loved comedy actresses of our time.

  Here Dawn French shares her story, and in particular with her father who committed suicide when she was nineteen years old. She invites us into her most personal relationships with, among others, her mum and dad, her husband, her daughter and her friend Jennifer.

  Dawn reveals the people, experiences and obsessions that have influenced her and that helped shape her comedy creations – including kissing, dogs, grandmas, David Cassidy, teenage angst, school, stealing, Madonna and not forgetting chocolate. She is as open about her fears and sorrows as she is about her delights and joys, and for the first time shares the experience of losing her beloved dad and later finding a tip-topmost chap in Lenny Henry.

  From raging about class, celebrity and bullying to describing the highs and lows of motherhood and friendship, Dear Fatty reveals the surprising life behind the smile.

  About the Author

  Dawn French is presently fifty-one years old and almost entirely spherical. She trained as a teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama but luckily for the kids at Parliament Hill School, she left teaching in 1981 to join the Comic Strip team with whom she has produced and appeared in over twenty films. Dawn made six series and various specials of sketch based hilariosity with another girl called Jennifer Saunders. She has done lots of other telly including Murder Most Horrid, The Vicar Of Dibley, Wild West, Jam and Jerusalem and Lark Rise to Candleford. She also does acting in plays sometimes.

  She is married to a man called Len and has a daughter called Bill. She is alive and lives in Cornwall. This is the first book she has ever written … or read.

  Hoc Feci

  For

  Michelle Lillicrap

  1968–2008

  Stephen Handy

  1972–2008

  Marjorie Emily French née Berry

  1908–Forever

  SMALLER

  lyrics by

  Alison Moyet

  Taken from the album The Turn

  I used to dance to the drum in your chest

  My feet on your feet, my head at your breast

  You gave me a tune and I carry it still

  And I promise my darling, that I ever will.

  Dear You,

  HELLO. I HAVE decided to think of this book as a memoir rather than an autobiography. As I understand it, the latter means that I have to be precise about chronology and touch on all aspects of my quite-dull-in-parts life. I think that would be quite dull because in quite a lot of parts my life has indeed been quite dull. You wouldn’t want to read about those bits, believe me. Those bits would mainly be about puddings I’ve enjoyed and when I’ve set the washing machine on the wrong cycle and my quest for comfortable shoes, and the time I put a gun in a kitten’s mouth. You don’t want to know about that ol’ faffle. So, I’ve decided instead to concentrate on those memories that are especially important or vivid to me. The parts of my life I can still remember the taste and feel and smell of. Otherwise we’d be here all day and I’m hoping you can be finished by lunchtime so’s you can have a nap and watch Loose Women. (Are they really loose? I’ve seen no evidence thus far and I’ve watched a lot … Unless, of course, the looseness is under the table … oh dear.)

  Here’s what I’ve learned writing this book. Memory doesn’t begin with or end in ‘what happened’. In fact, I don’t think it ends at all; it goes on changing, playing a kind of hide-and-seek with our minds. Some of my memories are nearly 50 years old now and sometimes the startling clarity of them makes me doubt their reality. Do all of the people I write to in these pages remember what I remember? My dad, mum, brother, daughter, friends, lovers and so on? I am lucky that I’ve kept diaries for large parts of my life on which I can anchor many of these memories. Even so, most of my diary-keeping is pure organisation and, annoyingly, doesn’t tend to remind me of my true emotions at any particular juncture. For that I must rely on my rapidly deteriorating grey matter, and a lot of investigative chatter with my nearest and dearest. I shouldn’t really be so surprised by the alarmingly speedy erosion of my memory, after all, my waistline has disappeared entirely. Like wearing a nappy or the Lost City of Atlantis, my waist is now only a vague memory or may even just be an ancient myth for all I know.

  So, it’s in this spirit of reminiscence that I offer you this memoir of my life. My life so far, that is. To this end, I have decided to tell my story through letters, because this way, I can address my life to the people I’ve actually lived it with. It’s not that I don’t want to tell it directly to you, it’s more that I know these people well, and hopefully, by the end, you might know me well too. I do hope you enjoy it. If you do, feel free to tell all your friends. If not, please replace the book neatly where you found it, and if you’re in a residential area, be thoughtful, and leave quietly. Thank you.

  Dear Dad,

  SO, YOU’RE STILL dead. It’s been 31 years and every day I have to remind myself of that fact, and every day I am shocked.

  You and I only had 19 years together, and so when I think of you, I am still 19 and you are … What age were you? … To me, you were just the right age for a dad. Old enough to be clever and young enough to be handsome. Probably about the age I am now. Blimey, that’s weird. I will soon be older than you ever got to be. That’s not right somehow. A parent is supposed to be older at all times. The natural form
is, I get older and you get … just old. Then, and only then, should you be permitted to die. Even that should happen in front of the telly after a bowl of stew and a cuddle up with your missus. Not the way you died. Not like that.

