Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders almost died after poison horror while filming

25 October 2023 , 16:59

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Dawn and Jennifer in A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques

Comedian Dawn French has told how she and Jennifer Saunders are lucky to be alive after being gassed in the '80s.

Dawn – one half of comedy duo French and Saunders – has revealed that the pair narrowly escaped death while working in Spain. In her new book, The Tw*t Files, the 66-year-old writes: “We made a film for The Comic Strip called A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques in 1984.

“We were sharing a villa with two bedrooms – Fatty (Dawn’s nickname for pal Jennifer) and her then-boyfriend in one room and me in the other. About five days in, we were called to set. A car would pick us up at 6am and it was my job to be the alarm. I duly woke up and, in an effort not to fall back to sleep, I attempted to sit up.

Pair in a scene from A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques

"What happened next was very odd. It was as if I’d been thwacked in the face with a frying pan in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Eventually, I managed to roll on to the floor. I was groggy and confused. I crawled to the door, opened it, and shouted to Jennifer. She mumbled something and then I heard a thud. None of us could stand up, so we crawled outside.

“It later transpired that we were being poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty boiler. I’m pretty sure that, if we hadn’t had that early morning call, we wouldn’t be here now because we wouldn’t have attempted to wake up and the gas would’ve finished us off.”

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* The Tw*t Files by Dawn French (published by Michael Joseph) is out now

Mark Jefferies