For those of us with longer memories she is perhaps best known for a recurring role in iconic nineties sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Starring alongside Jennifer Saunders as PR guru Edina Monsoon and Joanna Lumley as sozzled sidekick Patsy Stone, actress and comedian Helen Lederer featured regularly across its five series run as magazine employee Catriona.
But while Monsoon’s colourful wardrobe of designer clothes has long since closed, Lederer, 69, is back on mainstream TV in long-running soap Coronation Street, playing show stalwart Ken Barlow’s latest love interest.
It’s another plum role for the actress, whose lengthy list of screen credits also includes The Young Ones, Bottom and One Foot In The Grave, but she admits neither came close to being her best paid.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Lederer claims her most lucrative acting role came from the most unlikely of sources.
Helen Lederer is back on mainstream TV screens in Coronation Street, but she insists the plum role isn’t her most lucrative acting job
The actress and comedian was paid an astonishing £70,000 for a day-and-a-half’s work on a Finish dishwasher tablet advert in 1995 (pictured)
She recalled: ‘By the 80s, I was working a lot on TV and then I landed two adverts: one for Advocaat, the other for Finish dishwasher tablets and they paid ridiculously well. I frittered it all on clothes.
‘I went to Donna Karan – the proper posh shop, not DKNY – in Bond Street and bought a coat for £300. So yes, I’m a spender. I hate meanness. My attitude is that, if the money’s there, spend it.’
Describing the Finish dishwater tablet ad, released in 1995, as her most lucrative job, she added: ‘I was paid £70,000 for a day- and-a-half’s work and that was twenty years ago – one day to say the lines, half-a-day to show my hand inserting the tablet.’
In an except from her recent memoir, Not That I’m Bitter, Lederer spoke about her turbulent romance with comedian Harry Enfield during the 1980s, when he was at the peak of his fame thanks to characters Loadsamoney and Stavros.
The actress, who described Enfield as ‘very talented, very clever and very kind’ detailed how she had still been seeing her ex-boyfriend, behind his back.
She wrote: [Harry] arrived at my flat with a perfume named Poison. I felt sick, ashamed and rumbled. At the time the easiest way to avoid hurting either of them was to just crack on with both of them at the same time.’
However she admitted it wasn’t easy and Enfield eventually sent her a ‘chucking letter’.
Despite the relationship ending, the pair did make up and a few years later and he cast her in The Harry Enfield Show – as a sex worker.
For those of us with longer memories she is perhaps best known for a recurring role in iconic nineties sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, in which she played Catriona (centre)
In an except from her recent memoir, Not That I’m Bitter, Lederer spoke about her turbulent romance with comedian Harry Enfield during the 1980s, (pictured L-R Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry, Helen Lederer and Tony Slattery)
Lederer – who married second husband Chris Browne (pictured), a GP, in 1999 – also admitted she took slimming pills for years and lived on a diet of 400 calories a day and wine
Lederer – who married second husband Chris Browne, a GP, in 1999 – also admitted to taking slimming pills for years and lived on a diet of 400 calories a day and wine.
The actress saw her weight yo-yo from a size 10 to a size 16 throughout her career and said: ‘It was truly like I was living the Ab Fab life: I’m the muggins who’s really doing it.’
She told The Sun: ‘I was no stranger to testing something out if I needed to lose weight, I didn’t care how I did it.
‘I would have phases of going on and off slimming pills for many years. When they worked, I thought they were great, but it wouldn’t be long before your heart was racing.’
Now, Lederer has embraced her figure, adding: ‘You just have to forget about it and get on with it.’