  I’m not 19 any more, Dad, and so many things have happened that you haven’t known, so I have decided to write this book for you. I want to remember our time together and I want to tell you about lots of stuff since. So far, it’s been better than expected …

  Dear Dad,

  I’M HAVING TROUBLE remembering my very first memory. Each time I try I think I’m stealing other people’s first memories that I’ve either read or been told of. I can’t remember looking out of my pram at an adoring mother, I can’t remember being shocked at the first sight of my own pudgy baby fingers, I can’t remember the oddly delightful feeling of a nappy full of hot new poo. (Actually, on second thoughts, I can, but that came years later!)

  There is something I can remember vividly, and when I experience it now, the effect is visceral. It takes me thundering right back to a mysteriously timeless but definitely very early blurry memory. The smell of my mother. Of Mum. A heady aroma that embodies birth and life and strength and sex and safety and fags. Whatever perfume she adds (currently she’s favouring JLo’s new honk, I noticed, when I was last in her bathroom – she’s MoLo!), this smell is always there as the baseline, and for me it’s magnificent and it announces that I’m home. I swear to God her cooking is flavoured with the same scent, which is why none of us can replicate her recipes. You have to be her to do it. I guess the scent is the code, the method of imprinting between a mother and child, and it is so potent. Sometimes even now I snuggle up to Mum just to get another headful to nourish me till the next visit.

  I don’t have such a strong early memory of you, Dad, although I do have one of something that happened when I think I was about two or three. I remember creeping into your bedroom while you two slept and crawling under your bed. I’m not quite sure why I did this but I suspect it was the thrill of being hidden while being so close. A sort of delicious invisibility. (I did the same thing again years later at boarding school – more anon.) It seems a bit pointless to eavesdrop when those you’d like your eaves to drop on are fast asleep, but I suppose the joy was in the anticipation. Anyroadup, you might remember, a frightening thing happened. The bed was the kind that had low metal bars and bare springs beneath, and I only just managed to squeeze under. I must have had my hand inside one of the springs when one of you moved, resulting in a crushing pain as my little fingers were trapped. I shrieked and woke you. You leapt out of bed, full of confusion and dadly alert. You reached under the bed and, with a bit of gentle coaxing, pulled me out to safety and I ran into Mum’s arms for comfort (and most likely to smell that healing smell). All of this was fairly unremarkable except for one thing. You were completely naked and, although I was in agony, I couldn’t take my eyes off that weird dark dangly wrinkled thing. What was it? I’d never seen you without your pants on and for some scrambled reason the first conclusion I jumped to was that you were being attacked by some kind of nocturnal bed-intruding vicious hairy saggy mole-snake creature. Naturally the correct course of action, considering you had just rescued me from certain finger-death, was to reciprocate, so I lunged at your assailant with mighty force, thwacking it as hard as I could, trying to dislodge its tenacious teeth from your groin. However hard I hit, it would not let go or fall off and so I was forced to pull it like the keenest frontman on a tug-o’-war team. Inexplicably, both of you seemed helpless with laughter, and you even seemed to be resisting my help as you pulled on your pants and let the biting thing stay INSIDE them. What an idiot! I never saw it again so I guessed you’d had it put down at the vet’s or perhaps left it at the zoo.

  Dear Gary,

  DAD WAS AT RAF Valley and we were living in Holyhead, Anglesey, so I must have been three years old and you must have been six when Hunni the dog turned up. I don’t know where she came from, but I remember she was named after a little girl called Hunni Hindley-Maggs who you were at school with and who you lost your heart to. Did she know you named a dog after her? Did she feel special as a result of that I wonder? I think the dog, a cairn terrier, was officially supposed to be your dog, but I just want to let you know that she definitely preferred me and I loved her back with a fervent passion verging on the illegal.

  After a certain amount of initial resistance she gave in to my efforts to make her lie down next to me for hours on end. Mostly because I restrained her firmly every time she tried to move. I was determined we would be spooning partners. I wanted to feel her tiny body breathing calmly, sleepily, next to mine and I wanted her to be like a Disney or Lassie dog, who could understand me and all my three-year-old problems, so I endlessly blethered on into her ear, which twitched throughout these no-doubt heartfelt monologues.

  When I’d had enough of talking, which was a long time, and she had fulfilled enough of my desire for her to be counsellor/friend/hot-water bottle, she was also very handy as a baby or dressing-up doll. Quite a lot of my doll clothes fitted her and even suited her. She looked better in pastels – it contrasted well with her sandy fur – and I was stunned by how becoming she was in a mob cap, although I had to bite holes in it for her ears to poke through. I think that if she had shown a bit more commitment, we could have squeezed more stuff on, but too much wriggling prevented any true representation of an entire outfit, complete with sunglasses and luggage.

  One thing Hunni was always up for, probably due to the delicious taste, was liberal use of Mum’s lipstick, a stunning burnt sunset-type orangey red. Wetness of nose, hirsuteness of lips and constant licking made application tricky but, with effort and tenacity, not impossible. The overall effect was stunning and in no small part reminiscent of early Dusty Springfield. Excellent.

