Edmondson admits enjoying Nigel has made him much more appreciative of his almost 41-year marriage to Saunders. The pair met within the early Eighties after they had been each in relationships with others, so had been pals in addition to a part of The Comic Strip collective earlier than they bought together. While celeb pairings usually fall by the wayside, together with that of their pals Dawn French and Lenny Henry, theirs is without doubt one of the few that hasn’t.
“We’ve mostly done it by not talking about it!” he smiles. “But you can have tricky times, everyone goes up and down. Love isn’t a constant, it’s a sort of sine wave and you have to constantly work at it – that’s what you learn. A lot of people aren’t prepared to work; they want instant gratification. There’s an expectancy these days that if you arrange it right, you can have a brilliant life all the time, every minute of every day, which is obviously impossible. Then people think they fail when that doesn’t happen. You’ve got to ride the waves. You don’t see very many happy divorcees do you? I don’t know if it really works.”
Work is simply too attention-grabbing for retirement
Watching the various comedy skits Edmondson and Saunders made together, it’s clear they laughed loads of their youth, however he says they’re having fun with one another extra as they become old. They’re off on vacation this month and love being at their house in Devon, whether or not they’re gardening or watching telly.
“We do a lot of laughing,” he says. “We make each other laugh a lot watching telly. We should be on Gogglebox, really – although she is [on Celebrity Gogglebox] with my daughter, Beattie, and I don’t know if we’d work together again. I think we probably have more fun than we had then. We do like our gardens; she does the posh one, I do the veg, or Covid Gardens as they’re now called. And whoever cooks doesn’t do the washing up, that’s the rule.”
With Saunders at the moment showing in The Magic Faraway Tree, he says there’s no probability of both of them retiring to be at house completely.
“Never,” he says resolutely. “My work is too interesting to me. I’d be terribly bored. She seems to manage it better. I mean, she’s always got something, but if someone would pay her to sweep leaves, she’d happily do that! I cram my day with work; I love it. My dad retired when he was 58 and I can’t imagine what life was like and how dull it must have been.
“Most of Bergerac was filmed in Devon, which was another added bonus. I could get home every night, which is rare. I’d do that for ever and ever. And Jersey is only 45 minutes by plane from Exeter Airport, so it was easy.”
Although Edmondson began out in comedy, it was appearing he all the time needed to do. He studied drama on the University of Manchester, the place he met his comedy sidekick, Rik Mayall, and whereas the primary half of his profession was The Young Ones and Bottom, the second has seen him starring within the likes of Alien: Earth, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and A Spy Among Friends. He’s a lot happier for it.
