I REMEMBER...Jenny Eclair

Jenny Eclair (63) came to fame as a Perrier Award winner and is best known for Grumpy Old Women and her stand-up shows. She looks back on being an army brat, working as a life model and her many forays into reality TV

- Simon Button

MY FATHER WAS ABSENT A LOT BECAUSE HE WAS IN THE ARMY. I was born in Kuala Lumpur, but my first memory is after we’d moved back to England, when I was living with Mum in Blackpool. I was around three when Dad came home from Arabia, where he was stationed; he put me on his shoulders and pretended that he didn’t know where we lived. We went up and down the road, with him going down the wrong garden paths and asking, "Is it this house?".

MY MOTHER WAS EXTRAORDINARY. She was an army wife who didn’t work, didn’t do much housework and read a lot of books. She only just died this year, actually. My parents had longevity. They had rubbish hair and my dad had rubbish legs and genetically I haven’t been blessed with very much, but longevity does run in the family. Dad was 90 when he died and Mum was 93. She was probably the most stoic woman I’ve ever met. I’m on loads more heart medication than she ever was. She contracted polio when she was 22 but I think she took half an aspirin her entire life.

I WAS AROUND FOUR WHEN I FOUND I COULD MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH. I used to gatecrash my parents’ dinner parties, where I’d come down wearing my dad’s hats. I liked attention. We didn’t have a television and made up a lot of stories to entertain ourselves. There was a giddiness inside me that I could feel and I just liked laughing, making others laugh and pulling faces.