Dear Fatty (15 page)

Obviously, admitting this does not commit me to any form of pecuniary reimbursement. You will have the ankle bracelet, and that’s that. We’re quits.

May my suffocatingly enormous love for you smother you to certain death.

Your devoted hag

I HAVE ALWAYS
enjoyed partnerships. It’s how I think and work best. A chum to bounce ideas around with, to have a career with and laugh your tits off with, like Jennifer. A chum to trust and to go into business with, someone who inspires and motivates you, like Helen Teague. A chum to dress up in bridesmaid gear with and share dreams of hairdos and bouquets, like Sarah. A chum to guide and listen, to share home truths and teenage wrangling tips with, to be continually delighted with their direct-from-heaven-via-nowhere-else talent, like Alla. A chum to gossip and chirrup with like Di Cracknell. I have needed every one of these important partnerships and I have greedily gorged on all of them, and felt grateful to know and care for these wonderful women. And to be cared for
by
them.

You. You have so generously encouraged me to give myself to these remarkable relationships because you know the utter joy they have given me back. The bigness of your love is astounding. You are selfless. I don’t know how you are able to be the phenomenon you are. I don’t know anyone else like you and I never will, it’s too tall an order for any other human to emulate the beauty you have. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I reckon you are the result of several astonishing souls merged together. If I had to put the ingredients together, I’d say you consist of varying degrees of the following (apologies to those still alive!):

Bessie Smith for raunch and heart

James Joyce for rich characterisation

Spike Milligan for wit and splendid insanity

Van Morrison for poetry

Mother Teresa for patience and selfless love

Lassie for alertness to danger

Emily Pankhurst for righteous anger

Anne Frank for bravery, dignity and hair grips

Liberace for campness and bling

Tinkerbell for fairy outfits and shoes

Giacometti for surprise and elusiveness

Howard Hughes for fiercely private

Hercules for tenacity and stamina

Mary Magdalene for sauciness and forgiveness in equal measure

Tiny Tim for fun and silly singing in a high voice

Garbo for style and class

Dusty Springfield for song and soul

Edith Piaf for heartache

Marilyn Monroe for ditz

St Joan for dedication and commitment

Cher for chutzpah

Joyce Grenfell for pure funny

Archangel Gabriel for heavenliness

Jung for philosophy and method

Mike Yarwood for mimicry

Confucius for wisdom

Marianne Faithfull for hair and make-up

Lilith for earthy rootyness

Your mum and dad for everything else

Meeting you at college was my saving grace. I arrived late for the start of term, and I didn’t really fit in. The groups had forged themselves and I was a sort of lost puppy bounding hopefully between them, looking for a way in. My dad had committed suicide a matter of weeks before and I was dripping with sadness. But of course grief is invisible and suicide is tricky to introduce as an ice-breaker, so I kept it to myself until I knew and trusted people more. You have an extrasensory superpower, and it wasn’t long before you sniffed me out as the walking wounded, which was remarkable considering you weren’t even in my year. Central School of Screech and Trauma was run under a regime of separation. The actors didn’t speak to the lowly teachers (who were, in their opinion, people who had failed to make it onto the acting course), the speech therapists were distinctly aloof, so only those on the stage-management course were friendly with everyone else, and that’s because they were too knackered to put up any resistance. On reflection, I can’t understand why the staff allowed or even encouraged these damaging segregations. Except, of course, that they themselves were divided. Anyway, it was unusual to mix with folk from other years and you were someone who refused to be limited by that. I remember very early on, you required of me a proper, formal commitment to this new friendship. I think you must have been subconsciously searching for a ‘bestie’ forever, and when we set our sights on each other there was, frankly, no other avenue open except total devotion. I knew instantly that I would know and cherish you till my dying breath, or yours. I would truly lay my life down for you, give you my kidneys, my eyes, my teeth, my tits, whatever you ask for. That’s the key though, isn’t it? You never do ask, for
anything
really, which is why I belong to you. Our friendship is a labour of love, a pledge to keep watch over each other and to stay constant. It is a quiet arrangement. Deep calling to deep. I will never leave my post, I will remain vigilant, I will not falter, I will always forgive. These are our unspoken vows and I respect them. The massive anchoring stability of my love for you, and vice versa, means that I can float about quite carefree in the surety of it all. You know any secrets I have, you know my fears, my demons and my delights, and I yours. I feel honoured to have obligations to you. You make a mirror for me in which I used to seek out my shortcomings, but with your ceaseless support I have learned to recognise my strengths. What a very grown-up thing to do.

Being grown up isn’t exactly a mainstay of our partnership though, is it?

Do you remember when Billie was about to arrive? We only had a week or so’s notice and I had to somehow get every bit of baby kit together in one day, without rousing any suspicion. It was essential that her arrival was calm and unannounced by the press. We wanted her to come home without any fuss and to nest in with her away from any noisy publicity. It was the most important thing we had ever done and we were very serious and protective. Fatty swung into action, like a superhero, helping me to suddenly walk out on a
French and Saunders
series that was in production by taking over the crew, the studios, the whole obligation and plonking her new sitcom idea
Absolutely Fabulous
right down on it instead. It fitted well. She has since said that she needed that kick up the bum to force her to develop the idea we had written together in a single sketch on our show a year or so
before
. She was thrown in at the deep end and swam easily along with her brilliant new project to buoy her up.

