Helen Lederer: I regret being a feeble people-pleaser

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“I regret being feeble and a people-pleaser,” she tells me. “When I was younger, I was cautious – I wanted to be part of the establishment and to secure gainful employment that…

“It’s interesting when people ask: ‘What makes you happy?’ as it isn’t really an ambition of mine,” says Helen Lederer. “I would say my ambition would be the absence of anxiety.”

Sadly for the comedian, actress and writer, there is not much chance of that: anxiety seems to come as part and parcel of her current show – a podcast recorded in front of a live audience.

“I’m familiar with adrenaline – which means I’m familiar with anxiety.

“At this late stage of my life” – Lederer, who is 72, adds – “I’m actually doing what I wish I’d had the balls to do when I started stand-up when I was 30. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything, but f**k it.”

Anyone familiar with Lederer’s work will find it no surprise that she is as entertaining and irreverent during our chat as she is on stage and screen.

Emerging from the 80s alternative comedy scene, she is best known for playing dippy magazine editor Catriona in Absolutely Fabulous, but her credits also include The Young Ones, Bottom, French & Saunders and Naked Video. In a career spanning four decades, she also founded the Comedy Women in Print Prize in 2018, which celebrates women’s comic writing, and is the author of novels, columns and a memoir, Not That I’m Bitter.

Her recently launched live podcast, Eff It, celebrates the rejection of people-pleasing and sacking off permission. It is a subject with which she is well acquainted.

“I regret being feeble and a people-pleaser,” she tells me. “When I was younger, I was cautious – I wanted to be part of the establishment and to secure gainful employment that was largely commissioned by men for sitcoms that were largely written by men.”

Fellow comic Rik Mayall famously warned Lederer: “Don’t crash my laughs” – and trying to succeed in an industry where women weren’t taken as seriously meant taking a different tack. “I’d go to meetings and be really well-behaved, as I was brought up to be – and I would just stay in that lane.

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