Andy fame

CELEBRITY and reality TV now seem to go hand-in-hand, so much so that comic actress Jenny Eclair has turned the idea into a stage show. But even she was surprised when the phone rang with an offer of taking part in a show called Celebrity Shark Bait.

"Get this," she whispers conspiratorially, "I got a phone call yesterday and they were offering me Celebrity Shark Bait, where you go down to a cage at the bottom of the ocean and the sharks come and they see how scared you are.

"I didn't find it difficult to turn that one down. I was also offered a meeting about I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here but I think they saw through the fact that I'm a snivelling coward and it would have got quite ugly."

But just a few months ago, 45-year-old Eclair did put herself in front of the vote-for-me cameras to take part in BBC1's Celebrity Fame Academy. Never again admits the London-based performer who says: "I was desperately begging for votes and you all let me down. I thought I was going to get more of a sympathy vote.

"It was fairly traumatic and I don't think I was mentally strong enough to go another round and I was very relieved to leave. I don't think I could have gone another round and was out of my depth from the word go. That is the only one I'd ever do." .

Another surprise for the mother-of-one is not that a lot of people still want to be famous for 15 minutes but that younger audience members have no clue about who invented the idea.

As a result the title of her touring comedy The Andy Warhol Syndrome, which reaches Durham's Gala Theatre on Saturday, goes over a few heads in a generation gap sort of way.

"It was a sad day for me when I realised that a huge generation is there who don't know what I'm talking about in relation to Andy Warhol," says Eclair about the artist who famously predicted a future where we'd all be famous for 15 minutes

"One hopes that the audience don't assume I'm doing my stand-up show from the word go because there's a sound effect cue and I come on in a T-shirt and a pair of knickers and there's a bed and dressing table on stage. So by then the audience should be guessing that I'm not dressed for stand-up comedy," she jokes.

One thing that Eclair does promise is a performance that's 70 minutes long, with no interval, which is "a great evening out... I think we owe it to the restaurant world to release people early".

This is the fourth collaboration between Eclair, whose real name is Hargreaves, and Julie Balloo, and has successfully played Edinburgh Festival and London's Riverside Studios. Eclair's comedy lays bare the myth of reality TV fame as she adopts the role of 43-year-old Carol Fletcher - who has become 'whatserface off the TV'.

"This has had more press interest probably because of the subject matter which may appear to be fiendishly clever but it was actually staring us straight in the face. Our biggest worry when we were writing it, was that someone else was going to beat us to it. I'm surprised last year's Edinburgh Fringe wasn't littered with reality TV spoofs," she says.

Having been proud of the fact that she's taken reality TV into theatre, Eclair is somewhat taken aback to learn that she's touring at the same time as the costumed and soundalike TV spin-off Stars In Their Eyes.

"There is a proper morality tale to all this which harks back to another time and my character has a 1960s muse in the form of a showgirl called Renee Marguerite," explains Eclair who pretends to be outraged at the thought of being old enough to remember old-style entertainment shows on the TV.

I used to live abroad (Malaya) and missed a lot of this as a youngster but I remember visiting my grandmother who was addicted to telly variety shows and really enjoying the Black and White Minstrel shows," she says.

The Andy Warhol Syndrome focuses on the reality TV "stars" who are spat out after a series without any thought by the programme makers.

"I suppose my character is a cross between Maureen of Driving School and Jade Goodie of Big Brother. Interestingly, the dinner lady in Jamie's School Dinners (Nora Sands) is almost exactly like my character although I can't remember her name now, but that's showbusiness," says Eclair.

Her own adopted name has stuck in the mind thanks to a teenage game of pretending to be a French girl called Jenny-Claire which a man mistook for Jenny Eclair.

"Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I didn't revert back to a normal name after the punk era of having a daft title and weirdly my daughter (Phoebe) has it on her birth certificate so it's now official," she laughs.

Next on the agenda is a stage version of Grumpy Old Women, inspired by the BBC2 series which starred Eclair. She's again involved as co-creator and has already tentatively signed up Maureen Lipman as a co-star for a West End version.

"There's nothing quite so smug-making as seeing the finished product," says the woman who has also written two books and contributes to newspapers and magazines.

"We're doing a workshop next month and Grumpy Old Women live should be ready for the autumn. It wasn't expected to do that well on TV but did enormously better than expected so it's nice to give the idea more shelf life. The hope is we can put a 30-date tour together from November," explains Eclair.

Although that might take longer than 15 minutes.

* The Andy Warhol Syndrome, Durham Gala Theatre, Saturday. Box Office: 0191 332 4041.

Published: 19/05/2005