{"id":426942,"date":"2026-05-14T07:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/426942\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T07:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:43:14","slug":"dawn-french-how-i-survived-grief-and-heartbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/426942\/","title":{"rendered":"Dawn French: how I survived grief and heartbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Halfway through typing up the longhand draft of Dawn French\u2019s latest novel (\u201cI don\u2019t own a computer,\u201d the comedian confesses), her PA of 34 years, Sue, called her, concerned. \u201cThere was a tone in her voice and I thought, oh, she\u2019s doubting one of the characters,\u201d French recalls. \u201cBut she just said, \u2018Are you all right?\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

French sighs and gives a wry chuckle. \u201cThat was the first time I thought, oh f***, I\u2019m going to have to deal with people checking in on me. I\u2019ll have to deflect people\u2019s thoughts that I might not be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a legitimate question. French \u2014 beloved fictitious vicar, one half of the UK\u2019s most famous female comedy duo, bona fide national treasure and now bestselling novelist \u2014 has written a story about suicide.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001079834690\"In writing a book about suicide, she realised, \u201cI\u2019m going to have to deal with people checking in on me\u201dDAN KENNEDY for the times magazine<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want people to think that I\u2019m writing my plan \u2014 I\u2019m not,\u201d she insists. Yet, in writing it, \u201cI\u2019ve faced a lot of my thoughts and fears about it. It\u2019s helpful to put your face in the shit and then come up and breathe fresh air afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018As I\u2019ve got older, I want to talk about the big things\u2019<\/p>\n

In September 1977, when French was 19, her father, Denys, an RAF engineer, took his own life. He was 45. \u201cSuicide lives in my brain in a way it might not for somebody who hasn\u2019t experienced it so closely,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd as I\u2019ve got older, I want to talk about the big things. I set out to write something I\u2019m a bit afraid to admit: that getting older is difficult, end of life is difficult, suicide is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is an awful lot of the author in her new novel. Enough is set in Cornwall, where French was raised and has lived for the past two decades, with a protagonist, Etta \u2014 busily plotting her own demise \u2014 who is precisely French\u2019s age: 68. \u201cIt\u2019s slightly lazy of me, because I don\u2019t have to think about the politics, the music \u2014 I know everything about being my age,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s title is not intended as a negative \u2014 Etta hasn\u2019t \u201chad enough\u201d, but rather, French explains, \u201cIt is enough.\u201d And she has a point. \u201cWhat more selfless act could you make than sacrifice your life so that your children don\u2019t have to deal with the crunchy, grim part of it?\u201d<\/p>\n

French\u2019s daughter, Billie, whom she adopted as a baby with her first husband, Lenny Henry, is now 34 and lives close by, with a daughter of her own. French also has an adult stepson and stepdaughter, Olly, 31, and Lily, 34, via her second husband, the charity executive Mark Bignell, whom she married in 2013.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001079978655\"\u201cI\u2019m grateful to be this age. I won\u2019t take a machete to my face\u201ddan kennedy for the times magazine<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I approach older age I do think about it. I don\u2019t think I would ever make this choice,\u201d French says \u2014 by which she means suicide \u2014 \u201cbut I can understand why somebody would.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve been through all the stages of grief\u2019<\/p>\n

We\u2019re drinking tea in a whitewashed terraced cottage down a small side street in Plymouth, Devon, which was once the HQ of the famed local jeweller Drakes and has been converted into recording studios where French and her longtime comedy partner, Jennifer Saunders, record their podcast, Titting About. It\u2019s a convenient midway spot, since French lives just over the border in Cornwall, reportedly in a secluded 1868 gothic revival villa, while Saunders lives in a grade II listed manor house on Dartmoor.<\/p>\n

I arrive early, rainswept and windswept, shortly before French, who is sporting a jaunty red beret atop her sleek grey bob. Short, cheerful, warm, sweary and animated \u2014 it\u2019s a relief to find that French, unlike many famous entertainers, on whom we tend to project their TV persona, is seemingly almost exactly the same off screen as on. And in spite of the serious subject matter, our conversation, which ends up lasting well over two hours, could not feel less laboured or heavy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lose your dad at 19 and you have this whole life to go through, all those stages of grief \u2014 from being perplexed to sadness, anger, understanding and forgiveness \u2014 I think you have claimed the right, a little bit, to write about this with some\u2026 Optimism is the wrong word, but with some positive aspect to it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001079834696\"Among her future plans, \u201cI have a one-woman show in mind\u201dDan Kennedy for The Times Magazine<\/p>\n

