From The Vault: Dawn French

this is a global player original podcast

Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure. As the new year begins and we all slowly emerge from the soft blur of the Christmas break, there is something rather comforting about returning to a conversation that offered warmth, humour and... some unexpected perhaps perspectives since we launched full disclosure in 2019 we've been lucky enough to sit down with countless extraordinary people from right across public life and beyond but every so often there's an interview that stays

with you even longer than the others and long after we've packed up the studio this week we are going back in time right into the vault if you prefer to revisit a conversation with the incomparable and inimitable dawn french it really is one of the most generous funny and moving episodes that we've ever recorded you know her of course as a beloved actor writer comedy pioneer whose work truly transcends generations

But what makes this conversation so special for me is the openness with which she reflects on everything from her nomadic childhood in an RAF family to the love that fortified her, the loss that changed her. accidental beginnings of a career that has helped redefine British comedy. From boarding school to New York to the wild early days of the comic strip and that lifelong bond with Jennifer Saunders. All of it.

examined and explored with dawn's unmistakable wit and honesty if you've heard it before it's a perfect companion for easing yourself back into the rhythm of the new year and if it's new to you then you're in for a real treat This is a Global Original Podcast.

And welcome to the latest episode of Full Disclosure with me, James O'Brien, a podcast project designed to allow me to spend a little bit more time than is ordinarily available with some of the people I find most delightful or most interesting in the podcast. a description which couldn't fit this week's guest better. I speak, of course, of Dawn French. Hello, Dawn. Hello. Nice to see you. It's very nice to see you. I have had the pleasure of interviewing you.

before and it occurred to me while i was looking back on our previous encounters that you you i find it impossible to believe that you are as happy and well adjusted as you always seem

No, I can be grumpy and stinky. And, you know, I can be overanxious. I can catastrophize. And I can continue with this list of all my shortcomings. But hopefully... some of the other stuff uh outweighs that begin at the beginning if we may and then we'll work towards the latest book because of you your publishers are very helpfully we have the same publishers actually so i think i can take the mickey out of them without

offending too many people. They very helpfully supplied me with some discussion points, Dawn French, in case either of us ran out of things to say, I think, presumably. Us both being so famously quiet and reticent. This could be...

This could be a godsend, but we'll work our way towards that. Let's begin at the beginning in 1957. It was an RAF family you were born into. Very briefly, I never knew that your mother's maiden name was O'Brien. So chances are we're related somewhere back in the midst of time. Yeah, we might be. It might be. Well, her father, actually, I think her father had a Scottish accent because he'd spent time in Scotland. But in fact, I think we're Irish, as simple as that.

Like all the best people. What are your memories? Because it was an RAF family, wasn't it? It was just something that you'd have in common with Jennifer Saunders, of course. Did that mean that you moved all over the place and you went to different schools every year or was it more stable than that? No, that's exactly what it meant. Certainly in the first part of my childhood, up until secondary school, we moved around a lot. And I was born in Hollyhead because my dad was stationed there.

uh at the time aria valley which i think is where prince william was for a while but anyway uh that's where my dad was so i was born there for the first four years of my life um my brother would come home from school speaking Welsh because he learnt Welsh at school. I didn't get to go to school in Hollyhead, but he did. I think there was a kind of, there was a situation where the people who were on the RAF camps, like everywhere that we went, were the incomers.

So, you know, there was a kind of nice prickly relationship between the locals and the incomers. Because whenever you create a friendship, whenever my mom tried to create friendships, people, local people know that you'll be gone in a minute. You're forever trying to insert yourself into friendship groups and so on. So it's quite hard work and you're fairly isolated as a family.

But yeah, most of my young childhood was spent traveling around. And my mum did point out... to me that we used to sleepwalk a lot, my brother and I. And I think it was a kind of anxiety about changing schools all the time and being the RAF brats, you know, wherever we went.

But we were a family together, moving to every place. And one very, I suppose, comforting thing about being in the REF is that each camp that you go to, the house is exactly the same as the house that you have just come from. right down to the furniture, G plan furniture, the same layout. Everything is the same, except for you're now in Lincolnshire or you're now in Scotland or...

you know, wherever, or Cyprus even. We went to Cyprus for four years of my young childhood, which was heavenly. I mean, really heavenly. And we only went to school... in the mornings because it was so hot. And in the afternoons, which is, I cannot believe this was the case, but it was my mum was working and my dad was obviously working. So somebody's parents, you know, somebody that was designated that week to be on kid duty would pick us up, a whole gang of us, take us to a beach.

at about one o'clock give us some money for Fanta and you know crisps and then come and get us at seven o'clock in the evening so you know for 20 kids on their own, on the beach, no suntan lotion because nobody had such a thing. We were all nutty brown kids with bleached blonde hair who were in and out of snorkeling.

