Trivia / Absolutely Fabulous

• Acting for Two: Jane Horrocks played four characters across multiple series, specials, and the film — playing Bubble, overly cheerful TV star Katy Grin (Bubble's cousin), an American televangelist in "Gay", and a Shirley Bassey impersonator in the film.
• Adored by the Network: In the U.S., Comedy Central was very good to the series in the second half of the '90s.
• Creator Backlash: Jane Horrocks eventually grew reluctant to play Bubble and asked Jennifer Saunders to replace the characer with Yitta Hilberstam — the character she played in Saunders' short-lived Mirrorball concept. Saunders, instead, created Katy Grin so that Horrocks could play a different type of character and stay on the show.
• Dawson Casting: 16-year-old Saffron is played by 24-year-old Julia Sawalha. Also inverted with Edina: when Edina turned 40, Jennifer Saunders was actually only 34.
• Denied Parody: Jennifer Saunders denied that Edina was a parody of PR guru Lynne Franks; the character was actually derived from this sketch she did with Dawn French in French and Saunders, where the responsible daughter had to look after her flighty teenager-like mother. Of course, for Ab Fab both characters needed expanding, so it's still possible.
• Irony as She Is Cast: While Patsy wouldn't give two shits about most people who aren't herself and thinks the only use for exotic animals is fabulous furs and skins, in reality, Lumley is a massive human rights and animal welfare activist.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "This Wheel's on Fire", which was purposely re-recorded by Julie Driscoll for the show. Later series has it performed by Debbie Harry. The Movie has a cover by Kylie Minogue.
  • The 20th Anniversary theme song is Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Charlotte Rampling was offered the role of Jackie Stone.
  • Jennifer Saunders didn't intend to revisit the show after the third series and even developed a pilot script called Mirrorball^note where she and Joanna Lumley played ageing actresses holding onto the shreds of their limited careers so she could continue working with the AbFab cast on something else.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Jennifer Saunders confessed that she often wrote scripts on the way to readthroughs, often enlisting her daughters to take dictation as she came up with lines while driving them to school before heading to the studio.

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