\"'TheWith Jennifer Saunders on The Tube in 1983Rex<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough part of the process of understanding suicide is to go through the rage about it and to say, \u2018You selfish f***er, how dare you do that to us?\u2019 And I certainly went through that for a while,\u201d she admits. \u201cBut very quickly I thought, \u2018Yes, but my dad wouldn\u2019t be that selfish. So let me try and reframe this. Let me think it through further.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my dad lived his whole life with this suicidal ideation and with depression, with these black dogs,\u201d French says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know all the facts of it, but he\u2019d made an attempt on his life when he was a younger man at [the RAF base] Halton as a trainee.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he took his own life, Denys and her mother, Felicity \u2014 known as Roma \u2014 ran a newsagent\u2019s. \u201cLeaving the RAF is a huge thing. And back in the day, I\u2019m not sure they helped people to leave very well \u2014 you were out in civvy street.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was, she says, given \u201csome kind of electroconvulsive therapy, which was supposed to jolt him out of this lethargy. And no talking therapy, which is clearly what needed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her own experience of her father when she was a child, though, was \u201chappy, long, lazy, lovely days\u201d, she says. \u201cThen my dad would have a migraine and have to go to bed and we had to be quiet. Curtains would be drawn.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers times when her mother would ask her to come home from boarding school because her father had a migraine. \u201cI think my mum knew that if I was there he wouldn\u2019t do anything, and there was somebody to watch over him. Even though I didn\u2019t know that\u2019s what I was doing, aged 14 or 15.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of Denys\u2019s death, \u201ca square of a family, with the mum and dad and a brother and a sister, became a triangle\u201d, French says, forming the shapes with her fingers. \u201cAnd that triangle never stopped talking about it. My mum\u2019s gone now, but my brother, Gary, and I always talk about it. Just to check in on each other and to make it OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

French admits to some trepidation about how Enough will land with readers. While her previous books have sold by the bucketload \u2014 her 2008 memoir, Dear Fatty, shifted 800,000 copies, making it the second highest-selling celebrity memoir that year, and the first of her four previous novels, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, published in 2010, sold more than 720,000 copies, including almost 45,000 in its first week \u2014 French is studiously modest about their success.<\/p>\n

\"THEIn The Vicar of Dibley with Emma ChambersAlamy<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000660542246\"French as a teenager with her late father, DenysInstagram\/DawnFrench<\/p>\n

\u201cMy books have always been published in October, ready for Christmas \u2014 it\u2019s nice and easy to wrap for your mum, if she likes French and Saunders \u2014 and supermarkets take a whole load,\u201d she demurs.<\/p>\n

I pull her up for diminishing her objectively massive sales. \u201cI\u2019m delighted,\u201d she insists. \u201cListen, I\u2019m writing them for people to read.\u201d With Enough, though, she asked her publisher if the book could be released at a different time of year. \u201cThis just didn\u2019t feel like a Christmas theme,\u201d she says, deadpan.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jennifer is still the person who makes me laugh the most\u2019<\/p>\n

Next year it will be 40 years since French and Saunders hit screens, and 45 years since the pair first appeared as part of Channel 4\u2019s cult hit The Comic Strip Presents\u2026 alongside Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. Ahead of meeting French, I fall deep down a rabbit hole rewatching old French and Saunders sketches, delighted to find that they still feel fresh, relevant and very funny. \u201cShe still is the person who makes me laugh the most in the world,\u201d French says of Saunders.<\/p>\n

\"TheWith Jennifer Saunders, receiving the Bafta fellowship in 2009PA<\/p>\n

\"FRENCHThe duo\u2019s Titanic sketch from their 1998 Christmas specialAlamy<\/p>\n

But while they continue to collaborate on their podcast and various radio projects, anyone holding out hope for another French and Saunders sketch may well be disappointed. \u201cWe\u2019re out of practice. You\u2019ve got to put different teeth in and different eyes in and a different wig on. You\u2019ve got to race about \u2014 it\u2019s a young person\u2019s game,\u201d she says. \u201cPlus, when you get to this sort of age you can\u2019t play a teenager, it just looks creepy and weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is not to say that they don\u2019t think about it. \u201cWe will text each other: \u2018Begging for it,\u2019\u200a\u201d she says. \u201cMeaning, \u2018I\u2019ve just seen Barbie,\u2019 and acknowledging that if we were still doing this, we\u2019d have a go at that, wouldn\u2019t we? We\u2019d love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What they are not too old for, happily, is panto: this winter, the pair will reunite on a West End stage for the first time in 17 years for the London Palladium\u2019s reliably starry pantomime, in this case Cinderella, with Julian Clary<\/a> and Nigel Havers<\/a>. \u201cIt is always a spectacle,\u201d French says. \u201cI think The Guardian called it a \u2018tsunami of smut\u2019, and it is that, because of Julian. [Clary starred in the 2016 production, also at the Palladium.] I\u2019ve never been involved with something as rude as those pantos. We were waiting for Cinderella because it\u2019s got the Ugly Sisters, of course \u2014 perfect for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do 70 shows inside five weeks or so, it\u2019s mad,\u201d she continues, beaming. \u201cTwo shows a day, six days a week. You just don\u2019t have a life. You don\u2019t have Christmas, but you are Christmas,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I can give you this exclusive: there will be an element of Kardashian about how we are presenting ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the second series of her BBC sitcom Can You Keep a Secret?<\/a> filming before that, \u201cthat\u2019s me knowing what I\u2019m doing every single day until the end of January. And I\u2019m delighted. I love the control; I love knowing what\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"550047,TITLE:CanWith Craig Roberts in the BBC sitcom Can You Keep A Secret? BBC<\/p>\n

