Dawn and Jennifer reveal all about their new sketches in the French and Saunders Christmas Special, which airs on BBC1 on Christmas Day at 10.35pm
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are back on our screens with 300 Years of French and Saunders, a celebratory French and Saunders Christmas Special full of hand-picked clips and brand new material, including a send-up of Gogglebox.
Here they reveal how tough it was to get back to work…
What can you tell us about the new show?
Jennifer Saunders: "Well we’ve now lived long enough to actually be in our own clip show! It’s lots of clips, interrupted occasionally by us, and there is some new material."
Dawn French: "Very little though."
JS: "Yes because Dawn can’t remember lines anymore."
Tell us about the new sketches!
DF: "So Gogglebox is on the agenda and there’s a little sneaky peak at The Handmaid’s Tale. We might also visit Wonderwoman (below) and some ladies you might recognise called the Kar-crash-sians… see what we did there!"
JS: "We were trying to think up more new stuff but we don’t see each other very often – she lives in Cornwall."
DF: "The honest truth is that we met up for about three days and in that time we had to have some breakfast, and then we had to gossip about things. And then we had lunch and then we had to gossip. Then we had some cake, then we gossiped and we went home."
JS: "We had very limited time to write together."
DF: "Well we were given time Jennifer, it’s just we abused the time talking about horses, dogs and children."
The pair pop down to Poldark in the French and Saunders Christmas Special
What are your favourite French and Saunders clips?
DF "Anything where I’m being violent with Jennifer I find very pleasing [laughs]."
JS: "For me it’s anything where she is doing all the talking and I’m just sitting down."
DF: "I’ve got a great affection for the clip where I played Jennifer’s daughter, a clip that went on to be a giant success called Absolutely Fabulous, where I was replaced with a genuine young person."
How did you pick the best clips?
JS: "I had to do that, Dawn couldn’t be bothered! We basically tried to find the funniest ones, and some of our favourite stuff is the quirkier bits that haven’t been seen as much. Also we just like the ones where we look pretty."
DF: "That’s not very many, it would be about a two minute show on that basis."