Every afternoon in Cyprus for four years. I mean, you know, what's to complain about then? Nothing. Well, no. And four years is a fair old stretch. So that idea of being dislocated is, I mean, presumably you had proper friends. Do you have any friends?

From your earliest year, from your school days still today? No. I have friends from my secondary school because what the... services know is that you will need some kind of consistency at some point, you need some kind of security. So they pay for you to go to private school, because that's where boarding schools are. so that you can settle.

And so my parents thought this was amazing. I'd get to go to a public school and this was posh and phenomenal. And so they chose a school in Plymouth for me to go to. My brother went to the kind of... boy version of it and we were boarders and but we were in with kids that either had lots of money their parents had lots of money or they were posh

or they were in the services like us. So it was a very odd situation, having your schooling with kids that you wouldn't normally meet other than the other service kids. So that did feel... Strange. We were always a little bit fish out of water with that. But it placed me in Plymouth then, which is where both sets of grandparents were. And I was on weekly boarder. So I could go to grandparents at the weekend.

And you thrived, I think, at school? I mean, certainly you won a big scholarship to New York, didn't you? A debating scholarship a little later. I did, yes. I won a scholarship with the English Speaking Union because, frankly, I wouldn't stop speaking. Well, you're being very modest. hard to win that scholarship in the English speaking world that means you get to spend a year abroad in your first year after school I think

Yes, it was an exchange scholarship. So, yes, you had to go through a kind of debating competition. Crush and utter love for my drama teacher at school. And she took me under her wing. And she helped me prepare for this debating. scholarship. I mean, we didn't do a lot of debating at school, but so she had to teach me how you would do it. And she gave me subjects like, you know, the old capital punishment school uniform, you know, and get.

And I had to prepare for that. And actually, do you know what really happened? Was that you had to have someone who would second you to go forward for the scholarship. And the person who seconded me was Michael Foot. No way. Yeah, because he was a local MP in Plymouth. So he seconded me. I mean, I didn't really ever, I don't think I ever met him, but he was at one of the competition. In fact, I think he judged it. That's why he judged the competition.

So he seconded me to get that scholarship. So when I left school after my A-levels, I spent a year in New York then, which was amazing. Presumably then, if it was the drama teacher who was your sort of mentor, you were doing acting at school.

that bug arrived quite early. It did, but the acting bug was only with her in a little... private classes after school you could get a sort of a half hour once a week with her and via that I did the lambda examinations where you stand up and do a little piece and you know get your medals and all the rest of it so yes I did do that although I didn't ever think that would be my future. Well, no big productions then.

No, tiny little bit of Moliere and, you know, the odd nativity and panto type thing at school, but nothing big. No, nothing big. So if I'd met you... Oh, I did do. I'll tell you what I did do. Sorry, Jane. Go on. I did do... mainly because it was in conjunction with the boys' school, which meant that, you know, you got out from the girls and went and met the boys, and that was enough of a reason for me.

We did do Henry IV, part two, with the local boys' school, and that was a huge treat, and I slightly fell in love with Falstaff. Who did you play? I played Dolterre Sheet. okay you've lost my scholarship it's like a sort of bawdy woman right you know lots of bawdy jokes that nobody can understand because they're shakespearean

If I'd met you then, as you were heading off to New York, and I said, what do you want to be when you come back? What would you have said if you hadn't got the performing bug at that point? What bugs did you have? basically wanted to be my drama teacher. I just wanted to be her. So I wanted to teach drama in English and that's what I went on to train to do and entered into that with the full intention of being a teacher.

at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Where you bumped in fairly early on, I think, to another young woman from an RAF background by the name of Jennifer Saunders. I mean, I like these moments, but presumably it's hard for you to remember how much of it has become mythologised in both of your memories.

