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TV WEEK MAGAZINE JULY 2001
OF COURSE YOU CAN LOVE CHOCOLATE!
she has flawless skin, a glossy mane of hair, a healthy heart and a big appetite
for chocolate... and actor-comedian dawn french intends to stay exactly that way.
the glamorous star poses for the crowd,
preening herself as the flashbulbs explode around her.but shes not some lithe, slim, young model. shes dawn french, in all
her ample vibrant glory.
As far as the 44-year-old uk star is concerned, large is lovely-and most of her admirers agree.
But how does she manage to keep her figure the way it is? "i recommend slabs of chocolate!" laughs the curvy celebrity, who
has a clause inserted in her contracts that there must be chocolate nearby when she's on the set of a film or tv program.
"Everybody says that you're supposed to do this and you're supposed to do that, you should do this and you should do that.
Eating chocolate has always been one of the don'ts... but what really makes you happy is doing what you really want to do.
Society's rules just make you unhappy. "besides, chocolate has good qualities. It's comforting, it gives you energy- and because
of its nutritional content, its capable of banishing a range of illnesses." If you think this sounds a bit like a sales pitch,
you're right. Dawn currently features on tv screens in comercials for a top-selling chocolate bar called terry's chocolate
orange, but she doesn't just draw the line there. "there are times when i'd do anything to get my hands on a terry's chocolate
orange, but im also a big crunchie and twix fan," giggles the star best known for her work in french and saunders and the
vicar of dibley.
dawns exercise routine is as diligent as her quest to find a chocolate bar to suit the occasion. it involves
doing absolutely nothing! "i've just had my health checked out and i'm completely healthy," she muses. "my hearts fine, and
i never get sick.
"if a doctor told me that i'd have to lose weight for the sake of my health, he'd have to show me conclusive
proof that my life was in danger before i'd go on a diet or a flurry of keep-fit activities." her lack of exercise doesn't
seem to have had any adverse affect on dawns appearance. her shiny mane of black hair, gleaming teeth and green eyes are complemented
by a flawless complexion. suprisingly, she has no beauty routine to speak of either. "i feel embarrassed about anything to
do with beauty," dawn admits. we're so hung up about being a particular shape or having a particular symmetry. i would rather
celebrate what people make of themselves. "i've never worried about whether my bums going to sag with age, because its been
sagging since i was 13!"
however, she doesn't let her ample figure stop her from donning the most elegant apparel she
can find. dawn doesn't have to look far if she wants to find a suitable outfit, because she and business partner helen teague
run a clothing label for larger women. "i was doscusted at the lack of outfits available for large women who like being the
way they are, so i decided to do something about it," she says. dawn joined forces with helen, who already had a retail and
manufacturing background in fashion. she provided the expertise and dawn the financial backing for a designer range they decided
to call 1647- so named because 47 per cent of women in the uk were size 16 or ubove when the collection hit the stores in
1991. "theres a sad misconception that big women aren't supposed to dress well or look good at parties," says the 157cm tall
star, who is a size 18. "1647 sniggers in the face of that myth."
the enterprise reported a $2 million turnover six years
after it began- but then partnerships are something that dawn is very good at. French and Saunders, created in the 1980's
with Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fame, still blitzes the tv ratings in the uk. the duo also toured there last
year, and their video French and Saunders live was released at the same time. "the gags about weight were in the video to
show the irony of the situation," dawn says. "there has always been a stigma associated with being overweight, as with being
some other stereotype. i dont have a problem about telling fat jokes because i dont have a problem with being the way i am.
"i just try to show how ridiculous it is that people get the mickey taken out of them for something they've accepted about
themselves. people think they hurt you, but they cant do you any harm if you're happy with the way you are." dawn has never
slimmed down for her tv or movie roles, and she was recently on the london stage sans diet in a version of a midsummer nights
dream. in fact, shes only been on a diet twice. the first time was when she married fellow comic lenny henry in 1984. "i went
on a crash diet to get into the wedding dress, which i did,"dawn says. "i thought, all these people are going to be gazing
at me, so i had better trim down. i wasn't really fazed about my weight, however, and being on a diet certainly knocked me
for six". dawns voracious appetite returned soon after her wedding to lenny. "i went back to eating chocolate and could probably
wear my nuptial dress as a stocking now," she laughs. the weight piled on again, but it didn't seem to have an adverse effect
on the relationship. dawns marriage to lenny was one of the happiest in showbiz until a couple of years ago, when lenny booked
into an exclusive clinic amid allegations that he slept with a hotel receptionist behind dawns back and snorted cocaine at
a party. nothing much was made of the incident, and his 17-year marriage to dawn seems to be firmly back on track. the second
time dawn went on a diet was so she could coax uk adoption authorities into letting them have their beautiful daughter billie.
