Interview: Jenny Éclair
JENNY Éclair has spent the last few months in and out of posh hotels on tour with the second stage version of Grumpy Old Women – based on the BBC TV series. Only trouble is, it’s spoilt her somewhat.
“You get a bit cosy when you do a show with other people. It’s so much easier,” she divulges. “Grumpy 2 was such a hoot really. We were so well looked after and we were doing such big theatres and you start thinking that you’re a bit special.”
So with the next few months off before the Grumpy show tours again in the autumn she’s getting back to where she started and returning to stand up again having last toured solo in 2008.
“It’s quite good now and again to tip yourself up and go, ‘Actually, you know what? You’ve got to get back to doing things by yourself that put you where you are now’. There’s no point in calling yourself a stand up if you never do any. It’s very good every now and again to remind yourself that it all starts with the stand up.”
Indeed it did and it was in this very city that Éclair started her comedic journey, studying drama at the then Manchester Polytechnic. “I went to drama school with the absolute intention of being a very, very serious actress. In my day going to poly was much cooler than going to university.”
But back in the eighties you needed your Equity card to act and you had to do something to qualify for it. “It was a bit like being a Brownie; you had to do something to get your badge. Equity was very strong in those days. You couldn’t actually do a telly job or a West End job without it.”
But luckily it was around this time when putting on your own productions and creating your own work was positively encouraged.
“There was quite a lot of fringe theatre around. All the little rep theatres were closing down but entertainment will find a space, and it became spaces above pubs. It was cheaper to have one man, one woman and a microphone in a room above a pub and lots of wigs and shoes and hats.
“It’s not surprising really at a time when Margaret Thatcher was totally disinterested in the arts, that the arts were funding themselves and people were doing it themselves. It had started in London and there was a pocket of it in Manchester.”
'Childish'
Those pub back room beginnings eventually led to Éclair developing the distinctive bitchy, bawdy, no-holds-barred stand up style that won her the prestigious Perrier Award in 1995 (the first solo female winner and the only one until 2005 when Laura Solon won it).
She may be turning 50 this year but age has, thankfully, made little difference to her behaviour, as the latest show will testify. “In the main it’s the usual hour of showing off and getting quite hysterical and I have to apologise now and again for language and bad behaviour. I should know better, ridiculous daft behaviour from a woman but stand up does give you licence to be incredibly childish.”
Éclair may be keeping in touch with her inner child on tour but a recent return to acting has cast her as one of the grown ups when she joined the cast of teen series Skins as the mother of one of the characters. Unexpectedly it reunited her with some old friends.
“The writer of Skins used to be in a double act with Harry Enfield, called Dusty and Dick, a guy called Bryan Elsley, and he was there when I turned up to do the filming and I thought the whole thing just goes with you in big circles.
“Then the man producing and directing it, the big main producer, was in the first year at drama school when I was in the third year at Manchester Poly and he was like a grown man, a grown-up, serious television producer now and I remember him arriving at the poly a boy!” But off stage and off screen there is some growing up to be done as she’s got to book her travel and accommodation for the Oldham gig. “I’ve had someone look into it and there’s something at a roundabout just out of town.
“Someone else has suggested that I could just get a cab back to the Malmaison in Manchester or try to scrounge a lift off the support act.
“I’ve regressed so badly because of doing the big tour. I’m not used to buying any train tickets by myself. When I go back to doing it myself I’m like a giant stupid toddler not really knowing how to do anything. So it’s really time I got back into it before I lost any adult ability.”
Then again, if anyone’s got a spare room?
Jenny Éclair is at Oldham Coliseum on January 22, 2010.
Published: Fri, 22 January, 2010
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