Yeah, that's right. Did your eyes meet across a crowded canteen or a script meeting or did you just rub along for a while and suddenly wake up one day and realise she was your best friend? Well, do you know, I remember it very clearly because my dad sadly committed suicide and it was just before I was due to go to college. And so two weeks later.

After that happened, with my mum propelling me forward and insisting that I still took my place at college, I arrived in London, having lived mostly in Cornwall and Devon.

Central School of... greech and trauma um to um you know this course this teaching course where everybody had yet again established all of their kind of friendship groups and had started the lectures um and so the day one uh was something called tumbling can you imagine anything worse than that um which meant you had to put a leotard on can you imagine anything worse than that and um so i've got my leotard

I went into a room and there was Jennifer on the other side of the room. And she was by then in with a rather beautiful group of girls. There were two or three of them, all posh, all quite thin. who looked great in their leotards, like me. And I remember looking across the room and thinking, oh, well, that's the unattainable group. I haven't got a chance with them. I'll stick with the tubs on this side of the room.

And I did do that. And so I sort of circled her, really. I wasn't that interested in her. I just thought she was a bit aloof. too posh for my liking i had a massive prejudice against posh people and she sounded plummy and um you know whatever i i just i didn't really like the cut of her jib let's put it that way and then a few weeks later

We had a mutual friend who had a flat, a really nice flat in Chalk Farm that she was looking for people to share with her. And I needed to move and Jennifer needed to move. So I remember thinking. I'd like to live in that gorgeous flat, but unfortunately I have to do it with that posh twit. And the rest is history, so to speak.

You mentioned, I'm surprised to hear you hear that word unattainable, and I don't want to gloss over the loss of your father, but neither do I want you to discuss anything that makes you uncomfortable. But I remember when I interviewed you many years ago, I've never forgotten...

how much and how constant your father's praise for you was, not just in the kind of abstract ways, but constantly telling you you were beautiful, which I think you feel is a huge part of your sort of psychological foundations.

Absolutely. I mean, I'm more than aware that when you lose your dad, who is your hero when you're 19, which I was, you don't really get to meet your flawed... grumpy difficult dad you don't get that bit so I'm left with this rather lionized heroic character I'm aware that that's a bit unreal in a way but it is the real experience of a young girl loved by

her dad up till that age. And my dad always, I mean, he did it to my brother too. It wasn't just to me, but it gave us a lot of confidence. And I think my dad recognized that, you know, a little tubby girl like me. could fall into a pit of insecurity very easily. And so he just made sure that I had the armor not to do that. So I'm very grateful for that. It definitely worked. In many ways, it seems an odd thing to say, given how your father's life ended, but you hit the parental jackpot.

Because you've spoken recently about your mum as well. I've been mothered incredibly well in my life. Spiky and fiery at moments. We'd fall out and fall back in again. But you never rebelled because you didn't... Or maybe you did a bit, but this constant knowledge of how much your mum loved you is also a huge part of who you are.

Absolutely. And I think what happened was it fell to my mum when our little square became a triangle. It fell to my mum to make sure that she didn't drop the ball. So she did extra parenting, if you like. mean without a doubt in my certainly my early 20s I was a bit allergic to my mum and I think that having had kids that age, I think that's the norm. You're reviewing your allegiances retrospectively. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I'm understanding what it is like to be a mum of a child.

20 year old who just thinks that everything you say is just dull and wrong. Um, uh, but then of course, by being able to have these kind of muscular kind of, um, what is it differences if you like to be able to have those and to be able to express them to be able to have the furies and return to each other and know that You know, that is your scaffolding, actually. It's not going anywhere. That's what fortifies you. That's what is your fuel. And you're always, always going to be forgiven.

You know, even if you killed somebody, you're going to be forgiven. That's unconditional love. Unconditional love, exactly. And I don't think you know it until some of the conditions have been tested. Neither do you realise how... Perhaps not rare, but certainly not commonplace it is. You just presume every other family is a bit like yours. Yeah, definitely. I think it was only when I went to college and ever since that I have realised.

