Jennifer Saunders will enjoy a fun reunion with Joanna Lumley tonight for a special Ab Fab sketch on BBC1's Red Nose Night Live.

And she is hoping that their Spice Girls-type skit will go down rather better with viewers than her disastrous last TV series with Dawn French.

So is her husband Adrian Edmondson - whose struggles to stay in Celebrity Fame Academy despite a failing voice have won him an even bigger Red Nose following.

Jennifer has been thrilled by his show-stopping performances. "I think he's been fantastic," she says, speaking from France, where she is filming romantic comedy Entente Cordiale.

"My favourite song so far has been Wild Thing. Entertainment-wise, he's streets ahead.
"He was incredibly nervous beforehand. His big fear was that there would be a load of prima donnas in there and that he would get grumpy."

Ade, 48 - battling with EastEnders star Kim Medcalfe and DJs Edith Bowman and Reggie Yates last night for a last-three place - has told her he hates doing aerobics with instructor Kevin Adams.

And hearing that he has been crying on the show was a strange experience for Jennifer. "The weird thing is he's not like that at home," she says. "I am the one who cries at everything on telly, anything emotional. It sounds to me like they're all absolutely knackered.

"They reckon each person in there will raise about million pounds simply because of raising awareness among people."

Now Jennifer is set to do her bit for the Red Nose cause. And she is hoping to make a French And Saunders comeback later this year.

She admits with devastating honesty that their last series didn't work.

The much-loved comedy duo's return to our screens after an eight-year absence was hammered by the critics. Dreary and self-obsessed, said the critics, and their scathing reviews were followed by claims that the pair had fallen out and Saunders was a virtual recluse. "Dawn is like a great, lovely national chocolate," says Jennifer.

"I heard there was a report that we hate each other. Dawn and I love each other dearly and we speak all the time. And by the way, I'm not a recluse."

Still, she accepts the show's failings.

"I think we misjudged the pace of it and misjudged how much other stuff we might need it for it," she says. "It was lots of reasons. "Dawn and I enjoyed it - but I think we were probably the only people that enjoyed it thoroughly because it was exactly what we wanted to do.

"I'm pretty hard on us. I think I'm probably harder than any critic and I know what is wrong.

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We're trying to do something a little bit different at the moment, me and Dawn, and I don't think it worked in the last series."

She believes the show was based on shaky foundations.

"The hard thing now is you have to make a programme for a certain time," she says. "In our heads we were making a late-night BBC2 show, because we always forget we've developed into mainstream now.

"That's not how we started and that's not how we see ourselves, really. But I think we're halfway there to doing something different."

French and Saunders were the UK's most popular female comedy duo for much of the 80s and 90s, and also achieved solo success - Dawn in The Vicar Of Dibley and Jennifer in Ab Fab.

THE pair had cut their teeth in the age of alter-native comedy, writing their own material.

Ironically, it was a lack of material which forced them into their new idea of comedy - deliberately based around having no ideas.

Jennifer, 46, insists it was a risk worth taking. She says: "If you give up trying you'll be dumped almost immediately. You've got to go for it or you might as well give up."

She laughs ruefully: "Sometimes it just doesn't happen and you can't change it because it's in the can." Despite the critical mauling, the duo aim to be back. "Dawn and I are hoping to do another series this year, but it depends what happens with the BBC," says Jennifer.

The mother of three is also penning a new comedy for the Beeb, which she hopes will star Royle Family star Sue Johnston.

"I sort of have some ideas and I've started writing it, but I'm not going to tell you because I'll jinx it," she says.

The Mirror has made a donation to Comic Relief in return for this interview. Visit www.rednoseday. com for details on how to donate.