Dawn French

Dawn French

Dawn Roma French (born 11 October 1957) is an English actress, writer and comedian. In her career, she has been nominated for six BAFTA Awards. She is best-known for starring in and writing her comedy sketch show, French and Saunders, alongside her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and for playing the lead role of Geraldine Granger in the sitcom The Vicar of Dibley.

French was born in Holyhead, Anglesey, Wales to parents Denys Vernon French and Felicity "Roma" O'Brien, she was educated at the independent St Dunstan's Abbey School (now absorbed by Plymouth College) boarding school on North Road West in Plymouth, Devon, England. She has a brother, Gary French, who was born in 1955. Her father, Denys (5 August 1932 – 11 September 1977), was a member of the Royal Air Force being stationed at RAF Valley. The RAF partly funded her private education. She later won a debating scholarship that brought her to study at the Spence School in New York. It was after returning from New York that she broke up with her fiancé, David White, a former Royal Navy Officer.

French's confidence and self-belief stems from her father, who told her how beautiful she was each day. She stated, "He taught me to value myself. He told me that I was beautiful and the most precious thing in his life." He had a history of severe depression and attempted suicides but managed to conceal his illness from Dawn and her brother. He committed suicide in 1977 when French was nineteen and he was forty-five, having left the RAF.

She then went on to study at the London's Central School of Speech and Drama in 1977, where she met her future comedy partner, Jennifer Saunders. Both came from RAF backgrounds. They had grown up on the same base, even having had the same best friend, although never meeting. At first, as far as Saunders was concerned, French was a "cocky little upstart". The hatred was mutual: French considered Saunders snooty and aloof. The comic duo originally did not like each other as French actually wanted to become a drama teacher whereas Saunders loathed the idea and thus disliked French for being enthusiastic and confident about the course.

French and Saunders shared a flat whilst at college, and after talking in depth for the first time, they came to be friends. During her time at the college, French also worked as a chambermaid to earn money. After they graduated, they formed a double-act called The Menopause Sisters. Saunders has described the act, which involved wearing tampons in their ears, as "cringeworthy". The manager of the club where they performed recalled, "They didn't seem to give a damn. There was no star quality about them at all." French and Saunders would eventually come to public attention as members of The Comic Strip, part of the alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s.

French has also written a best-selling autobiography, entitled Dear Fatty, the term being a reference to the content of the book, namely, letters to the different people who have been in her life.

French has had an extensive career on television, debuting on Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents series in an episode called "Five Go Mad in Dorset" in 1982. Each episode presented a self-contained story distinct from other episodes, and showcased Comic Strip performers Peter Richardson, Rik Mayall, and Robbie Coltrane and Adrian Edmondson, in addition to French and Saunders. She acted in twenty-seven of the thirty-seven episodes, and wrote two of them. One week featured a parody of spaghetti westerns, and another, a black and white film about a hopelessly goofy boy. Some of French's first exposure to a wider audience occurred when comedy producer Martin Lewis recorded a Comic Strip record album in spring 1981, which featured skits by French & Saunders. The album was released on Springtime!/Island Records in September 1981 and presented Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders to an audience outside London. In 1985, French starred with Saunders, Tracey Ullman and Ruby Wax in Girls on Top, which portrayed four eccentric women sharing a flat in London.

French has co-written and starred in her own successful comedy series French & Saunders with Jennifer Saunders, which debuted in 1987 and still airs sporadically to this day. On their show, the duo have spoofed many celebrities such as Madonna, Cher and Catherine Zeta-Jones and they have also parodied films in the series such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After twenty years of them being on television together, their last sketch series, A Bucket o' French & Saunders, began airing on September 8, 2007.

French and Saunders have also followed separate careers. During French's time starring in Murder Most Horrid from 1991 to 1999, she played a different character each week, whether it was the murderer, victim or even both. In 2002, French appeared in the comedy/drama mini-series Ted and Alice. The series was set in the Lake District where French played a tourist-information officer who incidentally falls in love with an alien. She has also appeared in the BBC sitcom Wild West along with Catherine Tate, in which she played a woman living in Cornwall who is a lesbian more through lack of choice than any specific natural urge. This series was not met with as much success as her earlier role, ending after two years in 2004.

French's biggest solo television role to date has been as the title figure in the long running and popular BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley, created by Richard Curtis. She starred as Geraldine Granger, a vicar of a small village called Dibley. An audience of 12.3 million watched the final full-length episode to see her character's marriage ceremony. Her last appearance on The Vicar of Dibley was with Sting and Trudie Styler in a special mini episode made for Comic Relief in 2007. She was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Comedy Performance in the last episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Repeats of the show on BBC One still attract millions of viewers.