Some people have a really rough ride of it with parents, and it may not be so immediately obvious. Some people's rather insidious... difficult relationships are to do with the pecking and the disappointment that people are. And, you know, it's that sort of... It's the gradual erosion of somebody's confidence that is such a sin in so many ways. I mean, it's clearer to see the utterly unloved, isn't it? It's clearer to see that. My husband...

you know, runs a rehab and works with people with all kinds of difficult problems. They're in a pickle about everything. And he says to me very often, you know, the root... causes are people that have not been loved properly at all. So they have no idea what they're... compass is i don't know where the center is so of course you get lost and i'm eternally grateful that whatever happened in my life and it was lots of things and some tragic things the compass was firmly placed

To knit all that together then, I presume that when your mother was encouraging you quite forcefully to go to college, even though you'd missed the first two weeks in that first year, there was none of that stiff upper lip. stuff going on it was genuinely motivated by what she knew would be best for you yeah and selfless selflessness yes you know because really at home comforting each other

Yeah, and I think that's what I wanted. Selfishly, that's what I wanted. I wanted to be with her and I wanted to be going through this grief together. But I think she knew that I had longed to go to college. that I would recover better there. And what she also knew was that if I stayed at home, we could tip into

I don't know, a kind of mutual grief where we didn't heal each other, but we sort of dragged each other down and she didn't want to be a burden in any way. I mean, what it meant was that first year, especially at college. I just went home a lot. I went home a lot of the weekends. It's quite a long way from London to Devon, it was then. But I, you know, I used to check on my mum quite a lot and she would check on me quite a lot, but that's all right.

In all of your novels, and this is, I didn't realise it was five years between the new one and the last one, but family is huge, isn't it? These interplays and these intricacies are what fascinates you, I think. I think that's where... My biggest fears are is if family goes wrong. You know, if a mother has her eye off the ball and doesn't notice kids are in trouble or if if there's any kind of violence or anything like that. And those are my worst.

nightmares is anybody being massively unhappy inside a family. And as a mum, I know that You know, it sounds trite to say it, but for me it's true, and I wish it wasn't, that you're only ever as happy as your unhappiest kid. Yeah, for sure. You spend your whole time trying to make sure that everybody's buffered by you. And we've jumped ahead a bit. We'll just...

Steer back. We'll skip college and come to the point where you sort of found yourself upon the fringes of what I think could be called accidental fame. It's only you didn't have that. desperation to be well known or indeed you didn't really have much of an acting bug but lo and behold you're on the fringes of what must have been one of the coolest collections of people ever assembled.

Yeah. How blessed was I that that happened? Yeah, absolutely. Because I certainly wasn't looking. But Jennifer, who had no intentions of being a teacher. was horrified at the thought of working with children. So she just had to put something on the forms and do three years. Absolutely, she did. Everything was a happy mistake for her.

But Jennifer, by then, you know, she was living a sort of with Nail and I life where she wasn't drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes with her posh friends. And she was looking. She was looking at the stage. magazine, weirdly, to see what jobs. And I think she would have taken cleaning jobs, you know, in theatres, anything. We did do a bit of usheretting, actually. We did that at the Roundhouse. And once we had to, oh gosh, it would make me remember this.

Once when we were usherettes at the roundhouse in the evenings when we were at college, Vanessa Redgrave was in The Lady from the Sea. And she had a scene, a very heavy scene where she had to rush out through the curtains. stand in a children's paddling pool and we had to douse her with water so that she could return because she had been in the sea. And of course we could not speak to her and we were massively in awe of her and longing to chat to her about the work.

as revolutionary party. But we had to keep our mouths shut and just douse her with water and on she went again. It was hilarious. But anyway, where were we? I've forgotten where we were. Accidental fame. At the end of college, that's right. And... Jennifer and I had a friendship. I was being a teacher. She was being with Neil and I. And she said, look, there's this place in Soho. There's a club.

And they're looking for double acts. We'd done a bit of mucking about in a college cabaret. Really, that's all we'd done. In front of fellow students. In front of fellow students. And we'd mainly done that because the college cabarets were always a place where the act... could show off and we felt like Us, the teachers, there was a paucity of interest in us. And so we joined together to do a couple of, we did a couple of silly characters that we'd done in our flat to amuse us.

And we did it at that, really as the two fingers up to the actors who were big, massive, great show offs. And so we had something we could take along to this audition. And that's what we did. And then I used to moonlight at night at the comic strip and then teach during the day. It was good.

Mind you, do you know, we were on a 5-8. You crossed over the bit when you realised you were good. I mean, you can't have just gone from faffing about. Well, that took a bit of time because we really were very good. Right. So why did they put you on the stage then at the comedy store? Because we had...

