French and Saunders

French and Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring comic duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It is also the name by which the performers are known on the occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.

Widely popular in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of popular culture, movies, celebrities and art. The duo continue to film holiday specials for the BBC, and both have been successful starring in their own shows. Saunders won a BAFTA, an Emmy Award and international acclaim for writing and playing the lead role of Edina Monsoon in Absolutely Fabulous, which led to her minor, cameo roles in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends. She won an American People's Choice Award for voicing the wicked Fairy Godmother in the DreamWorks animated film Shrek 2, but more recently she has written and starred in another two BBC sitcoms, Jam and Jerusalem and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. Her other work includes being the face of Barclays Bank and BBC America. Meanwhile, French starred in the highly successful sitcom The Vicar of Dibley which received great critical acclaim as well as numerous holiday specials and future airplay, receiving cult status. She also starred in three series of the comedy show Murder Most Horrid. She had a voice over role as Mrs. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but more recently she has starred in Jam and Jerusalem, written by Saunders, and Lark Rise to Candleford, of which the fourth series has just been commissioned. For many years she became popular for her appearances in the Terry's Chocolate Orange adverts saying the famous line "It's not Terry's, it's mine!" and is currently the voice of W H Smith and Tesco adverts. She recently released her autobiography Dear Fatty, referring to Saunders, to whom she gave the nickname "Fatty".

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, the duo were voted among the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Their last special, 2005's French and Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special, aired on 27 December 2005 on BBC One. In 2006, both Saunders and French announced that their sketch show was now dead, and that they had moved on to more age appropriate material. Their last ever concert, and last ever performing as a duo act, Still Alive tour ran until the end of 2008, and then resumed in Australia in the summer of 2009.

In 2009, they were jointly awarded the BAFTA Fellowship.