Dawn French: 'I had to grow up, to become the matriarch'

The main character in Dawn French's new novel says not a word for the entire book. It was, as she tells it – sitting on the other side of a long table in a high, white room, in central London, arms tightly folded across her chest – an entirely practical decision. She had discovered, after writing a memoir in the form of letters, and then a first novel in similar vein, that monologue is where she feels most comfortable. So the protagonist, Silvia, lies in a coma in a hospital bed, inert, while her family and friends sit by her, hoping to rouse her, and talk and talk and talk.

Then, a few months into the process of writing the book, her own mother fell ill. "It was the strangest thing – although in another way it was completely organic. Everything happened slowly. My mum was a bit poorly. Then she was very poorly, and I'd be writing a bit of Silvia, and then a bit more of Silvia. The central conceit was already well set – I knew exactly what was going to happen at the end, and all the rest of it – but then it was just strange to be in hospital a lot." Eventually, she and her brother were spending whole days and nights by her mother's bed. And "there was a moment when my mum woke up, and she was very groggy, and I was just sitting there, watching her, and she said, 'Why aren't you writing?' And I said 'Because I'm here, with you?' And she said, 'Well, keep writing.' Because she knew what this book was about – she'd read those first bits." And so for days, French sat there with her mother, writing, looking, thinking, until her mother became too ill, and she couldn't any more, and laid it aside.

There is a striking immediacy about this aspect of the novel in particular: the ablutions administered by the nurses, the smells, the artificial light, the fug and dream-state of day and night ceding to each other. It's an odd book: it lurches between registers, from earnest lyricism to broad farce, from persuasive psychological insight (some of the book is very moving) to swathes of ill-advised dialect and stereotype. It is obviously written with serious intent, both literary and thematically: she tackles the big ones – love, death, grief, childhood, motherhood, parenthood – head on, without resorting, as other comedians might, to the deflationary, distancing joke.

She describes, for instance, the moment of shift from daughter to matriarch, as it becomes clear, in the novel, that Silvia will not waken. It was something she felt herself, as it became obvious that her own mother would not survive. "I just felt, 'Oh, god. Because my dad had already died" – he killed himself when she was 19 – "I thought, 'Oh, god, I'm going to have to grow up.'" A huge belly laugh. "I'm going to be that person in the family, I'm going to be the matriarch."

She is frank about the challenges at the other end of this line, too, with her own daughter, now 21 and testing her wings. "She's at college, in the same county as me – far enough away to be in her own digs, but home every weekend, with a big pile of laundry, ready for Sunday lunch and a good row!" Another huge belly laugh. "You're very connected, but you mustn't control too much, you mustn't interfere too much. It's time for me to take my hands off the reins, but how do you know when to do that? You just kind of feel your way through it, and you war a little bit, all the way through … I have a theory that the reason you have the wars is so that the eventual tearing is not too unbearable. You'd die of sorrow, if you didn't already have a bit where you'd gone, 'oh go on then! Go on and make your own way!'" And again she laughs.

She has also, over the past three or so years, spent a lot of time dissecting the nature of marriage. When she was writing her novel (which begins with a visit from Silvia's ex-husband, still trying to work out what the power relationships were in their marriage, how they capsized) she was acting alongside Alfred Molina in BBC2 sitcom Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Set in real time, in the half hour when they get home from work every day, it is "a piece about the intricacies, and the smallness of a marriage," the day-to-day glue, particularly when, as in the case of Roger and Val, they are in the process of surviving the death of a baby, distracting each other, as French puts it, "with play and constant blether". French has described the sitcom as "like stealing money from the comedy department to make a drama"; it was reviewed in this paper as "not … comedy as we know it, but Roger & Val manages to mix beautifully written dialogue with a quiet observational humour that can nevertheless leave the viewer gasping for air"; French's performance was one of the best of her career. Although French didn't write the sitcom (twins Beth and Emma Kilcoyne did that), the idea for it was hers, developed while her real-life, 25-year marriage to Lenny Henry was breaking up.

She and Henry have both described their parting as involving a year of concerted effort to be kind, and to end up "as chums, as we had started, if you like". Perhaps this is true, and very impressive if so; perhaps there is a good helping of wish fulfilment, or a united front for the media. Whatever the case, both are now seeing other people, Henry a theatre producer, and French a charity worker who used to work with her mother, and who also had, somewhat to her surprise (given how much of a mainstay she has been in the BBC light entertainment schedules for the last 30 years), never seen her on screen.