We had tits, James. Was it really that simple? Really? I think it was. I think it was because it was so massively un-PC to have a line-up at that point without women in it. And there were hardly any women around. We had that job the minute... We walked in the door. Didn't matter how bad or good we were. Just didn't matter. So we learned on the job. We were spectacular.

spectacularly bad. Because this would be the era of, I mean, sort of Alexei Sale, I suppose, being the first of the alternative comics. But then, you know, Ade Edmondson and Rick Mayall and all of the others coming up. I mean, alongside him or shortly behind him. Yeah, they were the gang. They were the gang. This is where I get uncomfortable as an interviewer because you're actually, as you well know...

You and Jennifer are quite brilliant as well together. And so I don't know that I completely buy this idea that you were sort of poor relations. Well, seriously, by then they had a sort of plan and they had a bit of experience. knew a little bit about what they were doing they even knew they were a sort of movement they knew they were alternative they knew to set up this club they you know they had gone down that route for several months before we joined on

And we were learning very quickly on the job and noticing this was a kind of hip thing to be part of. We weren't part of the creation of it. We landed in it when it was already, you know, motoring along. And thank God for that. I mean, it was.

imagine imagine like being part of a group that was on in this little strip club in Soho sharing dressing rooms with strippers you know it was remarkable and we go on stage and we did our funny little sketches that we didn't really have a proper punch But there in the audience is Jack Nicholson and Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman and Bianca Jagger and a sea of ruffles from all the...

new wave pirates. You know, it was, we were suddenly in this hit. But we couldn't. I was wearing A-line corduroy skirts at the time.

You know, we had to quickly catch up with the fashion. And we were very lucky, and I am eternally grateful for that. And we interviewed Ruby Waxnot a couple of weeks ago, actually, and I hadn't realised. Is it fair to say that in many ways everything revolved around Rick Mayall? Was he the sort of... I think what Rick was was the kind of golden boy. Yes. He probably was the funniest, although he and A together were even funnier than just Rick. But there was something very beautiful.

about Rick. Very good looking, extremely charming, very charismatic, a bit of a magnet, if you like. And he was the one that the most excitement was building. Channel 4 were interested in him and the BBC were interested in him. But Peter Richardson, who created the comic strip, was the one who steered it all. And he was the one who had the very good idea to create a little film company, really, and to take advantage of the fact that Channel 4 were prepared to be a big... bit braver.

I know a few comedians and there's this curious tension, isn't there? Because having a plan, they all frown on it and they'll name the comics, usually the big shot TV comics. Oh yeah, he had a plan. They had a plan. But actually, to hear you describe... a relatively anarchic troop. There was a plan, and the plan is probably the reason why you all ended up, partly the reason why you all ended up so far ahead of the field. Well, you know, I guess the plan...

was quite monetary, if anything, because to make the films we needed to make, somebody had to pay. And Peter Richardson noticed that Channel 4 was new and... had some dosh and looking for interesting new gang of people. And he went and presented us to them. And you know what was great? They were completely hands off.

So we were allowed to go and create our own little film company where we were very cooperative. You know, we all wrote them. We all directed them. There were a few little fights with the egos inside. But, you know, besides that, everybody was in everything. all got paid the same it was you know it was good do you have a favorite film from that or a favorite oh my goodness oh i think if i have to think of a sort of filmic moment it would be

Robbie Coltrane walking out with a great big, he had a chainsaw in what looked like a guitar case. What was the film? Was it in? What was it? Oh, you'll have to check it out, James. I forget all the names. We'll check it for the edit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But he walked out on the breaker, you know, on the cob in Devon, and a genuine storm was happening. that came and lashed.

over him and these were in the days when there was no health and safety whatsoever he shouldn't have been doing that he could have been swept away except that he's a hefty chap and uh you know he's got a bit of ballast thank god um but when i asked him afterwards why did you do that he said because uh the makeup women were watching so he did anything in order to you know show off to the makeup girls including risking his ruddy life fair play um

Was there a moment? It was in Supergrass. It was Supergrass. Of course it was. Was there a moment? Because of my age, probably, Five Go Mad in Dorset, I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw that. I stayed up. I used to have this little black and white television that mum and dad...