On television, French has kissed Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, George Clooney (in some cases for charity) and Gordon Ramsay. French also raised money for charity by kissing Hugh Grant.

It has been reported that French sold her autobiography, released in 2008, for £1.5 million. The book is in the form of letters. On an appearance on The Paul O'Grady Show on 6 October 2008, it was revealed that the title of the book is Dear Fatty. French said that "Fatty" is her nickname for Jennifer Saunders, as a joke about her own size. Dawn also said that she became great friends with Jennifer well before they started working together, which was "over 30 years ago".

In films, French has played The Fat Lady in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, replacing the late Elizabeth Spriggs, who played the character in the first film of the series. French's husband, Lenny Henry, provided the voice of the Shrunken Head in the same film, though they did not share any screen time together. In 2005 French provided the voice for the character Mrs Beaver in Disney and Walden Media's film adaptation of C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

She has also taken to roles in the theatre. French has previously appeared in plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, My Brilliant Divorce and Smaller, which is about a schoolteacher caring for her disabled mother. January 2007 saw French performing as the Duchesse de Crackentorp in an opera in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. The opera production was The Daughter of the Regiment (La fille du régiment) by Gaetano Donizetti, which depicted the life of a baby adopted by an army regiment. French soprano Natalie Dessay and the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez took the roles that required singing.

French is known for her larger figure and for her efforts to promote the notion that "big" can be beautiful. As a result, she has her own line of clothes, Sixteen47, taking its name from the statistic that 47% of the British female population are at least a size 16. The line aims to produce clothes designed to look flattering on larger women.

Her voice can be heard advertising the Tesco's "Every Little Helps" promotion.

The couple had a home in Shinfield, near Reading, in Berkshire which they recently sold to buy a property in Cornwall, where French intends to spend the rest of her life. It was once misinterpreted by the press that she was going there specifically to die because of an alleged belief that she would die prematurely. She quashed these rumours while appearing on Parkinson in November 2007 stating that she likes "being in one place" and simply hopes that this will be her last move. Both her grandmothers have lived to be well over the age of ninety. The £2.3 million mansion with 40 rooms overlooks a smugglers' cove in the Daphne du Maurier country. The grade II-listed building dates back to the 19th century.

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Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy

Dawn French's Girls Who Do: Comedy was an interview series shown on BBC Four. In the series, Dawn French interviewed some of the most prolific comedians of the century from Phyllis Diller to Catherine Tate and asked about life, love, family and comedy. The series was shown as 3 episodes featuring clips from French's various interviews with different comedians, however, from December 25 - December 30 in 2006 BBC Four showed six full interviews of 20-30 minutes. They are: (in order of re-broadcast on BBC Four) Whoopi Goldberg, Catherine Tate, Kathy Burke, Julie Walters, Victoria Wood and Joan Rivers. This is one of the last interviews done with the late comedienne, Linda Smith. Each episode ends with a tribute to Linda Smith.

It was followed in 2007 by Dawn French's Boys Who Do Comedy.

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Dawn French's Boys Who Do Comedy

Dawn French's Boys Who Do Comedy is a British TV series in which comedienne Dawn French interviews her favourite male comedians about how they came to be comedians. It is a follow up and counterpart to Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy.

The full BBC One series consists of three 30-minute programmes with 35 comedians, sewn together as if they were a single discussion. Programme 1 is about how family and early life influenced their careers, programme 2 is about the comedians' early careers, and programme 3 is about the experience of standing on stage in front of an audience. The decision was taken early in the production process to film with three cameras, largely in close up, and with very sparing use of archive material. Each show features five or six archive clips of a variety of other comedians past and present.

A spin-off series of six half-hour interviews , called Dawn French's More Boys Who Do Comedy, was transmitted on BBC Four, slightly bizarrely before the main BBC One series transmitted. The featured comedians were John Cleese, Graham Norton, Bill Bailey, Rob Brydon, Russell Brand and Ken Dodd.

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The Young Ones (TV series)

The Young Ones was a popular British sitcom, first seen in 1982, on BBC2. Its anarchic, offbeat humour helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers. Soon afterwards, it was shown on MTV, one of the first non-music television shows on the fledgling channel.

