In this candid interview (because that’s frankly the only option with Jenny Eclair), the comedian, novelist and actress reflects on squirrels, punk rock, hotel beds, travelling, sitting on walls, being best mates with your partner, ageing and death. Yup it’s all-encompassing and random at the same time. Interviewer Melissa Blease leaps into the world of Planet Eclair with exuberance, talking to Jenny ahead of her appearance at Komedia this month.
“I’m watching a squirrel in my garden. I’m not sure it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, but they’re everywhere, aren’t they? And most of them are in my back garden!”
Now I don’t know much about squirrels, but I know that watching a squirrel isn’t the most exciting thing that Jenny Eclair – one of the UK’s most popular comedians, novelists, actresses and all-round spokespeople for a ‘certain’ generation – has ever done.
Having bagged the Time Out Cabaret Award in 1989, Jenny Clare Hargreaves – who was born to British parents in Kuala Lumpur in 1960 and adopted the stage name Eclair when she was a teenager at a disco in Blackpool in an effort to ‘sound French’ – went on to become the first female solo performer to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995. Since then, she’s ruled the primetime TV and radio airwaves with her unique brand of observational comedy, wit and wisdom. She’s published six novels, a guide to the menopause and a memoir, and she aced I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – and she’ll be talking about all this and more when she brings her new show to Komedia Bath on Sunday 9 March. But for now: back to squirrels…
“I don’t know about squirrels!,” I confess. “I live in a third floor flat with a cat who tells me what’s going on outside of the window.”
“A what? Oh, a cat! I thought you said you had a tramp!”, Eclair screeches. “I thought, crikey, do people still use that term? And why has she got a tramp living with her, telling her what’s going on?”
Welcome to Planet Eclair, where we’re encouraged to say it like it is, whatever ‘it’ might be. Jenny; are you ever not fun? “Truth be told, I’m very bad-tempered because I’m still working while most women my age are going on cruises and getting into pensions they set up when they were 24!”
Whether age is or isn’t A Big Thing to Eclair is a moot point; she’s never shied away from sharing fearlessly frank observations on every stage of her life, from her earliest appearances to now. So how are her 60s treating her?
I’m probably as punk rock as a 64-year old woman can be, but y’know, life happens!
“I know what I like, and I make the most of all of it,” she says. “I like painting. I like watching TV in my pyjamas – and oh, I like my bed! I like any bed, actually; people say your own bed is the best, but hotel beds are much better than mine. And somebody else makes it for you, too; I barely change my sheets, so it makes a nice change. But I loathe that media image of women in their 60s being best-behaved, careful, proper people, because we’re just… not that. Be honest: we’re all furious about something. Everyone’s exhausted, everyone’s pissed off and most of us haven’t got enough money. Everyone’s a bit disappointed. That’s life in our 60s”.
But surely Eclair can rely on the punk rock element that’s so firmly woven into her origin story to – well, keep her pecker up? “I’m probably as punk rock as a 64-year-old woman can be, but y’know, life happens!” she laughs. “And anyway, it was exhausting being over-the-top all the time. These days I can be boring if I want to. There’s a subtle difference between allowing yourself to get boring and being boring, and I think I am that difference. I was never a proper punk anyway; I kind of borrowed from that scene. I was labelled a ‘punk poet’ for a while – whatever that means! – but I was never able to abide gob, so I was never a fully paid-up punk. But I liked dressing up a bit like Debbie Harry, if that counts?”
Any little memory box snippet Eclair chooses to throw out there counts.
“If that’s how you feel, you have to read my memoir. Or just come to the show – it kind of matches the handbag to the book, for those who can’t be arsed to read the book itself. But it’s not all about me; it’s about what most of us have done and were doing down every decade I’ve been around.”
Putting all that together must have been an epic task? “It was the right time for me to do it,” she explains. “In a way, it was a ‘safe space’ project. I was writing another novel but when my mum died, I didn’t have enough bandwidth to work with fiction. I knew my own life story by heart, though, and I had all this stuff just floating around that took me off to other places. It was mostly really comforting, but occasionally, writing about the show business side of my life, and how unloving that side of life can be, made me a bit angry. Good anger? Probably; who knows? But that’s all part of the ‘life mix’, isn’t it? My mum was 93 when she passed away. She’d had dementia for some years, and it’d been really rough. She was no longer happy living as she was, and she was really frightened, so I could see the release in her death; it should have happened a bit sooner than it did, really. I talk about all that in the show, but I don’t shy away from finding the funny in death. Watching someone die is quite mad, but sadly it’s a big part of life for so many of us at our age: we can all relate to death. But I don’t agree with that thing about women becoming ‘invisible’ in their 60s; most of us are about 13 stone, so nobody can claim not to see us! But unless we’re some kind of weird old sex-robot type woman, we’re ignored.”
Eclair is definitely not, however, ignoring her relatively new role as a grandmother.
Eclair married her husband Geoff (an artist) in 2017, when their daughter Phoebe Eclair-Powell (today a hugely successful playwright) was 28. In 2022, Geoff and Jenny became grandparents to Phoebe’s son Arlo – and Eclair is loving parenting once-removed.
“Being the centre of somebody’s universe even for one day is like having a day off without having a day off,” she says. “When Phoebe was small, I was out chasing my career and I never had the time for my daughter like I have for Arlo. I was a terribly neglectful mother.”
Was chasing a career neglectful, though – or is that not just another societal pressure? “Well, yes and no. I don’t mean I left Phoebe sitting on a wall outside the house! Having said that, our generation all sat on walls when we were younger ’cos there was f**k all else to do!”
Today, however, there’s no shortage of stuff for Eclair to do; by the time she pitstops in Bath, she’ll be around a third of a way through a massive tour that takes her across the UK and back.
“I find travelling punishing, but I kind of know how to tour, these days. Basically I turn into an automaton: my driver picks me up, and I just go. The actual gigs are lovely – and easy, these days – but everything that goes alongside them is punishment. I can’t even talk to people before a show; I save everything for the gig. All I ask is for an iron and ironing board in my dressing room, and that’s that. I do take breaks, though; this time around, Geoff and I can even get away for a few days between gigs. I’ve done much harder tours.”
Ah, her partner Geoff – Eclair talks of him often; I can tell they’re good friends. Yes? “Yes! It would be terrible to wake up every morning and think, I wish he’d go out for the day. If you’re not best mates with your partner by the time you’re our age, you’ve really done something wrong. You’ve got to enjoy each other’s company! Obviously there’s a cut off point; we’ve agreed to drive each other off a cliff if it all gets too much. But my dad died when he was 90 and my mum when she was 93; I think I’ll be alright for a while.”
Something tells me that Jenny Eclair will always be alright – and as long as she keeps on telling us how she’s managing to do that, so will we.
Jenny Eclair: Jokes, Jokes, Jokes Live!, Bath Komedia, 9 March, £25. komediabath.co.uk