Grumpy Old Woman Jenny Eclair comes to The Anvil on May 31

1:16pm Wednesday 21st May 2008

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AFTER time spent co-writing and performing in the enormously successful Grumpy Old Women Live tour, writing and starring in her own plays, penning a novel, and hosting a regular Saturday morning radio show on LBC, Jenny Eclair could no longer resist the call of the stand-up stage.

So in autumn last year, she set off on a major nationwide jaunt, the felicitously titled Because I Forgot To Get A Pension tour, and she's back for more this year, popping into The Anvil on Saturday May 31.

"When it goes well, there is nothing to match the buzz of live comedy," she beams, unable to suppress a grin at the very thought of returning to her first love. Jenny adds with characteristic wryness that, "obviously I won't be standing up all the time - I'll need to sit down now and again to stop my ankles swelling!"

She really strikes a chord with her fans. "Audiences like to see a mirror held up to themselves in the theatre," observes Jenny. They find it reassuring that everyone else is in as big a mess as they are. They love to see someone on stage owning up to being even more hopeless, paranoid, worried and bored than they are."

"I feel I have created a rapport with my audiences because they like to see their own fallibility reflected in me. Grumpy Old Women has helped a great deal in that respect. It's made me into the woman next door. It's much easier being an older woman in comedy." There is a panto element to it.

People trust the old dame and don't feel threatened by her. They also think, "at least she won't be on for too long. Her legs have gone and her bladder isn't what it was." By contrast, whenever they hear a young ingénue wittering on, they just think, "oh, shut up!"

The comedian, whose audiences lap up her winning self-deprecation, is offering lots of material about "being the mad side of forty, the odd joke about front bottoms and a bit of swearing." As a bonus, Jenny also promises to wear a shiny new jacket from the sale at Selfridges, "down from £199 to £49.99 - what a bargain!"

48 year-old Jenny, who is the adoring mother of a 19-year-old daughter, Phoebe, goes on to be more specific about the subjects she will be covering in her hotly anticipated new show. The great thing about the comedian is that she never stands still - she is constantly observing the absurdity of life and updating her material accordingly.

She reveals, for example, that, "lately I've been feeling terribly tired all the time. It's probably because I show off too much. Like a small child, I need to lie down and recover every now and then. I have also been unable to sleep at night. That may possibly be connected to the fact that I've had a four-hour nap in the afternoon! I'm so exhausted, I want to be carried around the supermarket, but sadly my partner always says, no!'"

Jenny is also one of the world's great fulminators - and she will be fulminating on this tour about the exorbitant cost of coffees. "I've worked out that I've spent £700 on lattes in the last year. Now when they ask, would you like a sprinkling of chocolate on your coffee?' I say, no, thanks, I'd like a sprinkling of gold dust, and shares in the company!'"

She is equally livid about the vacuity of daytime TV. "Jeremy Kyle gets through so many guests every morning that he'll eventually run out of chavs and be forced to start recruiting from the middle classes. The programmes will have titles like, son, why have you stopped playing the cello?'"

As well as a lustful tribute to the actor James McAvoy, the stand-up is going to treat us to "a big diatribe about the rom-com. I despise the mawkishness and the emotional manipulation and the contrivance of those films," Jenny fumes. "All those overheard phone conversations and unlikely coincidences. And as for the infuriating taglines - it'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry.' No, it'll make you puke!"

Jenny reveals that she will also be discussing the agonies of being the mother of a teenage daughter. "The mother-daughter relationship has replaced the man-woman relationship as my major concern," observes the stand-up, who studied drama at Manchester Poly. "I'm doing quite a lot of material about the empty-nest syndrome and the natural snooping gene of the female. That is at its strongest when you're the mother of a teenage daughter!

"I'll be explaining why everyone should have a northern mother. If Amy Winehouse had a northern mother, she would not be getting up to all these terrible things. She'd be sitting quietly at home eating meat and potato pies with her elbows off the dinner-table!" However, Jenny admits to one concern about her routine on motherhood. "I'm terrified that if my daughter comes to the show and hears that section, she won't come home again afterwards!"

The comic, who has built up a devoted live following over the years, is quick to reassure us, though, that she will not be entirely neglecting her best-loved topic: the differences between men and women. "I'll be discussing how women are ruled by their hormones and men are ruled by their bowels.

"I'll blow the whistle on the fact that the biggest passion-killer in the world is the en-suite bathroom - for obvious reasons! I'll also be talking about the ultimate nightmare scenario for any woman: an enthusiastic amateur man trying to give you a massage by candlelight. It's a deep sensual massage - as practised by someone who's read about it in a magazine and has no idea what he's doing!"

Will men feel left out of the show, then? "Not at all," Jenny laughs.

"They'll learn a lot. For instance, they'll learn that they're very lucky they don't have to live with me! They'll go home full of gratitude and be nice to the missus for - ooo, at least three days. I'm looking for sponsorship from Relate!"

In addition to the tour, Jenny has been busy writing two further books with Judith Holder, her co-creator on Grumpy Old Women. Grumpy Old Couples, which is published in June, focuses on "the difficulty of keeping a relationship together without hating each other's guts. It's invariably a question of staying with the devil you know. However, the book suggests that if you do decide to have an affair, it's important to have sex in a place where the lighting is most flattering. You choose the venues for your assignations according to their dimmer switches."

Meanwhile, Wendy: For Women of a Certain Age, which comes out in October, is a homage to the girls' annuals that were hugely popular during the 1970s. "It's full of bittersweet love stories for middle-aged women, next to problems pages and fashion tips," the comedian explains.

Jenny may well return to star in Grumpy Old Women Live again in the future.

She ponders just why that show has become such a phenomenon. "We just tapped into something," reflects the comic. "There are huge battalions of grumpy old women out there with rolled-up umbrellas and raincoats. Their fingers are itching to get out the rolling-pin and slap people around the back of the legs with it. We've opened the floodgates to them - it's an extraordinary sight seeing them all pouring into our gigs."

Grumpy Old Women Live has been an immense hit in this country and in Australia, but Jenny doubts that it will work in the most powerful nation on earth. "We'll never conquer America because they don't want anything with the word old' in it. They're allergic to it because it reminds them that they're going to die one day."

Jenny carries on that, "going out on the road on my own with my stand-up show, I'll genuinely miss the other Grumpy Old Women. I'm worried, too, that if the theatres put a bottle of wine in my dressing-room, I'll drink it on my own and be dead by the end of the tour!

"Touring solo also means I've got nowhere to hide. During Grumpy Old Women Live, if I was in trouble, I could always look over to Dillie Keane and Linda Robson and plead, can you do some more bosom acting?' That invariably got me out of a hole!"

One thing Jenny's stand-up was always renowned for was the unflinching rudeness of the material. But she reckons that is no longer required. "That approach is a bit dated now. If I just trotted out the same old stuff, audiences would notice! There is a sense that my show has progressed."

So she has matured, then? "No," Jenny howls with laughter. "I can't really say I'm older and wiser because at one point I pretend to be a pony!"

Tickets are available from the box office on 01256 844244.