The programme revolved around four undergraduate students sharing a house: violent punk rocker Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson), pompous anarchist Rick (Rik Mayall), long-suffering hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), and the mysterious and diminutive Mike (Christopher Ryan). It also featured Alexei Sayle, who played the quartet's landlord, Jerzei Balowski, and other members of the Balowski family.

The show combined traditional sitcom style with violent slapstick, non sequitur plot-turns and surrealism. These older styles were mixed with the working and lower-middle class attitudes of the growing 1980s alternative comedy boom, in which all the principal performers except Ryan had been involved.

Although the series was set in North London, many external scenes were filmed in Bristol. All four characters attended the fictional Scumbag College, although they were never seen attending the institution and were rarely seen studying.

The show was voted #31 in the BBC's Best Sitcom poll in 2004.

As The Comedy Store became popular, Sayle, 20th Century Coyote and The Outer Limits, with French and Saunders and Arnold Brown, set up their own club called The Comic Strip in a nearby Soho strip club. The Comic Strip became one of the most popular comedy venues in London, and came to the attention of Jeremy Isaacs of Channel 4. Peter Richardson then negotiated a deal for six self-contained half-hour films, using the group as comedy actors rather than stand-up performers.

The first of this series, The Comic Strip Presents..., was on Channel 4 on 2 November 1982. In response, the BBC began negotiations with Edmondson, Mayall, Richardson, Planer and Sayle to star in a sitcom in a similar style. Paul Jackson was installed as a producer.

The series was written by Mayall with his then-girlfriend Lise Mayer, and with Ben Elton (who had attended the University of Manchester with Mayall and Edmondson). Richardson was originally set to play Mike, but clashed with Jackson. He was replaced by Christopher Ryan, the only member of the group who wasn't a stand-up comedian.

The series revolved around the squalid house where the students lived during their time at Scumbag College. It can be classified as a comedy of manners.

When it was first broadcast, the show gained attention for violent slapstick. Though new to mainstream audiences, Mayall and Edmondson had been using it in 20th Century Coyote for some time. The show also featured surreal elements, such as puppets playing talking animals or objects. Confusion was added with lengthy cutaways to scenarios not involved in the main plot.

Episodes in the second series sometimes included "flash frames" (three frames, equivalent to 1/8 of a second), but these were edited out of some repeats. These were included as a mockery of the British and American public's fear of subliminal messages in television and music. Unlike original flash frames, which lasted only one frame, these were long enough to be noticeable without actually being identifiable. The images included the end caption of Carry On Cowboy, a rusty dripping tap, a leaping frog, a dove in flight, a skier, and a hand making pottery.

The episodes ran 35 minutes, and episodes were very often edited to a standard half-hour running time when repeated on the BBC or satellite channels.

In the United States, The Young Ones ran on PBS, MTV and, in 1994, on Comedy Central.

The series' theme song featured the cast singing Cliff Richard and The Shadows UK #1 song "The Young Ones". Throughout the series there were many references to Richard, as Mayall's character was a fan.

The theme over the end credits was written by Peter Brewis, who also created the incidental music on many episodes.

In 1984, after the second season, Planer (in character as Neil) reached No. 2 in the UK charts with a version of Traffic's "Hole In My Shoe". The accompanying Neil's Heavy Concept Album, a loose collection of songs and spoken comedy, included appearances by The Young Ones alumni Dawn French and Stephen Fry.

In 1986, the cast sang "Living Doll" with Cliff Richard and Hank Marvin for Comic Relief. The song, a reworking of his 1959 hit, reached the top of the UK Charts.

Most episodes had a musical guest performing in the house or street. By including the groups, the show qualified as variety rather than light entertainment with the BBC and was allocated a bigger budget than a sitcom. This helped introduce several British bands to American viewers, such as Dexys Midnight Runners, Motörhead, and Madness. The latter appeared in two episodes; they were under consideration for a Monkees-style show at the time.

Some of these performances were omitted from DVD release for copyright reasons. Some musical acts were also edited out for similar reasons on some satellite reruns.

Played by Nigel Planer, Neil Pye, the hippy, is a clinically depressed, suicidal pacifist, vegetarian and environmentalist working towards a Peace Studies degree. He is victimised by other housemates (especially Rick and Vyvyan) and forced to do the housework, including shopping, cleaning and cooking. He is never acknowledged for it unless it goes wrong.

Neil is pessimistic and believes everyone and everything hates him, which is mostly true, though he does have some friends, two hippies, one also named Neil and one named Warlock. He dislikes technology except for videos and speaks out for Vegetable Rights and Peace. He is a chronic insomniac, believing that "sleep gives you cancer".

