In the interests of complete candour, I should reveal that Dawn French and I have had ‘beef’ (and how suitable that word is, as we were both beefy at the time) for decades. Since 1994, to be precise, when she made a television documentary on ‘Big Women’. She asked me to appear in it; I refused; she put my name repeatedly on the credits. What a way to celebrate porkers – by calling someone a porker!
I was merely chubby at the time, being a good 5’9 in my prime (I’ve shrunk a bit with age and disability) whereas she was only 5 foot and maybe 19 stone at her ‘peak’. Also, I really like thin girls (I eloped from my second marriage with a perfect 10 the following year) and having been one in my youth saw them as sisters under the un-stretched skin. Whereas French – a supposed feminist – once said: ‘As far as I’m concerned there are two types of women, the ones who like chocolate and complete bitches.’ Later, in the 21st century, I got really fat, and a magazine printed a photo of Jabba the Hutt saying it was me. I laughed.
A lot of SlimFast has gone under the bridge since then. I’m a shadow of my former self – Ozempic, then disability – and so is French, who has lost a whopping seven stone, through ‘walking’ and ‘calorie-counting’ – in the sole interests of health, allegedly, and nothing to do with aesthetics. Maybe she’d actually be better off on the semaglutide, because then you don’t even fancy food, whereas as it is, she seems what is popularly called ‘hangry’.
Yes, despite her move to beautiful Cornwall, remarriage and successful career as a novelist, French appears loopy. Barking. So far gone she’s coming back. And not in a pleasant ‘hello-flowers-hello-trees manner’, but in a quite enraged way; if you saw someone carrying on like this in the street, you’d definitely cross the road. I refer to the extraordinary short videos she has taken to releasing on social media.
The first one – and the worst one – was posted in June 2025 and concerned her views on the conflict in Gaza and on the October 7th pogrom which led to it. Though only 40 seconds long, it managed to pack in more breathtaking insensitivity towards the victims than anything I’ve seen outside of the Saturday hate-marches. There’s the mandatory haranguing of the IDF – and then something really shocking occurs. To describe the torture, rapes and murders that were inflicted upon unarmed Jews by Hamas, French puts on what we can only imagine is her idea of ‘a baby voice’ to imitate grieving Israelis as they complain that their attackers did ‘a bad thing to us’ and ‘those people aren’t really even people, are they really?’
The splendid Tracey-Ann Oberman put it best, ‘This mocking voice “bad thing” of October 7 that Dawn appears [to] be mocking involved the most horrific terrorist attack involving rape, sexual violence, burning alive, child mutilation and taking of civilian hostages.’ Within two days French had come out with a predictable package of excuses: ‘My intention was NEVER to mock, or dismiss, or diminish the horror of what happened on 7 October 2023 and what continues to unfold from that brutal unthinkable, unforgiveable, savage attack.’
If you saw someone carrying on like this in the street, you’d definitely cross the road
But she hasn’t learned her lesson. Admittedly this time she’s taking on a trivial issue rather than a profoundly serious one: Andy Burnham’s wife’s taste in clothes. Specifically, the wildly unflattering Victoria Beckham number (pushing £900, an odd choice for the consort of a man who has styled himself the ‘Cost Of Living’ PM) that she wore to the Downing Street walk-in. It drew a good deal of criticism online, from many women who consider themselves feminists but are also blessed by having a pair of eyes in their head. But French’s online reaction seemed literally unhinged.
Like the Gaza video, it clearly thinks of itself as a let’s-stop-fighting-and-all-get-along plea. But what it is – once more – is a deep roar of reaffirmation of luxury beliefs; this time, of the Special Ones against the Brexit-loving, Reform-voting chavs. There’s a very telling bit where she tells us that Mrs Burnham is ‘a bright woman, she speaks lots of languages, she’s run businesses’, not like you low-achieving rabble is the unspoken bit. For a woman who once divided females into chocolate lovers and bitches and said in an interview, ‘Big women are sexier than thin ones. We pump more oestrogen, have higher sex drives and fantasise more’ this overweening concern that no woman should criticise another is a bit rich. (Rather like French herself, after all those M&S ads.)
Transcribed, it would be weird enough; but it’s the gurning which makes this latest salvo so remarkable. Is it acting? Surely not, as French has been a reasonably accomplished actress for many decades. Or is it, perish the thought, the start of some neurological complaint? Whatever it is, she needs to seek help; I speak as someone who will spend their life in a wheelchair because I ignored the symptoms of a spinal abscess.
Why does French involve herself in international and gender politics when she is so obviously incapable of expressing any emotion more complex than exasperation from her naysayers? Is it because she’s done so much voice-over work (which she may well be aware makes her look greedy) as well as working as a judge on Australia’s Got Talent? Are these projects an attempt to say ‘Look, I’m not just about flogging Percy Pig cakes and nipping off to the other side of the world to stick my snout in the reality show trough - I’m a Thinking Person, with views on global conflicts and feminism?’ No matter, with each home-video she loses more credibility. So from one broad to another, in a caring way (as Dame Edna used to do it) I’d say, ‘Dawn, please don’t film yourself saying your own words. Wait till you get a nice script in your hands, written by a proper scriptwriter.’
If it’s laughs you’re looking for, French certainly isn’t your go-to girl these days. British satirist Intel Lady’s impersonations of her, on the other hand, will have you falling about. She seems deeply unhappy, in the way that scolds generally are. Maybe she misses Jennifer. Maybe she’s bored with beautiful Cornwall. Maybe she’s simply ‘a tragic clown’ – one who brings joy to others while masking their own grief. But this time, judging by her mercifully short ‘shorts’ we can also add the colloquial meaning of ‘tragic’ as found in Green’s Dictionary of Slang; ‘an all-purpose negative meaning disastrous, appalling, very bad.’
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