French discovered her own capacity for humour early, and partly perforce: as the daughter of an RAF engineer, she often found herself in a new school and forced to make friends, fast, or at least to deflect potential enemies. It is a gift that has kept on giving, career-wise, but she is well aware that it has been useful in many other ways. "First of all, it's delicious." Her arms are unfolded now; she leans forward, chin on palm. "I love it when somebody makes me laugh – it's what attracts me to people. It's what attracted me to Jennifer [Saunders]. My whole career with Jennifer" – first on stage, then on Channel 4, on The Comic Strip Presents (which celebrates its 30th anniversary next month with a one-off episode, Five Go to Rehab), then as double act French and Saunders on the BBC – "has been about trying to make her laugh. And it is such a treat and such a reward when she does. And I know she feels the same about me."

Which is not to say there aren't tripwires. When she had her daughter, French stepped back from the double act and watched from the sidelines as Saunders achieved success with Absolutely Fabulous. Was that not difficult? Did she not feel competitive, left out? "Not competitive – I think I had a proper, healthy jealousy about successes that she had, and I would tell her that – but my love of her is bigger than any jealousy I have of her. I think it was when she won a Bafta or something for Ab Fab the first time, I remember sending her a bouquet of flowers with a note saying, 'well done, you clever c—'" A great cackle of laughter. "It's things like that I will say to her. 'Fuck you for being so good at this. Who knew you were going to be good at this? Who knew you were going to be so good at this without me? Not that I thought, 'I'm the thing,' but I thought together was the thing – but it's like a pride you'd have in watching anybody that you love do it, on their own. You think actually, 'yes'."

She is refreshingly straightforward about how humour gives her a certain kind of power. "I've often said the most difficult things I have to say to people through humour. I can very quickly put someone in their place with it. But we all walk away unscathed because there's been some funnies around it, and I'll usually make sure that it comes back at me. Every joke I ever told with Jennifer was always, 'We are the fools – you are not the fool, I am the fool.' And I will also control it, I will control what you're laughing at. I could have been a little fat kid that other kids would laugh at, without me controlling it. But that didn't happen. I decided, 'OK, this is what I'll do. I'll let you think you're laughing at this, I'll let you think that's your thing, and then I'm going to shape it a bit for you.' Call me a massive control freak, but it's just a way of being."

How does she think comedy has changed since she started out? For instance, it's hard to escape at the moment a strong thread of cruelty, of which comedians such as Frankie Boyle are the apogee. "Yes, I agree. But maybe it's a bit like buses – maybe quite a lot of cruel comedians just happen to be in the ether at the moment. [Maybe] it'll pass, and then we'll get lots of lovely people pretending to be animals for a while. That would be great," she laughs.

She feels, too, that television has changed a great deal: that the BBC had the courage to take a punt on new acts, and then let them develop with each series; now it's "all to do with ratings and people are afraid to take the risk". It's an attitude she feels extends into crises, such as the Savile crisis currently engulfing the BBC – "immediate mud-slinging, immediate accusations flinging everywhere", the immediate demand for heads to roll. "This man [George Entwhistle] has been in his job for five weeks, hasn't he? And he seems to be to blame for everything. I don't know enough about it. I don't think any of us do." She remembers a hands-off culture that she insists was only creative. In fact, on set, "people were quite strict about what you could and couldn't do. I never came across anything like this. That's why I'm completely shocked. I just hope [the BBC] doesn't implode as a result of it, that would be terribly sad, it can't fall as a result of this. Can it?"

As she has got older, she says, she has felt less and less the need to perform, to put on a "firework display. And it's a massive relief. Somewhere in my 40s I thought, 'this is exhausting, trying to make it alright for everybody and trying to please everyone all the time.' It doesn't mean you have to turn in and be entirely selfish – it just means you have to stop a little bit of that." Did people find it disconcerting? "I think some people did, yeah. Because I just went a bit quieter. I think you only find out your true nature when you return home, and when you have a bit of peace and quiet.

These days she spends most of her time at her house in Cornwall, writing (she has two more novels expected by Penguin). After decades of collaborative work she says she relishes the independence. "There is something about making every decision, every decision – commas, full stops – everything … that is … delightful. I've lived in a world of compromise. Most of which has been excellently good, and a good lesson for me. But there is something, when you want to shoot off a certain way, and no one is saying, 'Don't!' … So here I go!"

Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French is published by Michael Joseph. Buy it for £15.19 at guardianbookshop.co.uk