The ever-popular comedian, actor, novelist and much more talks about everything from living in East Dulwich to being an agony aunt
By Ben West
With a phenomenally varied CV, Helen Lederer has been in the public eye for years. As an actor on tv and the big screen, she’s played dippy Catriona in Absolutely Fabulous and appeared in Horrid Henry: The Movie, Naked Video, Girls on Top, The Young Ones and many more.
Her comedy novel Losing It was nominated for the P.G. Wodehouse Comedy Literary Award, and she’s also had a long career as a stand-up comedian, stage actor, columnist, presenter and panelist. She even found time to become a seasoned reality tv participant, in shows such as Celebrity Big Brother.
Helen was born in Carmarthen to an English mother and Czech-Jewish father but soon found her way to south east London, growing up in Eltham and attending Blackheath High School, which at the time was a direct grant grammar school.
“I have profound memories of Blackheath,” she says, taking a break from writing at her lovely sprawling turn-of-the-last-century house in East Dulwich. “It reminds me of rows with boyfriends in Greenwich Park. I used to go to The Crown a lot, and the Three Tuns [now O’Neill’s] in Blackheath Village.”
She recently added another string to her bow, launching a festive podcast, The Back Seat, for new national station JACK Radio. Also featuring actress/journalist Elizabeth Healey, the cultural show, which is still available to listen to on the JACK Radio website, covers exhibitions, movies and parties the duo recently attended. It may return.
“I had the title Back Seat because it’s not BBC Radio 4’s Front Row,” she says. “It’s not a focused review that warrants a full analysis like Front Row, we don’t analyse like that, and we’re not trying to slag things off. Generally I try not to say negative things to people, certainly not in public, it’s not helpful. But at the same time you want to be honest about it, you can’t be too anodyne about how you experience the things you are talking about.
“It’s my first podcast where I haven’t been a guest. I’ve been a guest on other people’s podcasts, for example one I really liked was Drunk Women Solving Crime, which was in a theatre situation with a live audience, where you drink while solving a crime. Genius idea, that’s an example where podcasts can be fun and interesting, slightly outside the box but which still work. However, I’ve not done a podcast where I’ve been in it all the time, like this.”
Helen has lived in East Dulwich with GP husband Chris since they bought the house a couple of decades ago after Helen’s mother died. Chris moved from Wiltshire and Helen sold her property, a cottage in Brixton.
“I bought the Brixton property off the actor Gregor Fisher, Rab C Nesbitt,” she says. “Before that I had a flat in Finsbury Park in north London. I’ve lived all over London: well, not all over. I haven’t done Notting Hill yet.
“We should move one of these days, downsize. But something always happens, gets in the way. We’re just living in chaos like everyone else now.
‘I like Dulwich, it’s quieter than many neighbourhoods. I go out three or four times a week, and it’s nice to come back to East Dulwich, to the quiet and calm.
“I like Lordship Lane, which has lots of places to have a drink or to eat. There’s a brilliant place called Peckham Bazaar, which serves Persian food. And I was taken to a rooftop bar in Peckham the other day. Young people were running it, it was great.”
Another string to her bow is having been an agony aunt. I tell her that I’m always mystified how agony aunts know what to say to people who write in, as they so often have such complex problems.
“Being an agony aunt is always interesting,” she says. “It takes time to give your best response. They are often problems we all have faced, like betrayal and bereavement. I am very careful. I don’t know if I get it right, but I learned my lesson to be careful when I once used a poorly phrased sentence that caused offence. There is a need to take great care phrasing your reply.”
If all the aforementioned wasn’t enough to keep Helen occupied, some years ago she also decided to become an expert on wine. After gaining the necessary qualifications, she started talking about wine on tv, writing wine columns and created a lighthearted wine workshop entitled The Show-Off’s Guide to Wine.
She takes a keen interest in women comedians and writers, and current faves include Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Muriel Spark and Ruth Jones of Gavin and Stacey fame. Furthering her interest in female writing, she founded the Comedy Women in Print prize, which is billed the first UK and Ireland comedy literary prize to shine a light on witty women authors.
“The Women in Print prize has taken up every hour of the last two years,” she says. “I simply wanted to set it up to recognise funny female authors, but I’ve become administrator, manager, everything. The inaugural winners’ event was in July and the first book will be published by Harpers. Something like that wouldn’t have happened in the 1980s. It was a bunfight to get things done then, competing with other women as well as men.”
She has also been working on her autobiography.
“I’ve just sent off the first draft of what is an over-revealing memoir,” she says. “It’s very scary, and very odd for someone who does not usually reveal too much. I’m always a bit careful. There’s no publication date as yet, it’s just something I wanted to do.”
I mention that in an interview in The Scotsman she had said that she had done everything in life at the wrong time. What did she mean?
“Perhaps that sounds bitter,” she says. “I think any creative person thinks, ‘I thought of that’, but unless you’re in pole position, you can be as talented as anything, but there’s room for only a certain number of people doing the same thing at the same time.”
By all accounts, Helen Lederer is one of those people who does a hell of a lot of things at the same time.
Further information
Comedy Women in Print: comedywomeninprint.co.uk
Jack Radio: jackradio.com
