I'm Not Jennifer Saunders: Absolutely Fabulous

Wednesday, 9 October 2013

Jennifer Saunders at the Southbank Centre and Why it's Never Cool to be a Superfan

Anyone who follows my blog (as much as it’s possible to follow something that doesn’t actually move for months on end – sorry!) will know that it’s not a Jennifer Saunders fan site. Jennifer Saunders is my holey old jumper that I put on when I’m feeling a little unwell or upset and need to hear jokes that I know the punch-lines to or just be in trusting, uncomplicated, familiar company. You can read my first post for more thoughts on this subject, but the overall point is that we all have these holey old jumpers (authors, bands, comedians, actors, etc.); we just can’t wear them all the time. There are new authors, bands, comedians, actors, etc. to be discovered, work to be done, relationships to be had and life to be lived. In fact, I now use Jennifer Saunders as a marker of how well things are going in my life. If the DVDs are cold then life is probably quite sweet.

That said…Oh my God!...She was at the Southbank Centre being interviewed and I went and I’ve never seen her live before and…oh my God!...I’m such an unbelievable sap that I almost cried when she came on the stage. What’s wrong with me? I’m a 36-year-old woman attending a literary event not a 12-year-old Justin Bieber fan hoping to get close enough to the stage to have his spit rain down me. How embarrassing! What’s more, I immediately felt possessive. What were all those other people doing there pretending like they knew what Jennifer’s all about, laughing at obscure Comic Strip references as if they understood them? Pah! She’s my Jennifer Saunders! Bugger off! But then it became quite obvious that she’s not just mine; the woman next to me looked as if she was going to kill me when I opened my bag of sweets noisily and she potentially missed a few sacred words from her hero; one weirdo had come all the way from Canada to see her and when given the opportunity to ask her a question couldn’t gather her thoughts to say anything but a garbled mumble about a diamond ring; other people came forward to ask questions, all prefixed by the words, ‘I love you, Jennifer.’ And do you know what? At no point during the whole interview did Jennifer Saunders look in my direction to seek me out, say hey, find out how I am. After all these years and the hours we’ve spent in each other’s company, this was the least I had expected.

I realise that all of this makes me sound a little crazy, but I think that it’s that pretend closeness that makes people crazy. Some part of us really thinks that we know celebrities and so they must know us back. This became apparent to me years ago when I was in a pub in Brighton and saw a familiar bloke sitting on a nearby table. ‘I’m sure I went to school with that guy,’ I told my mate. ‘I should pop over and say hi.’ Turns out it was Will Young, but I was convinced that we knew each other. Thankfully my friend stopped me from making an absolute tit of myself.

With this in mind, I guess meeting our heroes will always be an anti-climax and this is why I didn’t stay for Jennifer Saunders’ book signing after the interview. I knew that I would say something embarrassing and sycophantic or drop a nonsense on the table in front of her and she would probably roll her eyes at me or glaze over because I was the fiftieth or sixtieth mentalist to approach her thinking that there was some sort of closeness between us. So I kept my cool, went home, put the day behind me and put on an episode of Absolutely Fabulous instead.

Before I wrote this blog I thought I would do a quick Google search about superfans (understatedly defined by Wikipedia as ‘[people] who show a great deal of excitement for something’) and very quickly realised that compared to other nutjobs all I have is a mild case of admiration for Jennifer Saunders. There are people who have had plastic surgery to look like their idols, sent them letters in menstrual blood and covered their bodies in tattoos and that’s not to mention devotion shown in phenomenal volumes of calls, tweets and cash spent. One woman changed her name to Mrs Kanye West and another broke her own leg to be like Jessie J when she was injured in 2011. Perhaps most extreme, one One Direction fan killed her own dog to get their attention on Twitter.

Yeah, by comparison I think I’m fine!

(FYI, the JS tattoo pictured above is not on my leg. Also pictured, chest tattoo of Radiohead's Thom York with nipple for eye. Hmmm!)

Diazepam for Sale, the debut novel by Hayley Sherman is now available on Amazon

Time travel as a cure for depression, the Mods and Rockers on the West Pier, a vengeful Sat Nav lady, a seagull-stalked Frank Sinatra and Diazepam for sale...
A fairytale for a prozac nation...
Fiction for a world that doesn't behave the way it should....

www.hayley-sherman.co.uk

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Tuesday, 21 August 2012

I'm Not Jennifer Saunders

That’s right, I’m not Jennifer Saunders and neither are you (unless you are. In which case hello and I’m sorry that this blog isn’t about you. I’m a huge fan, but I’m not Jennifer Saunders. You are). I’m Hayley Sherman. I’m a writer and I do things for other writers for money. I write novels about people who have a questionable grasp on reality, which can lead to questions about my own handle on the subject, but one thing is definitely for certain – I’m not Jennifer Saunders and this I have to tell myself often.

You may wonder about the relevance of Jennifer Saunders in all this. Well, in truth we all have a Jennifer Saunders and mine came into my life when I was a child. She was in French and Saunders and Girls on Top and then came Absolutely Fabulous and she rocked my world. I would watch the videos over and over again until I could recite the words and dazzle my friends who would always get them wrong. I’d tape interviews on the TV and cut out articles about her and sometimes I’d find that my mouth would move the way hers does or I’d say something and sound a bit like her. Jennifer was my Beatles and Elvis Presley. She was my Bros and Boyzone… But then I grew up. I put away my playthings, got jobs and relationships. I went into the big wide world, put Jennifer in a cupboard and only pulled her out when there was a slump. She was strictly reserved for bad days and sick days. She would make me feel a little better and then I’d be off again.

Did I mention that I want to live in a narrowboat? In fact, I want two narrowboats, one in England and one abroad. I want to slosh about in little canals and write strange and unusual prose. I want to meet the oddly shaped neighbours and share stories of a mystical past. I want to sit on the stickyouty bit on the end of my boat with my feet sending out ripples and gulp at the night air. I don’t want to be being Jennifer Saunders at this time in my life, but she’s crept back in. There was the illness then the breakup. Then there was the move to a shared house (my parent’s house!). Then there was the day my back exploded and I bought the entire Jennifer Saunders back catalogue to help me recover from the surgery. The family drama, the friends moving on without me, the view from my little boxroom window at a world that’s got smaller and smaller, time stretching out endlessly behind and in front of me.

But no more!

I will not be Jennifer Saunders!

I will not watch another episode as long as there is great fiction to be read and written. I am a clean slate, a recovering Jennifer Saunders, poised to waltz not wallow, and I invite you to share my journey into the written word, the spoken life and the world of endless possibilities.

In advance, my new friend, I would like to thank you for accompanying me on my voyage. Leave me a comment. Say hello. I can tell already that you’re a real sweetie, darling.

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