Authors: Dawn French
Mum lives happily alone, by the sea in Cornwall, on a cliff overlooking a fishing village, where she’s lived for nine years now. She says the view and the air are healing. She’s very high up. I think she feels closer to you there.
I WRITE TO
wholeheartedly recommend Miss Kathy Burke for the position of Queen of England. I am aware that the post is not technically open to applicants presently, but I expect you must be tossing around a few names, just in case, surely? I’m also aware that there are other, more seemingly suitable contenders. Members of the royal family for instance, who may appear to be the obvious, if not the legal and constitutional, choice. Prince Charles springs to mind as the first thought of course, and actually I like him very much. So much so that I’ve always fancied the idea of ruffling his hair up during a tumble in a royal bush on a lazy Sunday afternoon in September. Yes, I would have to concede that he would do well as Queen. BUT, don’t be too hasty. Hear me out.
Miss Kathy Burke is the quintessential Englishwoman, and loved by all. She is firm but fair, she is maternal but disciplined, she is creative but focused and above all she doesn’t suffer fools, she tells it like it is. She is instinctive and clever and funny and she would really, really suit a crown. So few can pull that off and I genuinely believe that she is one of the lucky ones in that respect. Kath wouldn’t hold with long boring formal dinners for foreign dignitaries unless there was a bit of entertainment, so I reckon life at the Palace could liven up a bit. She also doesn’t like to stay up too late if she’s working, so the staff would be certain of reasonable hours, unless she was in her cups in which case I’m sure they would be free to join in.
I’ve heard tell that a large contingent of Palace staff are as gay as a really gay thing, and again, Kath would be perfect because she is nothing if not a splendidly well-qualified and experienced friend of a friend of the odd Dorothy.
Please consider my reference. This country needs her, so do your duty and anoint her with the Holy Gism. Soon as.
Yours in anticipation,
Dawn French
(possible future lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty)
I WANT TO
own up at last to what happened with your ashes. Much as you predicted, your death was quite a drama, and I’m glad that you decided to put me in charge of it because then, at least, I had something to do to distract me from the misery of it all. I love a bit of organising, you knew that.
I clearly remember when we met, as we so often did, for supper at Julie’s restaurant, it must’ve been about 1989 or so, and you told me you had HIV. I felt the ground beneath my seat shudder. I tried to remain calm, but one of my best friends was going to die quite soon, and I didn’t feel calm at all. I felt scared and panicked. Typically, you had everything in hand and you told me your plans. You’d always been in control like that. I remember loving that about you when I first knew you at Central. That and the fact that you were virtually the only actor who spoke to me for the whole three years at college. We had that in common, we were both people who like to have the organisational stuff, the arrangements of life, done and dusted quickly so there’s time for fun. I hate not knowing what’s happening. It unnerves me. You explained that you were going to the States where they were more familiar with HIV and where there were more advanced medicines available. You knew where you would stay, where you would go for treatment, everything. My job was to support from a distance, visit you occasionally for the craic in New York and be ready for your return, which you told me would indicate that
you
were in the final phase. And who knows, you explained, they might find a cure in the short time you thought you had left, but probably not. So, hey, that’s enough of that, you said, let’s talk about important stuff like which one of us is the more likely to get a shag with George Michael. If he was blindfolded. On a desert island. With only us two to choose from. Yet again, I was the loser, just like in the same game previously, featuring K. D. Lang.
So, you went to America. When you weren’t ill, you had a great time. You fell in love. He had HIV too. Then you came back in 1992 and the serious business of dying began.
The Middlesex Hospital was the venue, and the Broderip Ward, an Aids ward which was the campest place in London, was your deathbed of choice. There were nurses in drag, and a cocktail trolley at 6pm. I remember your key nurse, Mark, very well. He knew and loved you and was determined the finale would go as well as it could. With boas and glitter wherever possible.