they realized i could watch telly on it because i only used it to plug in my sinclair zx spectrum but obviously after bedtime you could actually if you had a dial on it not buttons and you'd tune it like a radio and i just stumbled across the the unid blyton piss

and I just felt everything. It was just breathtaking and it makes me wonder when you realised this isn't just a sort of holiday from real life, this bizarre world that we stumbled into. When did you think, do you know what, this could be my real life? Well, I think it was when I was forced to understand that I could make my living this way because for the first year or so, I was still teaching during the day and I had this secret life in the evening, which I couldn't own up to.

school and then a a moment a key moment came when uh the head of drama at the school that i was teaching at which was parliament hill school for girls um the head of drama had a bit of a breakdown And the headmistress came to me and I was only in my first provisionary year. And she said, look, I'm going to need you to take over this department. So suddenly I was being offered the chance to skip.

all the steps, earn a really good wage, be the head of the drama department after one year. And yet I was also being offered the chance with the comic strip to go on tour to Australia. We were taking part in the Adelaide Comedy Festival. And nobody else had another job, so everybody else could go. And I didn't want Jen not to be able to go, and I really wanted to go, but I knew I had to give up my teaching job. So I went to see. Say again? Why did you know you had to? Just because of the...

The smell of the grease paint. Well, it was really at that point, I thought I've either got to give up teaching and do this. Right. Or I've got to remain with teaching. I need to decide. And actually, rather pathetic. I didn't know how to decide because like teaching mattered a lot to me. I had kids doing exams. I felt very duty bound to stay with them. And now I have this other situation where the head was in a state. So the headmistress of the school.

called me in for a meeting to offer me this job and I said look I have to tell you something. I've been doing this other job and we've got the chance to go, oh, God, you know, please forgive me, headmistress, don't spank me. Like a secret cross-dresser or something like that. I know, it was awful. A desperate secret.

This is Mrs. McEwen, who I'm still grateful to, because really she needed me to say yes to the teaching job. And I think she thought, why wouldn't you go from being this baby teacher to a grown up teacher in two seconds and have a, you know, a pay rise of twice as much? But I told her my dilemma and she just went a bit quiet and she said, well, of course you have to go on tour. Of course you do. So she said, I would never forgive myself if I stopped you and you'd never forgive me.

So she gave me permission to give up teaching. Wow. Do you know, I think if she'd said, you know where your duty lies, French, I would probably be a teacher now. Probably would. Wow, that's a path not taken, isn't it? I mean, to be pragmatic for a moment, you could always, if it all went belly up in Australia or even at the comic strip, then teaching was... always going to be there, whereas you don't get many chances like that in your life.

No, that's true. Do you know a weird thing? I still think that. Do you really? I do. I still think, oh, well, if this all goes well, I'll go back to teaching. Go back to teaching. But except for I don't feel like it's back. I mean, teaching's left me well. behind i'd have to retrain now i suspect you know my dream thing go on my dream thing is to go and be in a junior school and be that person who sits at the back and any little kids who want to read come and sit with you and you just read books

all day long with kids that want to read. That would be my favourite thing to do in my dribbly, hairy old retirement. I'd love to do that. No kids will want to come and sit next to me. We'll deal with all the offers. We'll pass them on. We'll edit them and pass them on to you. We're going to fast forward through all the stuff that everybody knows. So, you know, comic strips of French and Saunders meeting and then splitting up with Lenny Henry. But the... I'd like to just...

Hear your reflections briefly upon the problems of being a public figure, upon however ebullient you are, however secure you are, however well adjusted you are. It's weird to know that people are looking through your metaphorical keyhole almost all the time, I presume. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's the certain knowledge.

That you're nearly always going to be a disappointment to people because you're not going to perform. Certainly I'm not going to perform for people when I meet them in the street. And I know they wish you would. And there's a part of me that thinks, oh, go on, Dawn, just, you know, just do it.

pull a funny face or do a funny thing uh do a silly walk whatever but i just can't bring myself to do it and i'm aware that it leaves people you know the people pleaser in me wants to do it but the real dawn knows that it's rather and dignified and it doesn't...

suit me well and it's not it's fake so uh that dilemma i i i'm uneasy with and and you know i've discovered that as as i've got older i know myself better now and i know that i i'm a sort of semi-functioning introvert is what I am and really very happy to be in my own company. Happy writing, happy quiet. I can do all the big jazz hands. I can absolutely do it. I'm clever at it. I know how to be. And I love my friends and I love the collaborations that I've had. But really, really.