An itinerant childhood<\/p>\n

She was born in Holyhead, Wales, and French\u2019s early years were itinerant as Denys\u2019s job demanded that they move every 18 months or so, across the UK and to Germany and Cyprus. She attended \u201csix or seven\u201d junior schools.<\/p>\n

For secondary school, the RAF paid boarding school fees for Dawn and Gary. \u201cMy parents couldn\u2019t believe what a privilege it was,\u201d French says. \u201cBut it also meant that they were dragged into a world they didn\u2019t know. My mum always put on a hat and a Hyacinth Bucket accent to try to match the other parents at speech day. She thought that they would look down on her. And so she tried to elevate herself in a really embarrassing way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard, when you\u2019ve had a suicide in your family, to claim that you had a great dad,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause if you had a great dad, then why did that happen?\u201d But Denys filled his daughter with confidence and self-esteem, telling her she was beautiful, even when \u2014 as she recounts in Dear Fatty \u2014 she came downstairs, aged 16, in purple hotpants.<\/p>\n

That father-daughter dynamic is \u201cabsolutely key\u201d for women, French believes. \u201cYou measure every other male by your dad,\u201d she says. \u201cNow if your dad\u2019s shit, you\u2019re going to suffer all sorts of shit, but if you\u2019ve had a great dad, why would you settle for less than that? That\u2019s your template. Not to say that you can\u2019t make some mistakes \u2014 we all do \u2014 but you value yourself if you\u2019ve been valued by your dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THEWith ex-husband Lenny Henry and daughter Billie, 2005Rex\/shutterstock<\/p>\n

Her mum, she says, was no less crucial. \u201cAnd she had to be even greater to be a mum and a dad to us for a lot of years.\u201d After Denys\u2019s death, Roma got a second wind, French tells me. \u201cI would come home and find these notes on her mantelpiece saying, \u2018Thank you, Roma. You\u2019ve saved my life.\u2019 And I said, \u2018What\u2019s this? Who are these people?\u2019 She\u2019d say, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s a boy up the road. He\u2019s been sniffing glue and his dad fiddled with him when he was young. He just doesn\u2019t understand life and he comes in for a cup of tea.\u2019 My mum was having every drug addict on Mutley Plain [in Plymouth, where the family lived] in her house for a cup of tea and a chat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mother\u2019s informal social work led to more organised efforts to raise money and, in particular, to requisition empty properties. Roma founded a women\u2019s refuge in an empty house that grew to take up an entire residential square, and had a vast derelict Admiralty building converted into a recovery centre.<\/p>\n

Roma died in 2012 but not before introducing her daughter to Bignell, whom she knew through the charity sector. He was helping French with research for her second novel when things took a turn for the romantic. \u201cI think of him as her present to me,\u201d she has said.<\/p>\n

Fame, success and marriage<\/p>\n

Roma was firm, in the wake of Denys\u2019s death, that Dawn take up her place as planned at the Central School of Speech and Drama. There she met Saunders, with whom she bonded over their RAF fathers and childhoods spent moving around. While both were training to become drama teachers, shortly after graduation they auditioned for the Comic Strip troupe and unexpectedly became TV stars aged 25. In 1985 they had a hit with ITV\u2019s Girls on Top, with Ruby Wax<\/a> and Tracey Ullman, and in 1987 the BBC gave them their own show, French and Saunders. It remains one of the most successful and popular female-created comedy series.<\/p>\n

For more than 25 years, French was also half of one of comedy\u2019s favourite off-screen couplings, married to Lenny Henry until their apparently amicable separation in 2010. Their much longed-for daughter, Billie, adopted after multiple miscarriages and failed IVF, now has her own four-year-old daughter, \u201ca very, very prized grandchild\u201d, reports a beaming French.<\/p>\n

