THE ORIGINAL LOOSE WOMEN

She's known as stand-up's most caustic comedienne. And no wonder. Jenny Eclair talks frankly about adultery, promiscuity and anorexia. Oh, and she takes a pop at Ricky Gervais. No guesses why her PR minder wants to keep a close eye on her...

- Nick McGrath

WITH HER peroxide-blonde hair, chilli-red lipstick and instinctive aversion to obedience, Jenny Eclair has never been one to conform. And this morning is no different. She sighs loudly from the unruly-looking study of her southeast London home as she deftly steers her PR minder away from our Zoom conversation.

"I'm 64 f***ing years old, you know. You don't need to keep an eye on me," she suggests. "You've probably got much better things to do with your time."

The middle daughter of a British Army Major, born during a posting in Kuala Lumpur in 1960, Jenny Hargraves has never been one to mince her words.

"It feels like somebody's eavesdropping and I find that really distracting," the former Loose Women panellist continues. "I can't be doing with it. It's like nobody trusts me."

Presumably, they have her best interests at heart, as evidenced shortly afterwards when Eclair, as she has been known since her teens, goes off on a highly unflattering rant about Ricky Gervais containing several four-letter words.

But then, one suspects, it wouldn't make much difference anyway, given the Grumpy Old Women star's militant (and brilliantly entertaining) outspokenness. It's hard to miss both in person and in the pages of her new memoir, Jokes, Jokes, Jokes, published earlier this month ahead of a major UK tour in the New Year.

Growing up in Lancashire's Lytham St Annes, her "predatory", teenage years were punctuated with an almost feral promiscuity - graphically chronicled in her acerbic memoir - which only snowballed when she scraped onto a drama degree at what was then Manchester Polytechnic.