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clipboard Nazis attending to her every whim, Hollywood style. Even amongst the tightly-knit but often bitchy world of television programme makers, for instance, it is widely acknowledged that the off-camera Jennifer Saunders is a true, kind, loyal, warm (and very witty) friend to those working alongside her.

      Dawn French, so closely connected with her for so long, says this at considerable length in her own book, Dear Fatty, lovingly addressed to Jennifer. Yet Jennifer would never attempt to tell us such things about herself. She might make dry cracks about it all in her impeccably accented drawl, but parade herself around the world as a high achiever? Never.

      Her success has brought her considerable wealth – estimates vary but there are suggestions of millions in double figures – but you won’t hear her boasting about it. She openly loves the good things in life – fast cars and horse riding are her passions – the English countryside is an enduring love, and she’s generous with her time when it comes to deploying her celebrity to help the less advantaged. But she won’t be in our faces, endlessly telling us all about it. Ever.

      It’s just not her style. Once you attempt to separate the private Jennifer Saunders from any of her hugely successful, outrageous comic creations, you find the very opposite of a larger-than-life, flamboyant or excessive person like Edina Monsoon or the aptly named Vivienne Vyle, two of the many characters she has created and portrayed so brilliantly. As a result, Jennifer Saunders remains very much an enigma. A role model to millions. And, it must be said, an alluring object of desire for the opposite sex: male interviewers consistently comment on her good looks. Men admire her, women want to emulate her; it’s been that way right from the start.

      But the real Jennifer is resolutely obscure, hidden from view. Even that other much-loved actor and collaborator in the Ab Fab phenomenon Joanna Lumley has admitted that at their first meeting she thought Jennifer seemed ‘intimidatingly opaque’.

      Yet the things we do know about Jennifer give us some sense of her true persona. Born in July, astrologers might say she is a true Cancerian – home and family life are close to her heart and usually take priority over everything else. This is a woman who prizes stability, continuity, the traditions of country life, and small, close-knit communities. Yet she’s equally at ease in a more urban, sophisticated setting: shopping for food in London’s ultra-fashionable Marylebone High Street, getting behind the wheel of a super-fast sports car, soaking up the sun in Italy’s most glamorous resorts.

      She’s been happily married to the same man, another comic genius, Adrian Edmondson, for well over a quarter of a century, quite rare in a country where one marriage in three ends in divorce and in an industry where relationships often last as long as the cameras are rolling. The Edmondsons have three daughters: two have started to make their name as performers and one is heading for a career as a fashion designer – creativity and making people laugh are the family businesses.

      Yet while the pair have raised their family comfortably, dividing their time between the demands of work in London and an idyllic country sprawl in Devon, there hasn’t been an excess of glitz surrounding their girls’ upbringing: it’s an oft-repeated legend that, at one point, one of their daughters came home from school and said accusingly to her mum: ‘Are you Jennifer Saunders?’

      However, in a career that took off in the far-off days of punk and continues to thrive in the iPad era, Jennifer’s very obvious reluctance to self-promote and her low-key, wry approach to such a stellar, successful career are remarkable. Jennifer Saunders remains one of the funniest, most entertaining women in Britain. But she isn’t going to run around reminding us.

      This might be extremely frustrating for the interviewer seeking a torrent of fresh personal revelations, but in the self-obsessed world we now live in, her sangfroid is admirable. Her philosophy, virtually since day one, seems to be: good work, family, loyalty and laughter are what matters, not fame or 24/7 exposure. If you have a good time at work – and there are good times galore, creating comedy and mayhem with a team of like-minded talents – and if what you create makes other people laugh too, you’re ahead of the game.

      ‘My job is wonderful and I don’t know where else I’d fit in. It’s all about having a good time, making the funniest programme you can and earning a living. It’s certainly not about being famous,’ she has admitted.

      So where do they come from, the outward detachment and the ability to stand back from the brouhaha surrounding telly and showbiz? There are small but significant clues. Part of the skill of any comic performer or actor is their ability to observe and dissect the little nuances of human behaviour that most of us might miss or overlook.

      In Jennifer’s case, this all started at a very early age. As a child, for instance, she has confessed to being a bit of a starer – a quiet kid who watched others and took mental notes.

      ‘My mother says I had to be taken away in restaurants because I’d be standing in front of tables just looking at people,’ Jennifer once revealed.

      Dawn French, writing in her memoir Dear Fatty (‘Fatty’ is her nickname for Jennifer), has also paid tribute to Jennifer’s outward detachment or cool, which conceals the brilliance of her observation.

      ‘She is constantly running a cynical, internal parallel tape of her real life, what she sees, hears, reads, eats, loves and hates, and it never ceases to amuse her.

      ‘It’s this sharp skill of observation that gives her the comedy spurs she uses to jolt her mind on from a trot to a canter when she is improvising or writing. On the surface, though, all is calm.’

      It is, of course, a traditional English trait to be reserved or self-effacing. Understatement is the name of the game, the hallmark of being… well, terribly British. The daughter of a former RAF Group Captain, she has her own take on this: ‘The big, overriding thing in our family was that any kind of taking yourself seriously was the biggest crime; you just didn’t do that. My dad said: “Be serious but never take yourself seriously.”’

      So there it is: a very big showbiz career, a close-knit family life that means everything to her, and an inability to emote or show off in person, no matter how flamboyant her comic creations, and you start to have a sense of the somewhat reticent but outrageously gifted Jennifer Saunders.

      Another important key to her real-life personality is that in times of adversity she refuses to make a big fuss: a recent bout of breast cancer was, typically, coped with quietly and as far from the public gaze as possible, until the time was appropriate to reveal what had happened. All conducted with total discretion.

      ‘How she managed to keep her illness under wraps in an industry that is so gossipy is massive,’ observed one seasoned TV writer.

      The media thrives on gossip: ‘Every stylist, every makeup artist, every person working in the studio tells everyone else stuff, no matter who it is. The way she managed to keep it quiet until after her treatment and recovery is incredible, but she’s earned that kind of privacy. The fact that she has never used her fame in any way meant that, when the time came, everyone around her wanted to close ranks and protect her.’

      Unknowable, cool, hugely attractive at every stage of her life and so very, very English, Jennifer Saunders continues to fascinate audiences of all ages around the world. It’s fair to say, too, that part of that fascination is probably derived from her enigmatic persona. Twenty-first-century celebrities who sign up for limited verbal exposure – Kate Moss is a very good example – create a mystique all their own, whether deliberately or not.

      This book will pay tribute to Jennifer Saunders’ talents and tells her story right from the beginning. This is not a heartbreak tale of someone from the back streets who had to claw their way to the top – to discover, when they got there, that they couldn’t cope with the pressures of fame. Nor is it a story about overnight success.

      Jennifer Saunders’ story is a tale of a shy, quiet middle-class English girl from a pleasant, rural background without any driving ambition to make herself known or forge a successful career as an entertainer. Until, by sheer chance, she spots an ad in a paper and finds herself climbing the narrow stairs of that strip club, in London’s Soho – the clichéd

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