The BGB

Post: #1 (ID: 113590)

Absolutely awful: Real life Edina's son says why growing up wasn't quite so fabulous after all

By Jane Fryer
Last updated at 12:45 AM on 04th August 2008

Rainy holidays in North Wales. Hot, bad-tempered car journeys. Or maybe just incessant bickering.

Childhood memories never quite pan out as parents hope. But at least most of us were spared hours of Buddhist chanting alongside Sting and Sinead O'Connor.

Or naked 'rebirthing' rituals in a hot tub with our middle-aged mum.

Inspiration: Ab Fab's Edina was based on the life of PR Lynne Franks, above with her son Josh

Or crowds of hippies turning up on the doorstep every ten minutes.

Oh yes, and an extended stay with a tribe of North American Indians who renamed you Blackhawk and taught you to 'dissolve clouds with your mind'.

But then Josh Howie's childhood was never going to be run of the mill.

Because Josh, now 32, is the son of PR supremo Lynne Franks, New Age enthusiast and inspiration for Edina Monsoon in Jennifer Saunders' Bafta and Emmy-winning TV sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

Today, he is a comedian and is performing his stand-up show Chosen to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is based on his life story and he has plenty of material.

Such as the time when Lynne, the daughter of a Jewish butcher, declared that the whole family (Lynne, her husband Paul Howie the Australian fashion designer, Josh, then seven, and sister Jessica, five) were all to become Buddhists.

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as Edina and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous

'It's easy to be a Buddhist,' says Josh. 'You learn the chant and you become one straight away.'

(Though it also sounds quite time-consuming - two hours a day in a room with an altar and all the paraphernalia, alongside staff and celebrities.)

'You'd chant for whatever you want,' explains Josh. 'It was all very materialistic.

'All the people at the company, Lynne Franks PR, were chanting for promotions. Mum would chant for her clients to win work.

'I'd chant for a bike, and if I didn't get a bike, I'd say "Mum, I don't think this chanting thing works", and the next day I'd get a bike.

'There were five minutes at the end of the hour when we'd chant for world peace, but I really resented the world peace stuff because it ate into my bike-chanting time.'

Jennifer Saunders knew comedy gold when she saw it.

She and Lynne were old friends, who worked, played and holidayed together, so Saunders had quite a bit of time to observe goings-on in the Franks/Howie household.

Not surprisingly, when Ab Fab came out in November 1992, Lynne felt hurt and betrayed.

In part, most likely, because for all her eccentricities and preposterousness, she was a hugely successful businesswoman and Britain's most famous PR.

With clients including Swatch, the Labour Party, Live Aid, Next and comedian Lenny Henry, she worried about the damage that the idiotic, dope-smoking Edina could do to her reputation.

Saunders has denied the Edina/Lynne link, but Josh is having none of it.

'Edina <cite>is Mum,' he says. 'The similarities in the conversation and mannerisms are amazing.

'Mum, just like Edina, will come downstairs and say to my sister "Make some tea, sweetie", and it'll be: "Make it yourself."

'Then it's: "Oh sweetie, darling, kiss kiss, make it for me."

'The show was quite painful to watch, although my sister and I thought it was very funny.

'And surreal: the bin was the same as ours, the kitchen was the same as ours.

'My grandma is just like the June Whitfield character, very prim and proper and oblivious to what was going on.

'It was pretty trippy to see our lives up there on the screen.'

The similarities didn't stop there. Bubbles (Edina's secretary) looked exactly like Lynne's secretary.

And Patsy - the Bollinger-quaffing, chain-smoking blonde played by Joanna Lumley - was an amalgamation of Lynne's friends.

Even strait-laced Josh had a role as inspiration for Edina's super-serious daughter.

'I was the Saffy character,' he said. 'I was very cynical, always dissing the hippies hanging around and being a grumpy teenager.

'Mum and my sister Jessica would be off at Grateful Dead concerts doing their thing [which, according to Lynne, included some pretty powerful hallucinogenic mushrooms] and I was the voice of reason.'

Which could be a bit tiresome.

'I'd open the door and there'd be 20 hippies with bongo drums and I'd slam the door in their faces.'

The £1.8million family home in London's Little Venice, complete with library, chanting room, summer and winter sitting rooms, and a little tower housing the nanny's bedroom, was always teeming with visitors.

