French and Saunders - And it's goodbye from them

Next month French and Saunders end their 30-year partnership with a final series of stage shows in London. In between a volley of gags, they talk to Liz Hoggard about fathers, Madonna and their plans for the future

'YOU'RE looking at 100 years' worth of woman here," says Dawn French triumphantly. "We're 50, the same age as Madonna." As an unabashed fan, I admit I dreaded interviewing Britain's best-loved comedy duo. I could see it turning into one of their sketches where the prissy teacher can't keep control of two unruly 13-year-olds. When I arrive at the private club where we're meeting, already they're tinkering with the air-conditioning. But in person they are funny, modest and genuinely interested in what I have to say. If I can get a word in edgeways.

Both look amazing for 50: French with a glossy auburn bob, Saunders low-key in black, with a hint of cleavage. But this is a year of goodbyes. They are ending their 30-year partnership as French & Saunders, bringing their live show to London's West End next month for the last time. The four-week run comprises classic sketches and brand-new material.

I always wonder how close the two really are – they cheerfully admit they don't see each other much when not working. Yet the chemistry is palpable. They finish each other's sentences, tease each other about senior moments – "Come on, dear, keep up!" – but have very different lifestyles. French has just moved to deepest Cornwall with husband Lenny Henry and their adopted daughter, Billie, 16. When she's working, she rents a flat in London but hasn't lived in the city for 20 years.

Saunders, on the other hand, with her husband, Ade Edmondson, and daughters Ella, 22, Beattie, 21, and Freya, 17, has just moved back to the city. She went in search of the rural idyll in 2002, when she bought a farmhouse in Devon to raise teenagers, horses and rare-breed sheep.

"I'm in a real 'love London' moment – not to have a car or need a cab from the theatre. I was talking to Jools (Holland] about it and I like the idea that we'll all be within walking or cycling distance."

French explodes: "Are you going to start going on a bicycle? Are you Madonna? Who do you think you are? I will dispatch you if you tone up!"

They seem pretty jolly for fiftysomethings who have voluntarily put themselves out of work. French says it's time: "I've been waiting for someone to say, 'What are you girls doing in the dressing-up box? Get out.' I don't feel remorseful about anything. I feel, 'Good, this will give me a kick up the arse' and we move on to other things." She has filmed the last-ever Vicar of Dibley and next month her autobiography, Dear Fatty, is published, structured as a series of letters, many to her father, who killed himself when Dawn was 19. Part of her motivation is that someone wrote a biography without even meeting her. She calls it "…a sort of rape. It lied about my mum and dad's marriage, saying they split up when they never did. My mum still cries about it."

French's father, Denys, hid his chronic depression from Dawn and her brother, Gary. He told Dawn every day how beautiful she was, which gave her self-confidence. She learned from her grandmother that her father had talked about taking his life when he first joined the RAF at 16.

"It must have been a massive burden for him, but he wanted to live a cheerful, happy life and would drag himself through the old 'black dogs' and get on with it." Early one morning, Denys drove from the family home and attached a hosepipe to the car exhaust. After his death, French wanted to delay her place on a teaching course at London's Central School of Speech and Drama to be with her mother, who instead insisted she go as planned.

It was fate: Central is where she met Saunders. At first, Saunders dismissed French as cocky and French thought Saunders snooty and aloof. But they ended up sharing a house because both had fathers who had been in the RAF (although Saunders's was officer class).

"I think that's what drew us to each other, French says. "It's quite a peculiar existence, so you feel safe in the company of others who have been itinerant and slightly identity-less." As an RAF child, you learn to put all your goods on display and be interesting, funny. "Basically, our job."

They created a cabaret act and answered an ad for female acts to join The Comic Strip, where they met Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle and Ade Edmondson. Soon The Comic Strip was signed up by Channel 4, and French and Saunders had their own BBC series.

It's easy to forget just how radical they were. Their teen-delinquent characters paved the way for Vicky Pollard. Dawn confesses that when they were in their famed fat-suits, they'd run round BBC Centre, goosing secretaries.