her efforts paid off when she and lenny were awarded custody of billie, who is now 9. dawn is a very caring mum who loves
and protects her girl. "i did something incredibly stupid once, though," she confeses. "when billie was seven months old,
i was eating a mars bar and i looked at her and thought, i'd just love to witness that moment when a baby tastes chocolate
for the first time. so i did it very quickly , so that she hardly knew what had happened. "then i saw that expression on her
face which said, what is all this rubbish you've been giving me up untill now? give me chocolate from now on! i knew from
that moment that i was going to have to start hiding my stash of twix and crunchie bars!"
dawn hopes billie will grow
up with the same sort of attitude that she has developed. she loves herself, and others love her for being herself... but
does she ever intend to change her habits? "i'll stay the way i am until the fat lady sings," dawn replies. |
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The Independent, 1 April 2002
Dawn French: The French connection
Three years after a nasty brush with the tabloids, Dawn French is still wary of the press. But here, in a rare interview,
she talks frankly about marriage, motherhood, adoption, insecurity - and how she came to fall in love with an alien
The Brian Viner interview
How exciting. I have a rendezvous with Dawn French, who between you, me, and an absurdly ornate bedpost, I have always
rather fancied. I am waiting for her in a rococo bedroom suite at Home House, a flamboyantly decorated private members' club
in Portman Square, London. It is the Groucho Club-meets-Versailles. Indeed, since, in my excitement, I have arrived 20 minutes
early, I have time to read in a brochure that Home House used to be the French Embassy at the time of the French Revolution.
Which makes it an apt setting for a "French" rendezvous (the more so considering the sitcom she did that was set at the court
of Louis XVI, a rare French & Saunders turkey called Let Them Eat Cake).
The Lady Islington suite, where I am waiting, has a vast and extravagant marble bathroom designed in the Pompeian style
by the Marchese Malacrida, so the brochure informs me. When French arrives, looking short, round and gorgeous in a capacious
black two-piece, I suggest doing the interview in the bathroom. She chuckles. She has a wicked chuckle.
I whip out not one but two tape-recorders. Belt- and-braces, I tell her, although, naturally, being a highly experienced
journalist, I am capable of shorthand. "Right, I'm going to test you later," she says. I titter nervously. "Mind you, you
could show me any old scribble and I wouldn't know." Another chuckle. For one so wary of the press, and so economical with
her interviews, she seems relaxed, infectiously jolly. Her West Country vowels – her father was in the RAF and she went
to boarding-school in Plymouth, her parents' home town – are more noticeable in person than they are on the telly.
Starting this Thursday, she stars in a three-part BBC drama series, a romantic comedy called Ted and Alice, set in
the Lake District. She plays a tourist-information officer who falls in love with an otherworldly chap (Stephen Tompkinson),
then finds that his otherworldliness is literal, for Ted is an alien.
Ted and Alice was written by Nick Vivian, the partner of Jane Horrocks. French asks whether I know him. "He's quite
badly behaved and very good for drinking with. Lenny [her husband, Lenny Henry] knows him very well. He's got great stories,
and he's a good writer, so there were lots of good reasons to do it."
However, filming in the Lake District meant spending time apart from her 10-year-old daughter, Billie, which filled
her with angst. "I can't bear to be away from her too much, and this was the first job that has taken me away for any length
of time. Even when we [she and Jennifer Saunders] were on tour, I was away for no more than three days at a time. With this,
I couldn't get away all week. It was like my heart would break. I can only compare it to having a new lover, when you just
can't bear to be separated and it becomes sort of obsessional, you need to see them all the time.
"I need to know what she's done nearly all day, and I'm not interested in anyone else like that. I want to know what
she feels about everything, what she's seen, what she's experienced, how she's changing. She's very mercurial, and I'm fascinated
by how she perceives things. I didn't know I would be quite as obsessional. It's as well I've only got one child."
Billie was adopted, and I tell French that I was, too. In fact, the next five minutes of the precious hour I have been
allocated are taken up with her asking questions of me. Like Billie, I was an only child. I ask French, who is 44, whether
she and Henry have ever considered adopting another child, or trying to have one naturally (not even her unofficial biographer,
Alison Bowyer, who otherwise did a thoroughly nosy job, was able to find out whether one or other is unable to have children).
"We did think about it, yes. But I didn't want to do it enough. Then I started to realise that the only reason for
it would be to provide a companion for her, and I didn't think I could look a kid in the face and say, 'You were really a
pet'. I thought we might as well get a dog, which, in fact, we've just done.
"If another kid had happened, I guess I would have felt differently, but it's such a total life-changing thing, I'm
not sure I'd have the energy to do it all over again. Motherhood has tested me beyond belief. It's absolutely not what I thought
it was going to be. It's almost the opposite, in fact. I thought, in typical Dawn-style, that I'd be able to organise her
into my life, but in fact we've all been organised into hers.