Jasper Conran, Donna Karan and Lenny Henry could be sipping drinks in the kitchen, while Sting, Sinead O'Connor, Ruby Wax and Katharine Hamnett might be in the chanting room.

There were also countless nannies over the years, a maid, a macrobiotic cook, a gay housekeeper called Nigel and a chaffeur.

Their luxurious pad in Mallorca (currently on the market for £4.5 million) was just as hectic.

'All her clients were also her friends. They all came on holiday with us.

'But I didn't really know who any of these people were, apart from maybe Seal, who used to play tennis with us,' says Josh.

The Buddhism ended when Lynne's 24-year marriage to Howie crumbled (though Lynne was still chanting during her appearance on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! last year).

At about the same time, she sold her PR firm for a reported £6 million and embarked on a decade of spiritual navel-gazing, assisted by a slew of self-help gurus, a Rastafarian drummer, a 22-year-old fire-eater and the stint with the North American Indians, accompanied by Josh, then 15, and Jessica.

'I made my own drum,' says Josh.

'The culmination was the "vision quest" where we were each abandoned for 24 hours with no food or water in the wilderness and told to find our animal spirit.'

By her own account, the 'quest' had an equally dramatic effect on Lynne.

'During the day, I watched the eagles circle below me. Then I took my clothes off,' she has written.

'I sensed the primeval blood of my female ancestors, the blood of woman of all time, running through my veins.

And, she continues: 'As night came, I made a circle with my urine to keep out the wild animals, put my sleeping bag in the middle and wasn't scared of the spooks that I'd always imagined in the dark.'

Josh returned to his North London boarding school and told his classmates: 'I'm now Blackhawk, I can regress people to their past lives and dissolve clouds with my mind.'

Next came his mother's hip-hop phase, during which he convinced himself he was black. Followed by a few sessions with a psychic therapist.

It might not have been a boring childhood, but it can't have been easy.

'I was just so eager to please and it was a way of getting love,' he said in an interview at the weekend.

But perhaps the most cringe-making incident came when Josh was 18 and was persuaded to take part in a 'rebirthing' ritual - naked, in a hot tub, at midnight (for added authenticity) with a spiritual 'midwife'.

'I questioned it, but there was a fair bit of blackmail and there weren't any other adults around to confirm it was as mad as I thought it was.

'I agreed to it only because she kept hassling me during Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was the most excruciating experience of my life.'

Not least because, as well as having the naked 'midwife' sploshing about beside him, at the last minute Lynne decided that she also wanted to be 'reborn', so stripped off and jumped in, too.

But Josh did, finally, rebel by embracing his Jewish roots and training as a rabbi in Jerusalem - until he was caught with a naked Catholic girl and expelled.

While Josh's show is based on his life - it's a marvel he managed to crunch it down to an hour - he's never traded on his family name and doesn't actually mention Lynne by name at all.

Which presents its own problem - the stories are so ridiculously far-fetched he's had to introduce a few family snaps to the show.

'People just didn't believe it, so I've had to bring in a projector,' he says.

'This is me training to be a rabbi. This is me living with the American Indians. This is me as a Buddhist.'

Today, he is married - to Monique, a child therapist - and since 2003 has been a regular on the stand-up circuit.

'It could have gone one of two ways,' he says. 'I was very bonkers for a while.

'Comedy has been such a great outlet for me because for the first time in my life I've become a blossoming butterfly.'

Even Lynne agrees it's a success.

'Oh, he's brilliant. I'm so proud of him,' she said yesterday.

'It's a wonderful show and, for once it's all about him and nothing to do with me.'

Apart, of course, from the chanting and the Buddhism and the American Indians and the hip-hop phase and the rebirthing and, indeed, pretty much her whole Ab Fab life.

Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1041283/Absolutely-awful-Real-life-Edinas-son-says-» growing-wasnt-quite-fabulous-all.html

Post: #2 (ID: 113592)

Oh, the days of Ab Fab - I was Patsy with Edina's figure Laugh Out Loud

*sigh*

Reminds me of the time when discussing Sabrina the Teenage Witch with my friend's daughter. She said her mother and I were like the aunts in the show. Foolishly I asked which one I was........I was Hilda Crying

Oh whatever happened to Salem?

Post: #3 (ID: 113596)

Ah lurved Ab Fab!

June Whitfield wiz a scream! Laugh Out Loud

Post: #4 (ID: 113597)