On the day in question, Len and your chap Barrie remained at home putting up shelves and trying to navigate their way around the construction of a cot. Potentially disastrous. We drove the 40-odd miles into London and parked behind Mothercare in Hammersmith. Your mission, which you boldly chose to accept, was to pose as the heavily pregnant first-time mother, and I was there as your mate, helping you to select all your baby kit. I nearly peed with glee when you shoved our sofa cushion up your front and rearranged it under your top to look convincing. We went into the store and you were immediately offered seating and a glass of water, which you graciously accepted. You stumbled about a bit when a young assistant asked ‘how far on’ you were and when the ‘little one’ was due. You had to do some quick mental maths – never your strong point. With my hasty calculations you were confidently informing her the baby was going to be eleven months in gestation …

Our elaborate system of coded winks and blinks and coughs meant that you could be seen to be choosing everything you wanted for your baby, whereas in reality I was making every choice. The downside of you being up the duff was that I had to load up the car while you looked on smugly from the comfort of your chair in the shop, nursing your ‘swollen’ ankles. With the car now full of baby stuffing we went home, where you gave birth to your baby cushion in a hilarious display of torturous labour. That cushion slept in that cot until that real bundle turned up. You were a great decoy.

We go back a long way, you and I. Thirty years or so, I reckon.
We
have witnessed the big stuff of each other’s lives haven’t we? The loves, successful and disastrous, the weddings, the IVF, the miscarriages, the births, the adoption, the kids, the families, the deaths, the birthdays, the meals, the New Years, the houses, the schools, the pets, the shoes, the choices, the phases and the fads. The friends and the enemies. We steer each other on with unfaltering concern. We keep each other safe and steady, and because of that, we can take the chances we do.

Big respec’ to the BF.

HELLO, MY NAME
is Dawn French and I’m 14 years old and your biggest fan. We are doing a project at school about investigating song lyrics and looking for the subtext behind them. I love and therefore have chosen your song ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’. A lot of people probably think it’s about a goat. I know you are a kind, handsome, wise man who wouldn’t just simply sing about a goat for goodness’ sake, so I know it must have a more deeper meaning. So I went looking for that meaning, rooting around in the lyrics for what you really meant to say.

The first verse concerns Patrick from the title, and his buying of the goat. He claims that ‘I mean to have me fill’ of goat’s milk, he’s obviously very excited. But of course, when he gets it home, he discovers the Nanny goat is in fact a Bill, or Billy goat, meaning a male. Is this some kind of representation of the disappointment Patrick feels about his life? Or are you trying to say something important about what we call ‘the
troubles
’ in your fair Emerald Isle of Ireland, maybe? Or not? Or yes?

In the second verse, you refer to ‘all the young ladies who live in Killaloo’, and you sing, rather daringly I suspect for you, about their many undergarments. After you have described their petticoats you say, ‘leave the rest to Providence and Paddy McGinty’s goat’. Now, I looked up the word ‘providence’ in the dictionary and it says ‘the foresight and benevolent care of God’, so I’m wondering whether, for you, the goat is some kind of Holy Spirit? Like a fourth member of the great celestial trinity? Am I close? Or could it be very different? After all, Satan, who is the opposite of God, is often depicted as a goat, isn’t he? That is certainly food for thought.

Later on in the song, you mention that the goat munches on Norah McCarthy’s trousseau, which was hanging on the line. You say he ‘chewed up all her falderals, and on her wedding night’. Are you trying to make a comment about marriage and the sacred commitment people make to each other? Or the lack of it or something? What exactly are falderals, I wonder?

Actually, I’ve just had another listen to the song and I have a creeping feeling that perhaps it
is
just about a goat, which would be a shame, but I still like the song. Especially the way you sing it, so jauntily. I also really love your jumpers and your rocking chair, which make you seem like you are such a friendly man. I really mega love it when you are singing your lilty love songs, which I stupidly sometimes think are mainly just for me. Ha ha! … Are they?

On a finishing note, if ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’
is
just about a goat, does that therefore mean that ‘Delaney’s Donkey’ is about
a
donkey? Which would be awful because I’d worked out it was mainly about love.

With all my very best hugs to you, my special favourite singer.

I LOVE THAT
you are good at horses. You’ve got the lingo and the gear and the confidence, and you know what you are talking about. I think your mum knows stuff, doesn’t she, and you have absorbed a lot of knowledge over time and now you have a full and valid passport for Planet Equine. You are unafraid, for instance, to own a yardful of beautiful horses, and I admire that spirit in you.

Let me tell you
my
experience of horses: I always wanted a horse. I read
Black Beauty
. I watched
Follyfoot Farm
and
National Velvet
. I sang along with
The Lightning Trees
and Jackie Lee’s ‘White Horses’ till my head hurt. I pleaded with my dad to buy me a horse, but RAF quarters only have tiny gardens as you know, so I had to settle for lessons, which I took eagerly, everywhere we lived. All the while, I continued to fantasise about owning my own ONE day, please GOD, one day.