"And although I didn't have the hormonal thing after we adopted Billie, I still went slightly mad. When I went back
to work, I'd gone a bit cardigan. I hadn't read anything, hadn't talked to anyone. Well, I had with Len, but I just felt very
fat-headed. I think a lot of women go through it. It's possibly nature's way of making you go all domestic. You'd better not
be longing to read a book, because you need to mash up more carrots.
"Jen [Saunders] has three kids, but she does it much better. She's one of those women who can manage [motherhood] without
it taking over too much. There are others of us who can't. It totally drains you, and you realise that you're not the person
you thought you were. Suddenly, you're this person called Mum – and it's not a bad thing, it's quite a good thing –
but it takes a while to retrieve your personality.
"And you can't write comedy when your head feels full of cotton wool. I was angry about that. I know it's something
men think happens to women when they have babies, and I was really annoyed that I had it. Because I was out to lunch for a
long time. It was like walking through treacle, though I got there in the end. Which is a long explanation of why I don't
really want to do it all over again. I went back to work with very little confidence, and I'd never had that before."
Just to compound that feeling of insecurity, of standing at the sidelines while the comedy bandwagon rolled on without
her, it was while French took time off during the adoption process that Saunders, for want of anything better to do, turned
a short sketch that the pair of them had performed into the hit sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Still, French has benefited from
Saunders' Ab Fab-inspired popularity in America, for the pair are currently discussing an option to develop their stage show
for US consumption. Not that it will be easy to find the time. French is committed to starring in a new sitcom, written by
Simon Nye, in which she plays a grumpy Cornishwoman, enabling her to crank up those West Country vowels. Moreover, an American
tour might mean further separation from Billie. French thinks it unlikely.
"Mind you," she adds, wistfully, "I do love to go to New York. Mainly for the shopping. My first stop used to be for
Reese's Cup Cakes, but you can get them here now. I know all the big-girl shops in New York. They know about big girls in
the States." A huge chuckle. "Lenny is very used to sitting outside them for many hours, with a good book. I don't shop at
all in this country. There's nowhere for me to go other than Evans. It used to really annoy me, but now I can't be bothered
wasting the energy. I do think they're foolish, though. They're missing out on a massive market."
It is a market, in actual fact, that she has successfully tapped herself. She is co-owner, with her friend, the fashion
designer Helen Teague, of a shop in London called French & Teague. Their label, 16/47, also sells in Evans. She is perfectly
content with her weight, she adds, but it became an issue during the adoption procedure. "I was told that I had to lose weight
– it was non-negotiable. That was hard for me. No-one had ever said that to me before, and I had never agreed to do
it before. I'm actually the sort of person for whom it's quite a big deal not to [lose weight]. I'm so comfortable after all
these years, and I thought, 'who are they to tell me this, unless they can prove to me that I'm going to die?'.
"What they were looking at was charts. I had to be in the middle of a chart, and I don't want to be in the middle of
anybody's chart. But I was told, 'These are the rules'. I had to lose five stone, and I did. They said, 'Are you going to
whack it back on straight away?'. I said 'I don't know. I've never done it before. But I'm not going to spitefully eat loads
of doughnuts, if that's what you mean'."
Billie has always known that she was adopted. I ask French whether she worries that her daughter will one day ask to
meet her biological mother. "Well, at the moment she's more interested in herself, the story of herself. She's a complicated
kid, but I don't know whether she'd be like she is if she weren't adopted. Jen says her three are all completely different:
'Other than looking a bit like us, I don't know who they are,' she says, 'so don't be too quick to think it's because of the
adoption'.
"Whatever she wants to do when she's 18, we'll support her. What I do worry about is anyone else making the decision
for her. I have a great fear of the press, and I'm very, very guarded. I've had to take out injunctions, because somebody
wrote a biography of me and was getting very close [to revealing the identity of Billie's birth mother], and I was like, get
lost, this is not about show business, this is a kid's life. I don't want anyone rocking the boat until she's ready to rock
it herself."
I feel like applauding, but instead I ask how French dealt with a different assault by the media – the tabloid
allegations three years ago, that Henry had spent a night in a hotel with another woman.
"It feels like you're being bullied, and I'm not a victim person, but you just have to eat it, which I find quite hard.
If I was in the playground being bullied, I would first use my brain, and then my fists. But you can't do that. And these
lies become your history. I'm amazed that we've become this society of gossipy twits, although I admit I do get Hello! every
week. I don't mind Hello! because it's chirpy and positive. Jen and I cut out people's heads and put them on other people's
bodies."
And with that rather curious thought implanted in my mind, it is time for me to leave. Another huge chuckle follows
me out of the Lady Islington suite, past the Pompeian bathroom. I still wish that we'd done it in there.
'Ted and Alice' starts on Thursday, 9pm, BBC 1 |
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