\"DawnWith her second husband, Mark Bignell, in 2013Wayne Perry\/The Sun<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently she said to me, \u2018Are you Dawn French?\u2019 I nearly denied myself. I was so close to saying, \u2018No, never heard of her. What do you mean?\u2019 She\u2019s not stupid, she picks up on things, but I\u2019m going to have to curate this carefully,\u201d she says. \u201cOr make her sit down and watch it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from the \u201ccrunchy\u201d aspects of getting old, as considered in the book, French is at peace with the physical side of the ageing process. No Joan Rivers-style surgery for her. \u201cLet them see it. I\u2019m f***ing grateful to be this age. I\u2019ve made decisions about whether or not I\u2019m going to take a machete to my face, and fine for anybody who wants to, but these are my decisions. People troll you and whatever, as if I would really care. Nothing will hurt me by criticising my age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her body, meanwhile, is \u201calways mentioned\u201d, she says. And in reading previous interviews, I am staggered by the constant commentary on her weight. In one particularly horrifying interview from 2006, the piece begins, \u201cHow big is Dawn? It is an obsession. How can she be that big and that confident?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel a bit impervious to it now but you\u2019re right, it\u2019s shocking how much I\u2019ve got used to reading this about myself. I just skim through and go, oh, there\u2019s that shit.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things are unacceptable to say now, but it\u2019s definitely still there,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m too long in the tooth. I can\u2019t even find the place where it hurts, because it doesn\u2019t any more. I had such a lot of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I suggest that now, though, public shaming has shifted. While cruel comments about people\u2019s appearance are (somewhat) less acceptable, we shame public figures in other ways: most notably, we cancel them.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re living in very tricky times\u2019<\/p>\n

French has experienced this first hand too. In June 2025, she posted a 40-second video about Gaza, which prompted immediate heated criticism on social media. French quickly removed the post and apologised, explaining that her intention had been \u201cto mock and point the finger of shame at the behaviour of the cruel leaders on all sides of this atrocious war\u201d.<\/p>\n

In October 2023, in an interview in this paper, French said, \u201cComedy is supposed to offend a bit. You\u2019ve got to be a bit edgy and I would fight for people\u2019s right to do that,\u201d but joked that she was \u201ctoo old\u201d to worry about being cancelled.<\/p>\n

The backlash from her post last June was therefore not a situation one imagines French expected to find herself in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can say is the whole experience was shocking and edifying,\u201d she says. \u201cI know so much. I now see how it works and how people attempt to make it work, and it\u2019s fascinating.\u201d She plans, eventually, to turn it into art. \u201cI have a one-woman show in mind. I have to be sufficiently distanced from it and our world needs to be different before I think I can say the things I need to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remind French of her public endorsement of Keir Starmer in 2020 and ask how satisfied she is now. French gives a hollow laugh. \u201cI\u2019m a paid-up [Labour] member and I will remain so, and I think that you have to fight from within,\u201d she says. \u201cI think we\u2019re living in very tricky times. I think it\u2019s hard to get it right. I have faith in that party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her brother, a diehard Corbynite, has relinquished his membership. \u201cWe have very robust debates at all times. My take is: remain in and fight from within, properly. Fight with a vote, fight with your opinion, fight with everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

French checks her phone and discovers we\u2019ve been talking for more than two hours. Her husband will be \u201ccircling\u201d to collect her.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not sure what the next book will be, just that there will be one. \u201cI\u2019ve got some thoughts. I try to let story ideas percolate and see what sticks and I think, ah yes, that\u2019s a rich seam and I can add to that.\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly, she says, \u201cI cannot imagine retiring yet.\u201d Dawn French is definitely OK. <\/p>\n

Enough by Dawn French (Michael Joseph, \u00a325) is published on May 21. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk<\/a>. Special discount available for Times+ members<\/p>\n

Lead image and picture 1: shirt, marinarinaldi.com<\/a>. Trousers, saharalondon.com<\/a>. Trainers, solebliss.com<\/a>. Picture 2: suit, eskandar.com<\/a>. Trainers, solebliss.com<\/a>. Hat, mjmshop.dk<\/a>. Picture 3: top, yoursclothing.co.uk<\/a>. Collar, juliaallert.com<\/a>. Hair: Michael Douglas. Make-up: Charlie Duffy at Carol Hayes Management using Elemis and Stila<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Halfway through typing up the longhand draft of Dawn French\u2019s latest novel (\u201cI don\u2019t own a computer,\u201d the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-426942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}