Find Live comedy

Caroline Aherne

Born in London and raised in Wythenshawe, Manchester, Caroline Aherne started out on the comedy circuit in the mid-Nineties with characters such as country singer Mitzi Goldberg and nun Sister Mary Immaculate.

She also made regular appearances on Manchester radio stations, including KFM, where she met her Royle Family co-creator Craig Cash; and Piccadilly Radio, where she developed the character of pensioner Mrs Merton for Frank Sidebottom’s show.

She made brief appearances in The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and appeared in and wrote for The Fast Show in the mid-Nineties, before Mrs Merton was given her own mock talk show, where she had famous exchanges with Debbie McGee and Bernard Manning among others. The character was also given a short-lived spin-off sitcom Mrs Merton and Malcolm, about her home life with her over-protected son, played by co-writer Craig Cash.

With Cash she also created The Royle Family, in which she also played Denise Royle in all three series as well as six one-offs. Aherne also directed later episodes.

In 2002, she moved to Australia and wrote the series Dossa and Joe, about a working-class Australian family, but it failed to find an audience.

In 2009, she co-wrote the ITV1 comedy-drama The Fattest Man in Britain with Jeff Pope – and in 2011 they reunited to write the four-part ITV series The Security Men.

Aherne was married to Peter Hook of New Order until 1997. During their marriage, he led the house band – Hooky & the Boys – on The Mrs Merton Show

BBC to remember Caroline Aherne in new documentary

...as another celebrates French and Saunders

Caroline Aherne and French & Saunders are to be celebrated in two new BBC documentaries this Christmas.

Airing as part of the Arena arts strand, the film Caroline Aherne: Comedy Queen, features unseen photographs and contributions from a cast of her lifelong friends and colleagues, including Steve Coogan, Jon Thompson, Craig Cash, Sue Johnston and producer Andy Harries.

The film traces Aherne’s life from childhood in Wythenshawe, Manchester, through her early adventures on the city’s alternative stand-up scene and the breakthrough moment when the BBC commissioned The Mrs Merton Show.

Her legacy was assured with The Royle Family, which she co-created with Cash. Co-writers Henry Normal and Phil Mealy, and fellow cast members including Ricky Tomlinson and Ralf Little will all be contributing to the 70-minute documentary.

The BBC adds that her friends ‘recall not just the lasting cultural and creative legacy she left behind’ following her death of cancer in 2016 at the age of 52, ‘but of the joy she found in human life, her inimitable sense of mischief and the happiness she brought those closest to her’.

The documentary, produced and directed by Claire Whalley and Hannah Lowes, will air on BBC Two over Christmas. It is one of three new Arena projects announced today, with the others focussing on Noel Coward and poet and playwright Kae Tempest.

To mark the new commissions, the BBC has put a raft of previous documentaries on iPlayer, including Ken Dodd’s Happiness and Oooh Er Missus! The Frankie Howerd Story. Mark Bell, commissioning editor for Arena, said: ‘The Arena archive is a treasure house of the best in creative documentary over nearly five decades and continues to be extraordinary.’

Meanwhile. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are to be the subject of the next Imagine profile from Alan Yentob, subtitled Pointed, Bitchy, Bitter.

French Saunders and Yentob

The hour-long BBC One programme ‘explores a brand of comedy based on satire, silliness and above all friendship’, which began when they were college flatmates, playing pranks and inventing characters.

The film charts their journey from the game-changing Comic Strip team, which helped launch the new Channel 4 in 1982, to becoming probably the most successful double act of the last 40 years.

It features interviews with their contemporaries Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer and Adrian Edmondson – Saunders’ husband – as well as

later generations of female comics such as Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who French and Saunders encouraged as young comedians.

Yentob also goes behind the scenes at a recording of their successful Titting About podcast to explore their relationship today.

As previously revealed, BBC One with also be screening French’s latest stand-up show Dawn French Is A Huge Twat over the Christmas period.

French on stage

Thanks for reading. If you find Chortle’s coverage of the comedy scene useful or interesting, please consider supporting us with a monthly or one-off ko-fi donation.

Any money you contribute will directly fund more reviews, interviews and features – the sort of in-depth coverage that is increasingly difficult to fund from ever-squeezed advertising income, but which we think the UK’s vibrant comedy scene deserves.

Subscribe or donate here

Published: 29 Nov 2023