You were pretty bad by the time they moved you into a private room. We all took it in turns to sit with you, and while you were still conscious, we managed a lot of laughs. I remember one evening when you and I were alone and you indicated (you couldn’t speak too well by then) you wanted a joint. This had become a regular comforter and pain reliever for you each evening. I knew where your stash was. I also knew it meant I would have to roll it for you and help you to smoke it. Being a stranger to dope, and indeed to smoking, what ensued was an utter fiasco. I could see the frustration in your eyes as I dropped everything and cocked it up so badly. The spliff looked like a fat sausage, there was far too much of everything in it, and it was splitting
at
the side like some kind of illegal pitta pocket. I knew that because of your various problems, you couldn’t actually hold it or properly draw on it, so I had to smoke it and puff the smoke into your mouth for you. This is when I realised what a very poor hippy I would have made. I was rubbish at smoking, with bits of roll-up paper stuck to my lip, and burning tobacco and weed all over the bed and all over us. It was a dangerous, chaotic half an hour that left us both in hysterics. Sorry I didn’t do drugs better. I never have, and it’s unlikely I ever will.
Although I arranged the funeral, you had, of course, stage-managed and designed it to perfection way ahead of time. The music, the coffin, the flowers, all chosen for perfect dramatic effect. You chose the quiet room at the Lighthouse, the Terrence Higgins Trust hospice, for the ceremony and decided exactly how the room should be set out. As we sat there, crying to Louis Armstrong singing ‘What a Wonderful World’, I looked at the coffin and I couldn’t erase the thought of your tired and ravaged body inside it. Then my eye wandered to the artwork on the wall beyond, which was a huge photographic triptych of a mass candlelight vigil in Trafalgar Square with thousands of young gay men singing. Then, I saw you. Right in the middle, young, healthy, with your hopeful happy face bathed in candlelight and your lover’s arm around your shoulder. The old Scottie. It was a fabulous final masterstroke, you absolute drama queen.
So, to the ashes. I know you asked for them to be flung off the top of the Empire State Building while simultaneously incanting favourite lines from various show tunes, BUT it wasn’t that easy, Scottie. Len and me and the BF and her fella Barrie went to New York for New Year specifically for that purpose.
We
had booked a table for supper at the Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center for 10pm to see the New Year in and to raise a glass to you. So, earlier on in the evening, your old friend Michael Way joined us as we traipsed up to the viewing platform at the top of the Empire State Building with the urn containing your ashes (which, by the way, had involved hefty amounts of paperwork to ‘export’ from the UK to the US). On arrival we discovered that there are fine mesh nets all around to prevent people jumping off, or falling debris killing innocents on the street way below. We didn’t want you to be caught up in that mesh, so we changed to plan B, climbed in a yellow cab and drove to the river on the West Side to scatter you there. But, of course, there are huge fences and barricades, so we climbed back in the taxi and asked the now impatient and confused driver to take us back to our hotel via Times Square. That way, at least you’d be scattered on Broadway. We thought that was fitting. By now it was raining and the cabbie really couldn’t understand why we needed to divert through the busiest square on the busiest night of the year. It would be chaos. We eventually persuaded him and Len distracted him while we attempted to get the ashes ready in the back of the cab as we approached Times Square. Who knew they’d be so industrially well wrapped? We prised the lid off the urn using a key edge as a mini crowbar, then we hacked through at least three thick polythene liners with mini scissors from a Swiss army knife. Then, to our horror, we realised that the cab window only opened two inches, so we had to sort of flick you gradually out of the cab in the fervent hope that most of you would end up on Broadway. Sorry if you got stepped on, but it was the best we could do in the circumstances. Job
done
, and recovering from the fit of hysterical giggles the whole process had reduced us to, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the evening. We paid the driver and gave him a fat tip for the favour he didn’t know he’d done. As I stepped out of the cab, and watched it speed away into the night, I saw that the majority of your ashes were smeared all the way down one side of it, stuck to the rainy door and bumper. We consoled ourselves with the thought that at least you’d see more of New York that night than ever before …
Later we stood against the windows at the top of the world at midnight, looking down on all the firework displays. We improvised a quick show-tune medley, and raised a glass to you. To Scottie. The gayest and fairest of them all.