Absolutely Fabulous – which started off as a sketch in a French and Saunders show – came about by accident. "We had the studios booked for a new series and then I adopted a kid," French explains. "When you go through the adoption process, you sit and wait for them to tell you when the right kid is available, and you don't know when that's going to be. I had to say to Jen, 'I've got to go now – shit!' And so she took the studios and wrote Ab Fab. And you think, 'God that's great, she covered for me, she did the things she wanted to do, and she didn't hold it against me.' She'd been pregnant three times, so it's not like she went, 'Oh God, you're ruining our career now.'"

In 1999 French's marriage hit a crisis. Lenny's mother died and, while he was on tour, the tabloids rumbled a liaison with a young blonde, and he ended up in the Priory. At the time, French observed: "He went a bit mad. I was sort of worried he hadn't gone off the rails before that, he'd always been so calm."

The couple are still very much together but it has given French a horror of the press. She also had to take out an injunction to stop her biographer revealing the identity of Billie's birth mother. That, she says firmly, is Billie's business when she is 18.

More recently French has been doing straight roles such as Lark Rise to Candleford, while Saunders has been progressing as a writer. Jam and Jerusalem, set in a fictional West Country village, was inspired by her time in Devon. "I wrote it after my dad died, it's about someone left on their own and grieving. But I wanted to show life in the country isn't sinister, it can be totally real."

She's fascinated by human psychology and when French goes off to the loo, she grills me about life on a newspaper. While Saunders is enigmatic – which is thrilling – it was French I wanted to please. She's so warm and bubbly, though her stare can be forensic.

Both seem easygoing mothers. While Jen's girls are mad about popular culture, Dawn says Billie is quite an individual. "Weirdly enough, she's not really involved with telly, although she loves cartoons. She's free to watch what she likes. I'm all for telly. I must make her watch more!"

Saunders' middle daughter, Beattie, is a performer now, too – she had an all-girl Fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival called Lady Garden.

The duo have never had a big argument and are not remotely competitive. Saunders says that "working with Dawn, you can make huge embarrassing mistakes – you're with someone you trust enough to be a child with". Their latest favourite game is identifying celebrities upside down in Hello! "You'd be surprised how difficult Kate Middleton is upside down," says Saunders.

Their extraordinary partnership has made for a perfect working-mother career – they've almost never worked in the school holidays. "Nothing has ever come in the way of our real life, ever," French says firmly. "And that's about planning, which women are particularly good at. Our job is our fun." So what fun can we expect of them in the future? Saunders, a self-confessed "comedy tart", would like to write a proper film. They can foresee working together on TV again, but in a very different way. Maybe an edgy BBC3 slot. "When you've been promoted as we have been, it's hard then to experiment, and people don't forgive you very easily," says French.

For their farewell show there'sone special guest they'd love to nab. For 20 years, they've been turned down consistently by Madonna. They find it an oddly comforting ritual when her agent says again, "Sorry, she's out of the country." French boasts she once got a fax at home from Madge, but it has faded.

What would they do if she said yes? "Oh God, I'd lick her up the face," says French. "I'd lick her up the legs," says Saunders.

"I'd rather do the face," rejoins French. "Although these days it might come off."

BACKGROUND

Dawn and Jennifer's early years

1982: THE COMIC STRIP PRESENTS

THE duo were part of a new generation of radical British comedians that included Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson and Nigel Planer. The first of the Channel 4 Comic Strip series was Five Go Mad in Dorset, a cruel and hilarious satire of Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories.

1984: THE TUBE

THE hip and irreverent music show presented by Jools Holland provided a weekly stand-up slot for the pair. French distinguished herself by becoming the first person to utter the word "blowjob" on British television.

1985: GIRLS ON TOP

AN anarchic sitcom about four batty female flatmates, in which Dawn and Jen (who wrote the script) performed alongside emerging talents Ruby Wax and Tracey Ullman.

1987: FRENCH & SAUNDERS

THE first of six hugely successful TV series which ran for 20 years. Here we first met the trendy mum and stuffy teenage daughter who eventually became Edina and Saffy in Saunders' Absolutely Fabulous, as well as Star Test (with Dawn and Jen memorably parodying Bros), and the Dirty Old Men in fat suits. There were send-ups of pop videos, films and TV dramas, and numerous B-list celebs eager to appear with the duo and be treated appallingly by them (Bananarama; Darcey Bussell; Jane Asher; Felicity Kendal; Darren Day).