My Fat Friend

Vicky, who runs a bookshop, is a heavyweight. Inevitably she suffers, good humouredly enough, the slings and arrows of the two characters who share her home next to the shop, a somewhat glum Scottish youth who works in an au pair capacity, and her lodger, a not-so-young homosexual. When a customer- a handsome bronzed man of thirty - seems attracted to her she resolves to slim by hook or by crook. Aided by her two friends, hard exercise, diet and a graph, she manages to reduce to a streamlined version of her former self - only to find that it was her rotundity that attracted the handsome book buyer in the first place. When, on his return, he finds himself confronted by a sylph his disappointment is only too apparent. The newly slim Vicky is left alone once more, to be consoled (up to a point) by her effeminate lodger. My Fat Friend premiered at the Globe Theatre in 1972 starring Kenneth Williams and Jennie Linden and has since been performed throughout the UK and the United States and in many European countries.