Neil wants the others to feel sorry for him, or just acknowledge his presence. His attention-seeking ranges from repeatedly banging himself on the head with a frying pan to attempting suicide. He claims "the most interesting thing that ever happens to me is sneezing". When that happens it results in a big explosion.

In the second series his parents - who appear in the episode "Sick" - are revealed to be upper-middle class. They are conservative Tories who look down on Neil for starring in such a disreputable comedy series.

Neil also says 'heavy' frequently.

Played by Rik Mayall, Rick is a self-proclaimed anarchist who is studying sociology and/or domestic sciences (depending on the episode). Rick writes poetry and calls himself "The People's Poet".

Rick is a hypocritical, tantrum-throwing attention-seeker who loves Cliff Richard. Rick tries to impress the others with his non-existent wit, talent and humour. He verbally insults and often physically assaults Neil at every opportunity. He fights and bickers with Vyvyan and attempts to impress Mike.

Rick's political beliefs vary, depending on how they benefit his particular situation. Mostly Rick is seen as being an anarchist, but in reality can be somewhat reactionary. Rick has an unhealthy obsesion with Leninism, a subject which he professess to be particularly enlightened about. While Rick sees himself as an enlightened revolutionary, he in reality has little understanding of the political ideals he purpots to follow.

Rick is a vegetarian, agnostic and wishes all men to love each other like brothers. However, he rarely does anything that can be attributed to brotherly love.

Rick is portrayed as unlikeable and so self-absorbed that he believes he is the "most popular member of the flat" even though his housemates hate him. Vyvyan describes Rick's name as being spelled "with a silent P". Despite the fact that the other members dislike and disregard Rick, he is heard to say that they "really are terrific friends".

Rick's self-obsession and naive belief everyone likes him is shown in 'Bambi', where he says in front of the other three, 'Hands up who likes me?'. In complete disbelief when they all state clearly they do not like him, Rick' proceeds to bet them money they do. He asks them again, and obviously loses. In dispair Rick then attempts to commit suicide by overdosing on laxatives.

Believing himself the 'People's Poet' or the "spokesperson for a generation", Rick exaggerates or lies about his political activism and class background and is exposed in the final episode "Summer Holiday", when it is suggested he comes from an upper class, Conservative background. He seems to also be a closet transvestite, as Neil found a dress in Rick's closet with his own name stitched on it in the episode "Nasty".

Rick perceives himself as an anarchist, but ironically is fond of ideals produced by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and states his interest in them in several episodes. He claims to dislike Margaret Thatcher, as is noted by his efforts threatening to blow up England with an atom bomb in the episode "Bomb" if she doesn't do something "to help the kids, by this afternoon." This is also noticed in "The Young Ones Book," first published by Sphere Books, wherein negative references are made to Thatcher and the Conservative Party.

Rick speaks loudly and cannot pronounce "r"s sometimes.

Played by Adrian Edmondson, Vyvyan is a punk rocker and medical student. He has orange-dyed & spiked hair and has several metal stars seemingly embedded into his forehead. In the episode Interesting, he shaves his head and the tattoo of 666 is visible on the side of his head. He is extremely violent and regularly attacks Neil and Rick with pieces of wood, cricket bats and other large objects. He never harms Mike, whom he respects, and often addresses as "Michael". He despises Rick more than he does Neil, taking every opportunity to insult and attack him. For example, when Rick, Mike and Neil meet his mother at a bar in the episode "Boring", he calls both Neil and Mike his friends, but not Rick, whom he refers to as "a complete bastard." Ironically, this antagonistic relationship between Rick and Vyvyan makes them virtually inseparable, as the two spend by far more time together than with the other housemates. Unlike Neil and Rick, Vyvyan appears to come from a working class background (something Rick incorrectly believes himslef to have).

Vyvyan owns a yellow Ford Anglia, with red flames painted along the sides, and a Glaswegian hamster named Special Patrol Group ("SPG" for short) which he is very fond of, although SPG is also frequently subjected to Vyvyan's extreme violence. His mother is a barmaid and former shoplifter, who before "Boring" had not seen Vyvyan in ten years and has no idea who his father is.

Vyvyan displays feats of inhuman strength on occasion (moving entire walls with his bare hands, lifting Neil above his head in a fight with Rick, biting through a brick and even being decapitated and re-attaching his own head), surviving a pick-axe through the head, and eats just about anything; televisions, dead rats, caviar and cornflakes with ketchup.