SO, HERE I
am, nearly at the end of my book, and here we are nearly at the end of
French and Saunders
. I’m glad we decided to do one last tour, aren’t you? It feels right to finish it as we started, with a live show. Don’t you think it’s amazing how we have jointly and happily come to this decision to stop now? It feels completely timely and undeniably the correct choice to say goodbye to that part of our work lives while we still love it, and while we still have the audience for it. I know you felt like I did, privileged and grateful, to be taking the show around the country and personally bidding farewell to our audience from the stage each night. It has been so rewarding to experience the appreciation, and to notice that there were often three generations of the same family who came to see us. Blimey, how old are we? I’m only 50 as far as I know, and aren’t you the same? Yet we have the support of three generations. How bloody gorgeous is that?!
Doesn’t it get your goat when interviewers
always
ask how often we fall out? To my knowledge, I don’t think we
ever
have, have we? Sure, we have a few grumpy moments and an occasional bit of skilled sulking goes on and some extremely enjoyable ranting about whoever or whatever has annoyed us, but as for outright fury
at
each other, I can’t remember any. I think we have a well-tuned mutual gauge of each other’s mood, attitude and taste. We know what could be potentially awkward
so
we don’t travel there. Why bother? I’d rather spend time seeking out and enjoying what we both love about each other than rooting about in what we might dislike. There are those who would call this avoidance. These are the people, in general, to avoid. Avoidance is good. It’s what compromise and maturity are made of. In order to avoid, you have to identify that which you are avoiding, and know that to avoid it is a choice. More often than not, a wise one, made after consideration and with an unspoken instinctive understanding of the complex nature of the other person. Avoidance is a loud and clear inner language, which we all speak and hear with various levels of clarity. You and I know each other.
Really
know each other. And so I think we make these intricate and sophisticated decisions
all the time
. We try to work out what matters to the other one, what would make us happy or sad, and we make constant, attentive fine adjustments so that nothing needs to come to such a head that it unbalances us, knocks us off-kilter. We rarely need to ‘have that conversation’ because so much mindful benevolence has already taken place. I think that’s why our partnership has endured. We relish our similarities and respect our differences, of which there are many of course.
Can you remember the people we were when we first met? We’ve shed a few skins since then, I think, but essentially we are the same two bods who have grown through so much, learning all the time. There’s no massive alteration of character, or personality, or habit, there’s just the natural metamorphosis that age brings.
I have such vivid memories of our friendship. Mostly, it feels like we came out to play as often as possible, both with work
and
home life. Long before we ever imagined such a career as we’ve had (did we ever imagine it? – I think not), I remember drinking in a pub on England’s Lane and noting two fat old men who used to sit in the corner, near the door to the Ladies, and leer at every woman who passed by. They’d wink and click at the girls, then at each other
about
the girls. It was as if they thought the girls should be flattered by and grateful for the attention of two old farts, so fat they couldn’t possibly have seen their genitals for years. This amused us greatly and of course we stored that image, along with many other shared experiences, which popped up later in our show.
I remember you going off on Sundays to cook for the local firemen to earn a few extra quid when we were students. One day you were running the customary 30 minutes late and so you borrowed my foldaway bike to make up time. I watched from the top-floor window of our flat, as you sped away on the bike, then I watched the bike folding away underneath you as you frantically pedalled, gradually bringing the handlebar closer and closer to your hilariously bewildered face. You must have forgotten to put the necessary pin in or something. This image tickled me so much, I laughed about it for weeks.
I remember, later, writing
Girls On Top
in Ruby Wax’s flat in Holland Park. You fell asleep a lot, so your character ended up as a sort of dormouse who didn’t speak much. Thank God for Ruby, whose energy was the generator for both of us. No wonder she was often exhausted, she was constantly pushing the two of us lazy lardbuckets up the comedy hill to work. Do you remember Ruby pretending to be blind so’s she could utilise the disabled taxi pass she’d mistakenly been sent in the post? The chutzpah
of
the broad. I think in Ruby we found another Jobo. A clever, funny, self-deprecating and daring woman who motivated us, and who made us laugh all day long.