crawling back inside is an okay place for me, which is why the lockdown was all right. It was all right. It was more than all right. And then, again, briefly, given that semi-functioning... introvert when when you read about your personal life in the pages of newspapers and it doesn't actually bear that much resemblance to reality is that i don't know whether that's something you can ever get used to or indeed whether it's something you should get used to no it's a kind of bullying

I mean the worst experience I had was when somebody wrote a whole book about me. I don't know if you've experienced that, but it's really odd. Because I can kind of deal with almost anything, even inaccurate things about myself or people's opinions about me that I think don't hold with that. But okay, that's your opinion. But when it spills out onto your family, you know, when it affects you.

mum or your daughter or whatever, people that have not asked for it and where it's unkind. I don't know how to protect my family against that and I feel bad about that. I'm not sure anyone can. But that does lead us inexorably to Because of You, which is very much about nature and nurture as well, very much about mothers and daughters. Do you want to do it from the publisher's discussion point? Shall we see how we get on with it? Yes, fine.

not let's see what they think we should be saying so because because of you dawn french is your first novel in five years what did it feel like returning to fiction and has your writing process or style changed from your last novel believe they've given you pointers i don't know if i'm supposed to have told you this but anyway we're in there now so has it answer the question dawn french has it changed your writing style

I think I have definitely learned my own voice a little bit. I was a little bit nervous when I started to write fiction. I mean, I wrote a biography, an autobiography. I spoke to you about it actually, you know, years ago. And I think that's when I thought, Ooh.

I like writing. I like the control. This is good. But when I started to write fiction, I think I was trying to be a bit rebellious. I didn't want anybody telling me how I should write, that it should be the classic form where you write chapters and people talk to each other. So I wrote books that... in the form of letters, diaries. I even wrote a book where the central character was in a coma, inert, so that everybody could speak in monologues. So I tried to find different ways to write.

And I think what I've now done is slightly grow up as a writer. and realize that it's okay to write this very traditional form. And in fact, it frees you. The very thing I thought it wasn't, I thought it would be shackles, it frees you to do anything. And so I've landed in that, definitely.

That's why they've become tropes, isn't it? Because they do actually provide you with the best... So in the sense that the plot is what you throw to the reader while you get on with the real business of developing characters and writing stuff, there's a reason why some of those plot devices do feel well-trodden.

Absolutely. It's like, you know... uh the classic they knew they've they've worked it out for us you know here's the blueprint yes get on with it it doesn't stop your imagination doesn't stop your form in any way it just gives you a freedom however i would say that the other day i read um Bernardine Evaristo's book and realized you can write a book without any speech marks in it whatsoever. Incredible. Now that, that is my least favorite thing in books is that, you know, the he said, she said.

Kind of, because you always have to describe how he said it or she said it. And it breaks the spell of that, doesn't it? Oh, God, it's dull. It's so dull. And then you spend the whole time trying to find out how you can be more interesting about that. And then you look at some books. Look at Road. There's a book with no, you know. Nobody tells you who's speaking at any point.

Anyway, when I grow up a bit more, I'll learn how to do that. That last question was one of mine. I didn't get that one off. Oh, OK. The novel is about mothers and daughters and explores ideas around nature and nurture. Is this a theme? that you have thought about a lot? Well, yes, of course, publisher, I have. I have thought about it. This is not an autobiographical book in any way. Nobody in this book is, and this is one of my stock answers, nobody in...

in this book is anyone in my actual life. But of course, you know, I had a mum whose work was in social work. He was on adoption panels and fostering panels and used to tell me that she'd stay up at night worrying about placing kids. with the right families and so on. And then I adopted my own kid and went through a lot to do that. So, of course, I'm interested in it. I read a lot about it before my daughter turned up. And I worried a lot about it.

anymore from the day she turned up. I didn't worry about that at all. But I do think that it's an interesting dilemma and it's an interesting theme, if you like. It's a good thing to have. And in my book... A woman steals another woman's child and raises that child as her own. And like we were saying earlier, when it comes to family, this for me is like the worst imaginable.

thing that could happen if someone takes your child i don't know how you survive that and i don't even know how the woman who takes the child survives that because of all the guilt and the shame and everything that goes with it you have to suppress a lot of that in order to raise that child as your own and to live inside that lie. And I was interested.