Despite being a homicidal maniac, Vyvyan seems quite sociable and creative; In one episode ("Flood"), he has developed his own potion to transform a person into an axe-wielding homicidal maniac (he claims "it's basically a cure... for not being an axe-wielding homicidal maniac... the potential market's enormous!"). He has more friends than the others but apparently "he doesn't like any of them." He frequently causes havoc or damage such as wiring the doorbell to a bomb and adding a 289 CID Ford V-8 engine to the vacuum cleaner which proceeds to suck up the carpet, the floorboards and a friend of Neil's (the vacuum also prompted one of the few clashes between Vyvyan and Mike; when Mike admonished Vyv not to use it anymore, Vyv replied by calling him a "poof"). Throughout the series, Vyvyan suffers near-death experiences, such as when Neil drives a pickaxe through his head or when his head is cut off by a train window. Disturbingly, Vyvyan also appears to be the only member of the group with a driving licence.

Played by Christopher Ryan, Mike was the odd-one-out of the four. He is the assumed leader of the group, despite his diminutive size, and does not involve himself in the battles between the other three. He makes puns, which are either deliberately cheap or humorous but over-celebrated.

He frequently utters confusing, profound-sounding phrases which baffle the others (for example, when asked by Rick if he stole his apple, Mike replies "Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original."). Mike is supposedly the ladies' man of the bunch and brags about his prowess with women, although he is shown to share his bed with an inflatable Sex doll and once almost admitted his virginity to the others in "Nasty." Though he is a virgin he makes every attempt at wooing the opposite sex, being quite forward and unsuccessful.

While Mike often does things at the expense or detriment of his housemates, he rarely expresses the sort of open hostility that the others do, and seems to cause them trouble only when it benefits him, rather than out of sadistic joy. He has, however, managed to nail his own legs to a table, and knocked Neil out during a game of cricket, albeit unintentionally. We only see violence inflicted on him twice (at the end of the "Living Doll" video, when Vyvyan knocks him unconscious with a hammer and in "Summer Holiday", when Neil transforms into the Incredible Hulk, who picks up Mike and throws him to the ground, however it turns out it was only Neil's imagination).

Throughout the two series, Alexei Sayle routinely appeared as many different characters, interjecting his own material into the programme in ways that emulated his stand up comedy routines. His main role was that of the flat's landlord Jerzy (Jeremy) Balowski, which was the only character he reprised, appearing in "Demolition", "Flood" and "Summer Holiday". The rest of the time, he was billed as playing various male members of "The Balowski Family", including nephew Alexei Balowski (a protest singer), son Reggie Balowski (an international arms dealer), brother Billy Balowski (a lunatic who believed he was a taxi driver), cousin Tommy Balowski (a drunk), escaped convict Brian Damage Balowski, and a medieval jester "Jester Balowski" (with Helen Lederer as his sidekick).

In the second series, Sayle's characters also included a train driver, a Benito Mussolini look-alike (by day the head of the local police force, by night an entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest), and "Harry the Bastard" (manager of the local Rumbelows store, disguised as a South African vampire).

Mike is the natural "leader" of the house. Always trying to make himself appear more important and exciting than he really is, he does appear to have done some of the things he claims to have done (such as getting Bambi the "Babycham" commercial in "Bambi"). He experiences little hostility from the other members of the house. If there is any "fruitful" or amicable relationship in the house it is between Mike and Vyvyan. Vyvyan accepts Mike's role as the house leader whereas Mike needs Vyvyan's physique and willingness to act forcibly to enforce his own authority (as was literally shown in "Oil" when Vyvyan became 'Col. Vyvyan', the right-hand-man to Mike's 'El Presidente'.

Neil is the second least liked of the four, although he is the only one who performs any kind of household chores and is therefore needed by the other three.

Rick is the least liked. Rick thinks very highly of himself. He tells poor jokes and stories (but finds them hilarious himself), is a would-be anarchist (although deep-down he is quite conservative) and frequently acts like a child when he doesn't get his way. He generally vents his frustration (when trying to impress the others) on Neil, since Neil never sticks up for himself and is ignored by the others. However, on the one occasion that Neil looked as if he was going to retaliate, Rick fled. The majority of his anger is generated in endless battles with Vyvyan, which he invariably loses. Rick is the only character which the viewer is made to feel no empathy towards, being as he is a complete hypocrit, completely self-obsessed, and while unfortunate things happen to him, they are always a concequence of nothing more then his own actions.

