
As one of the country’s best loved comic actresses, Helen Lederer is probably best known for her role as the lovably dippy Catriona in Absolutely Fabulous alongside Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in all six series and more recently in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. She created the Girl at the Bar in the BBC comedy sketch show Naked Video and is known for her unique wit and observational humour.
Now, the Absolutely Fabulous star feels it’s time to spill the beans, before she forgets everything and takes up gardening. What really went on in the Big Brother house? Can she be honest about stand-up comedy, being fat, wheezy and other secrets? probably not. She might lie. Tickets are on sale from 19th April.
Helen has starred in a great number of top TV and radio comedy shows during her long and successful career. She was part of a group of early 1980’s comedians, including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Ben Elton and the late Rik Mayall who made their names at London’s Comedy Store. She was a guest on ITV’s Saturday Night Live with her solo comedy act as well as performing at the first Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal with Lenny Henry. TV appearances include the likes of The Young Ones, French and Saunders, Happy Families, One Foot in the Grave, Bottom, Love Soup, Miss Marple and Hollyoaks. She also starred as Rich Aunt Ruby in Horrid Henry: The Movie.
Helen is also recently appeared in ITV1’s The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night this Spring to raise awareness of breast cancer.
On radio she has written and performed her own BBC comedy series Life with Lederer and All Change as well as being a panelist on shows such as BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, Just a Minute, Quote…Unquote, A Good Read, Open Book and Woman’s Hour.
As well as her prolific acting career, Helen has been a columnist for Woman&Home and The Independent as well as contributing to The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Express and The Daily Telegraph. She is currently the ‘agony aunt’ for Woman’s Weekly.
Helen’s theatre work includes Educating Rita and playing Doreen in Alan Bleasdale’s Having a Ball. She has been in The Vagina Monologues, Calendar Girls, and The Killing of Sister George in London’s West End.
Not content with a successful acting and comedy career, Helen’s first comedy novel Losing It, which was published by Pan Macmillan, was nominated for the PG Wodehouse Comedy Literary Prize.
Helen is also the brains behind Comedy Women In Print, which is a new women’s comedy literary award.
Much to Helen’s surprise, her recent appearance in Celebrity Big Brother led to her trending on Twitter, being saved by the public vote three times affording her the temporary title of “national treasure”. She is currently working on her second novel Do the Indecent Thing, which is comedy memoir.
Underbelly: Jersey Room: 4th – 26th August
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