  Obviously, to achieve the baby image was a much simpler operation – lay dog on its back, put on nappy and insert dummy in mouth. Simple but effective. Hours of contented cooing and cradling followed. That’s me contented of course, maybe not always her. Still, I’m pretty sure she favoured this sort of girly activity over the silly exploits you got up to with her – like walking, throwing and catching, running after rabbits or wrestling. Honestly, what were you thinking? She was a dog!

  Dear Mum,

  I’VE BEEN THINKING about what life must have been like for you around the time I was born, when Dad was stationed in Anglesey. When I look at pictures of you pushing me in a pram, with a toddler Gary by your side, you look so glamorous and so happy. Then I look at other pictures from that time. We must have been in RAF quarters but there I am having a bath in a bucket in the backyard. Maybe this was just for a laugh – we must have had a bathroom, surely? I know that the camp was miles from the local village and the shops in Caergeiliog and that you had to walk for hours to get a pint of milk. I also know that Anglesey is hellishly windy and flat and remote. I’ve seen photos where the trees are growing diagonal to the ground because the mighty maverick gales have battered them into submission. They look tipsy, like staggering drunks, lurching sideways against their inebriation. It must have been exhausting to drag both of us such a long way in that raging raw weather, and I know that often when you arrived at the shop, so relieved to be out of the bluster and so glad to see other grown-ups, it was very hurtful when people chose to speak Welsh only, to refuse to help you in English. I know you often felt lonely and rejected but for me there is a truly visceral connection. I prick up my ears when I hear Welsh, I pay more attention when I am around Welsh people. I like how dangerous and dark and a bit caustic and secretive they seem, and somehow I have fused that persistent stormy weather with my memories of that country and those seductive Taliesin people. I feel a curiously enduring connection, although by rights I’m not entitled to it. I was born there, but I wasn’t bred there and I’m not from there, yet Wales and the Welsh prompt an acute sense of tribal belonging in me. Perhaps what I’m feeling is a distant sense of your alienation, Mum. Because
you were made to feel the trespasser, I want to belong, on your behalf. Maybe it’s a bigger issue. Dad’s being in the RAF meant that you (and we) followed him wherever his work took us, so we didn’t get to belong anywhere. Sometimes we were in our home for less than a year. You might have only just got a job, we might have only just settled at school, and we had to move on again. Sort of legit gypsies really. Moving to a new camp, new town, new county, but strangely and rather comfortingly, always the same house – same layout, same G-Plan furniture. We seemed to have very little of our own. Just ornaments and books and odd items with which to try and personalise yet another RAF standard red-brick house.

  It’s no wonder both Gary and I did so much sleepwalking and sleeptalking when we were growing up. We probably harboured our fair share of new-school stress, constantly having to try to carefully negotiate our way into new groups of friends. It was chum war. There were tactics. The RAF kids were easy to befriend – they had the same itinerant experience and were sympathetic. It was the gangs of local kids that were harder to crack. They were fed up with forces kids turning up, and then buggering off before true friendships could be forged. They were often wary of us and quickly judged if we were worth the effort or not. I vividly remember that crucial testing time in the first few days of arriving anywhere new, when it was imperative to make a good show of yourself, make sure all your wares were on display attractively – humour, hipness, kindness (but with a hint of steel), intelligence, comprehensive knowledge of hit parade, courtesy, eloquence and skipping and twoball prowess. If that failed (which it usually did due to pathetic lack of élan in any of above skills), employ bribery and giftage techniques swiftly, sometimes even deploying own toys as bait. This was a supremely risky strategy and you stood to suffer a high incidence of collateral damage, sometimes losing four or more well-loved Sindys or even a pair of champion skates or a warrior set of clackers. No matter – this is the cost of war, no one said it would be pretty, and these casualties were the price we had to pay. We will never forget them. On rare occasions, this modus operandi backfired and we were judged to be spineless tossers for buying our friends’ affections. Then, and only then, would I employ my master plan, a strategy that never failed, but demanded countless hours of tireless acting. I would concoct a terminal illness – ‘toxic spasm’ was a good one, as was ‘marrow fester’ or ‘trench head’, or simply ‘swollen blood’. All of these maladies meant I was not long for this world, and would elicit sympathy and pledges of eternal friendship from otherwise hostile enemy agents. RAF kid 1 – local kid nil. Result. I’m sorry, Mum, if it meant you regularly had to answer strange questions from concerned parents about your sickly daughter’s tragic condition, but somehow I eluded retribution and moved on to the next camp with renewed vigour and no small relief that I could shake off my fatal ailment and be healthy again in readiness for the next bout of ‘find some friends!’. This nomad life, which incidentally also rewarded us richly with experiences all over the country and later in Cyprus, was no doubt part of the nagging core feeling I had: that we didn’t belong anywhere.