in exploring all of that really and briefly because i'm i'm adopted i've told you that before so yes on the sort of binary nature versus nurture where do you lean or do you lean at all or is it different for every case probably It is different in every case. And it also depends.

how you're raised. Yes, of course. But, you know, you're going to love your nurture more than your nature if you've been raised in a particular way, I guess. And the quality of the nurture highlights some of the nature. Some of your nature might have been suppressed by the wrong... kind of nurture so you can exactly but i quite like the moral dilemma that i've tried to explore at the center of this book which is

has this child been raised in the right family by the woman who stole her? If she had remained in the other family, would it have been worse? In other words, was it right to steal her? And I've tried to write an empathetic. character at the center of it who you could forgive for such an unforgivable thing so that you know again none of us can decide this none of us can know and people have stolen other people's children in the past you know

Identity as well, hasn't it? Because that's the other thing. And we follow Minnie from birth to kind of almost ready to leave school kind of territory. But the other thing it's about is who is she? What is identity, I think? I mean, who would I be if I hadn't... I've just written about this myself, actually. Have you? Yes, because I often find myself thinking, who would you be if you hadn't been adopted? I wouldn't be me, and yet I would...

Do you think any people that are raised by their natural parents ever think, who would I be if I had been adopted? I wonder if they ever do think that. They used to romanticise it at school. You'd have people say, I wish I was adopted. Well, I've certainly said that to my mum in my life. Or I've actually accused her before saying, I cannot be from you. No way. I can't be from your bones. When you think of it like that, it's the mother of all sliding doors, isn't it?

It really is. It certainly is. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, there's a lot to be said for who steps up for you. Isn't that that's that's what that's what matters in the end, you know, and I know this from my own daughter and I know it.

I know it from lots of people. And funnily enough, since I adopted my daughter, everywhere I go, I meet adopted people. They're everywhere, James. Yes, I know. It's like a mask. As soon as you take it, everyone will tell you. I find that also oddly with fertility treatment. When I went public...

about having had fertility treatment, suddenly loads of people would come up to me and say, oh, we had that. I said, I've known you for 15 years. I'm a godfather to your children and you never told me that you had IVF, for God's sake. Because there's no shame. I think, you know, shame is what cripples.

us and if you're not ashamed of stuff that's happened to you then you can be much healthier and much happier the men in it are strange you write do you prefer writing men or women i mean the central characters preference really i like writing uh baddies and goodies i like that you know and i've i've chosen in this book to write um an irredeemably awful person um you know i gave him a little bit of a he's a bad dad and i gave them a little bit of...

background that might be a tiny explanation for how he's turned out to be the giant narcissist that he is. But he has every opportunity to change that and doesn't. And that, to me, is the bigger sin. And I really enjoyed writing.

him really enjoyed it it probably like playing i'm more fun to play a baddie than it is to play a goodie as well definitely a similar sort of process with writing i i don't know how other writers do it but i absolutely have to improvise all the people i stand up and walk about

and I try and be them, I try and sound like them, which is always fairly pathetic. Well, you should do a red button. You should film that. So if it comes as an extra director to cut with the book, it would be brilliant. No, it wouldn't. Love it. It'd be superb. Two more questions because I know how busy you are. Both from the list. So much of what happens in the novel is down to fate. Do you believe in fate and destiny? Oh, God, do I? Do I believe in fate and destiny? God!

Don't know. Honestly don't know the answers. Well, I think if you answered yes, you'd almost be contradicting yourself, wouldn't you? Unless I knew you'd say that. Yes. No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't. For the reasons we've just discussed, because there's so many different paths. There's so many frost moments where the path... So many. Okay, final question. This is your second book to feature a hospital setting. Okay, yeah. What have you found...

This is your fourth book that's got humans in it. No, please, please stick to the script. What have you found fruitful about this as a location for your work? Already hell. Well, the first time I wrote a person in a coma, so they had to be in a hospital, didn't they? Twits. Who have I put in the hospital here? Well, they only start off in the hospital because they're having a baby, you twit. Where do we find these people?

And I think that is it for this time. Every time I talk to you I feel that it's ending before we've barely started. Because of You is out now. It's a novel that... really looks at every aspect of family life, every aspect of nature, nurture, personal identity, but as you would expect, it's also incredibly warm and incredibly funny, just like you, Dawn French. Thank you, James. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Take care. Bye. This has been a Global Player original production.