In the final episode, the four students steal a red AEC Routemaster after robbing a bank, only to drive it through a billboard with a picture of Cliff Richard on it and then over a cliff, exploding into flames at the bottom of a quarry.

The end of the series was not the last appearance of The Young Ones. For the British charity television appeal Comic Relief, the four recorded a song and video for Cliff Richard's "Living Doll", accompanied by Richard and Shadows guitarist Hank B. Marvin. Alexei Sayle was not involved, but had already achieved chart success in 1984 with "'Ullo John, Gotta New Motor?".

At the 1986 Comic Relief stage show they performed the song live (following a short skit which involved Rick doing a comic song about showing his underwear and bodily parts, before being ejected from the group by Mike, and Vyvyan supposedly having backstage sex with Kate Bush with Neil as his contraceptive). The skit climaxed with Neil claiming Cliff Richard could not perform with them and John Craven had been booked as a replacement, only for Cliff Richard himself to appear on stage.

In 1986 MTV aired edited versions of the episodes.

Mayall, Planer and Edmondson reunited in 1986 for the Elton-written Filthy Rich & Catflap. The series had many of the same characteristics as The Young Ones as did Mayall and Edmondson's next sitcom Bottom. Ryan, for his part, was regularly recruited to play roles on associated series (such as Happy Families, Bottom and Absolutely Fabulous). Mayall, Edmondson and Planer have also appeared in episodes of Blackadder.

DVD releases have been somewhat basic: only the U.S. "Every Stoopid Episode" edition featured documentaries and no extra footage was included. Musical references proved difficult to clear so "The Sound of Silence" (one line) and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" were excised from the U.S. editions. A "bloopers" tape made for the amusement of cast and crew has, according to a BBC employee, gone missing from the BBC archives.

The UK 25th Anniversary box set also features documentaries and claims to have the full uncut episodes.

In Bambi, the housemates appeared on University Challenge, where they played against Footlights College, Oxbridge, a reference to Footlights drama club at Cambridge University. The Footlights College team was played by show writer Ben Elton and three actors who were once members of the real Cambridge Footlights: Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, and Stephen Fry, the last of whom had actually appeared on the quiz show while at Cambridge. The episode title is a reference to the show's presenter, Bamber Gascoigne, impersonated by Griff Rhys Jones.

Mayall and Edmondson elaborated on some of the series' concepts later in their sitcoms Filthy Rich & Catflap (written by Elton, with additional material by Mayall) and Bottom (written by Mayall and Edmondson).

Most of the regular cast (and several of the guests) also appeared in Channel 4 and BBC2's comedy films, The Comic Strip Presents. All four main actors have since gained reputations as dramatic, as well as comic, actors.

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Wild West (TV series)

Wild West is a situation comedy screened from October 2002 until 2004 (12 episodes) starring Dawn French and Catherine Tate. It was described as a dark comedy from the pen of Simon Nye and was filmed on location in Cornwall. Set in the hamlet of St Gweep, Wild West observes the strange goings-on in the local Cornish community. Shop owners Mary Trewednack and her life-partner Angela are the main focus but there are many other strange characters in this sitcom.

The first series of the sitcom was scheduled to appear on prime-time BBC1 where its eccentricities met with a poor critical and popular response, but a second series was commissioned and both series have received retrospective praise.

Most of the sitcom was filmed in the village of Portloe in Cornwall.

The action centers around Angela (Tate) and Mary (French), a lesbian couple who run the local town store and post office. Though self-avowed lesbians, halfway through the first series Mary comments that the only reason they are a couple is because they were the only two people in town who weren't already in a relationship when they met. Some plots of first series episodes revolve around both of them pursuing romances with men and the jealousy the other partner experiences; by the second series, all mentions of a lesbian relationship are completely dropped, including a recurring gag during the opening credits that showed them in bed together. This is resolved in the final episode of the show.

Mary and Angela are friends with the village locals, including Holly (Duff/Weaver), owner of the local witchcraft centre; Harry (Mylan,) a young local hippy; Old Jake (Bradley,) who runs the local boat tour; Jeff (Foley), a swinger and sexual deviant who owns the local pub with his deaf wife Daphne; and PC Alan Allen (Wright), the somewhat bumbling policeman who becomes Mary's major romantic interest in series 2.

Each episode centers on a new situation that has come into the lives of the characters and how they deal with it, generally with a focus on the different ways in which Mary and Angela meddle in everyone's lives.

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