Illustrations

1. Podge.

2. Happy Podge.

3. Who was cutting my hair?

4. Just before I drowned.

5. My mother, brother Tim and me, on the golden sands of Littlehampton beach.

6. Picnic in Cyprus. My brother Peter is in the white carrycot.

7. Tim and me with Daddy, watching Doctor Who.

8. Test driving a very early eco-car. My brother Tim is on the bonnet.

9. All my heroes were cowboys or horses.

10. Two whippets, my great-aunt Mary, my grandmother Mooma and my posture.

11. Smart new mac and gloves. Riding school on a pony called Badger.

12. My mother looking slightly unhappy as the borrowed pony had just stepped on her toe.

13. Christmas morning. I wanted a tommy gun.

14. First year at big school.

15. Northwich Grammar School for Girls. I once volunteered to stand in for the goalie and made the mistake of being quite good at it and never got out. Helen Newman, who I was in Italy with, is back row, third from left.

16. Twelve years old and off to do some snaps with my snazzy Instamatic in my snazzy hat.

17. Mummy in the kitchen in Cheshire.

18. My parents in the swinging sixties.

19. I loved the martini shirt! My twenty-first birthday party in the cellar in Cheshire. Dawn and me, lookin’ a bit pie-eyed.

20. Theatre in Education. Peter (one of the only two boys on the course at the college), JoBo, me and Dawn. We performed to some poor schoolchildren. The opening number was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.

21. Dressed up to go out and stare at people on the Tube.

22. Very early Comic Strip club days. Yes, those were our stage outfits.

23. 1980s live show. A sketch that was based on my old headmistress Miss Dines.

24. The sublime Raw Sex: Rowland Rivron and Simon Brint, aka Duane and Ken Bishop.

25. Rik Mayall, Dawn and Alexei Sayle in a charming dressing room in Glasgow on the first Comic Strip tour.

26. Rik, Nigel Planer and Ade having a break during the filming of A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques.

27. Ade and me in Australia with the Comic Strip. We’re not actually going out at this point.

28. Cheer up! In the Caribbean on holiday with Ade while our wedding is being organized.

29. 11 May 1985. Wedded.

30. The reception. My father actin’ the fool with a make-up brush, with Dawn over-actin’ the fool behind.

31. Rik, my god-daughter Cordelia, me, Ade and Robbie Coltrane on the ground.

32. My agent Maureen Vincent at our wedding.

33. At the wedding. Robbie Coltrane and Jools Holland. What a lovely couple they made.

34. Honeymoon. Photo taken by camera on timer, not by chambermaid.

35. Ade and me with Ella when she was just one year old.

36. Dawn and me as Anne and George in Five Go Mad in Dorset.

37. Peter Richardson, the man behind the Comic Strip.

38. Girls on Top: Dawn, Joan Greenwood, Ruby Wax, Tracey Ullman and me. I’ve got my Mr Bean face on.

39. Now that’s what I call lighting!

40. The Menopazzi Sisters. Please note tassels on back of leotards.

41. This photo needs no caption.

42. Live tour in 2000. Dressing room at Hammersmith Odeon, doing phone interviews.

43. On tour. Make-up removal on coach.

44. Madonna!

45. ‘Braveheart’. Never happier than when in a chest wig and beard.

46. ‘Star Wars’. Me with my girls Ella, Beattie and Freya as very cheap supporting artists. Note beard but no chest wig. What a howler!

47. Ab Fab, France. Joanna Lumley and me on a break from filming.

48. Ah, the sixties! Joanna, Zandra Rhodes, meself, Lulu and Britt Eckland.

49. In New York. Hideously overdressed to receive LGBT award.

50. With Graham Norton at the International Emmys. I’m sportin’ a huge flower given to me by Anita Pallenberg.

51. Edina with God (Marianne Faithfull) and the Devil (Anita Pallenberg). Both are actually goddesses.

52. In Varanasi with Ruby Wax.

53. Trying to amuse Goldie Hawn in Delhi.

54. With the divine Catherine Deneuve. Abberlofabberlo.

55. During L’Entente Cordiale. Serious face.

56. At Shrek screening in Cannes with the ridiculously tall Rupert Everett.

57. En route to baldness.

58. Bald.

59. Ella’s wedding. Dan, her husband, standing to my left.

60. With Ella, Beattie, Freya, Whisky and Beryl.

61. Ella and Beattie in the flat in the Fulham Road, 1988.

62. Olive hard at work writin’ a musical.

63. Edina and Patsy catch 2012 Olympic fever and muster up a semi-jog along the King’s Road.

64. Mid eighties fashion crisis. Hoping the bag contains new clothes.