Joanna Lumley walks over with her arms outstretched: “Oh hello darling: don’t you look beautiful?” And there it is: as close to being fabulous as I’m ever going to get.
Peak, bouncing-into-the-red, critical-mass fabulousity.
Later, Jennifer Saunders, her Ab Fab partner, adds just a little extra sparkle by asking me what county I was born in: "Oh, I love Fermanagh," she gasps, with a little tug on my arm.
This is not one of those tricky, teeth-pulling interviews. Nor should it be. Absolutely Fabulous – now a major motion picture at a cinema near you – has been an unbridled success for both women. Borne of a 1987 French and Saunders sketch about an immature mother and her sensible teenaged daughter, the project was developed into a full series by Saunders when her onscreen partner Dawn French took a break to focus on her newly adopted baby.
Ab Fab – as it was soon known – became one of the most beloved sitcoms of the 1990s, spawning four series, a 20th-anniversary special and a 2001 French film, Absolument Fabuleux.
“To be honest, we were just killing time when it started,” says Saunders, who, happily, is in remission from breast cancer since 2010, and who is positively glowing.
"Here's a pilot. Let's see if it goes. Here's a series: let's see if that goes. And this is at a time when it was a lot easier to make TV. You didn't have to jump through quite so many hoops. So we'd do a series of Ab Fab. And we'd do a series of French and Saunders. And then we'd break for a couple of years. It all felt very organic. And even now, with the new movie, I thought it would be a small British film. Tomorrow's the premiere. I can't actually believe it. You never expect the next thing."
When did they realise that those characters – hapless fashion PR Edina Monsoon (Saunders) and her champagne-swilling co-dependant Patsy Stone (Lumley) – had become dissolute icons?
“When it hit New York, I think,” says Saunders. “And someone rang me to say: You’re on the side of a bus in New York.”
“Were we really?” asks Lumley. “In New York? I do remember once, an American slowed down in his car, and shouted out the window: ‘Hi, you crazy broads from England.’ And I thought, Oh my God, He knows who we are.”
“But you never think it will last,” adds Saunders.
Saunders and Lumley share an easy chemistry and military upbringings. Saunders’ father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force; Lumley was born in India, where her father served with the 6th Gurkha Rifles, a regiment of the British Indian army.
“It’s been fabulous between us from the very beginning,” says Lumley. “I couldn’t wait to get back between series. In the rehearsals, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.”
“That’s true,” says Saunders. “We become incapable with laughter. Often it’s not the thing they’re actually doing; it’s the reason that we’ve decided that they might be doing it. Something they might have done 10 years earlier.”
Drunk and indecorous
The film, as with its TV source, requires the twosome to drunkenly and indecorously fall out of cars in the small (and sometimes larger) hours of the morning. Is there a particular art to the arse-first pavement splat?
“You have to just let yourself go,” says Saunders. “You’re pretending you’re drunk so, ultimately, you just have to flop. Thing is, when we did the joke first in 1990, the car was only a little bit off the ground. This time it was one of these big fat limos and I looked down and thought: that’s actually quite a long way to the tarmac. The guy did lower the car with hydraulics. But it still hurt. By take three, I said: ‘Can we not do this any more, please?’”
It may not have helped that Saunders, who now has two grandchildren, and Lumley, who recently turned 70 (though you’d never place her north of 50), are finally old enough to play the characters they first essayed in the 1990s.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be old enough to play Patsy,” laughs Lumley. “I suspect she’s about 112.”
“Do you know, I knew more about the menopause before I was 40 than I did when I went through it?” says Saunders. “I did so much research for Edina. And then when it actually happened, I hardly noticed.”
Strangely prescient
Ab Fab's depiction of fashionistas and hangers-on – replete with fleeting obsessions, absurd vogues and nonsensical beauty treatments – now seems both strangely prescient and comparatively innocent.
“It must have been coming,” nods Saunders. “You only have to see a glimpse or hint of something to imagine what would happen if it was taken to extremes. I don’t think I could possibly have foresaw what’s happening now because we couldn’t predict the technology.
“We had a joke in the first series with Edina walking into the office with her great big brick of a mobile phone and saying: ‘I’m just coming into the office.’ And people thought it was one of the funniest jokes ever. And now it happens everyone all the time. You say: ‘I’m just coming in. Bye.’ And that’s our world.”
Vodka tie-ins
Today, in the countdown to the premiere, a flurry of PR activity – vodka tie-ins, themed cola bottles, the works – is in evidence. Meanwhile, the film is graced by such prominent fashion folk as Kate Moss, Stella McCartney, Lara Stone, Daisy Lowe, Alexa Chung, Lily Cole, and Suki Waterhouse. Doesn't anyone from the twin fields of fashion and PR ever get offended by Ab Fab's depiction of their endeavours? Why does the show, in common with The Devil Wears Prada, seem to be embraced by the very people it lampoons?
“But Edina is so desperate and bad at her job,” says Saunders. “So PR people always say: ‘We know her, we know someone like that.’ ”
“It’s the same with fashion people,” says Lumley. “They laugh. But they never know it could be them. It’s always someone they know. Of course, it’s never really getting at them personally. It’s about being in that world. And they, more than anyone, know about the ridiculousness of that world.”
These days, Lumley is almost as well known for her charitable work as she is for her acting. A vegetarian and patron of Trust in Children, Action on Addiction, Tree Aid, Population Matters, and Survival International, she fought successfully for the right of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers who served in the British army to settle in Britain. Playing the debauched Patsy must be a little cathartic between all that activism?
She laughs: “I know. Before I go to sleep every night, I think: have I hurt a single person today? Have I kissed the birds goodnight? All of the birds? But then Patsy is just fantastic. Jennifer writes her so I can say or do anything.”
She curls her lip into that patented Patsy sneer: “And then, it’s grrr.”
Peel away the preposterousness and all the celebrity baggage and there’s something genuinely wonderful about Edina and Patsy. They may be silly but they do have each other and no one could say that they bow to those ghastly “Things Women Can’t Do/Wear/Say after age 30/40/50” listicles.
“Who writes those awful things?” says Lumley. “We pretty much are who we are from almost the word ‘go’. We get more apps as we go along. We get more knowledge and wisdom. But that’s not really changing.”
“Did you just say: ‘We get more apps?’ ” asks Saunders.
“Oh yes. I thought it might be a groovy thing to say.”
“It’s honestly the grooviest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Who are we to argue?
