Patsy: Oh, I just told her a cock-and-bull story about how I was a slave to my mother in her dying years and how I always strived to make her like me and she never loved me at all, ha!
It is based on the 1990 French Saunders sketch Modern Mother and Daughter, created by Saunders and Dawn French. The series features Saunders as Edina Monsoon, a heavy-drinking, drug-abusing PR agent who spends her time chasing bizarre fads in a desperate attempt to stay young and “hip”. Edina is joined in her quest by magazine fashion director Patsy Stone (played by Joanna Lumley), her best friend and enabler, whose drug abuse, alcohol consumption, and promiscuity far eclipse Edina’s comparatively mild self-destructive behaviour. Despite being a middle-aged, twice-divorced career woman, Edina is reliant upon the support of her daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha), a secondary school pupil (and later university student) whose constant care of her mother has left her a bitter cynic 
. The series also stars June Whitfield as Edina’s sarcastic and thieving mother, and Jane Horrocks as Edina’s brainless personal assistant. In 2000, the show was ranked number 17 on the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes by the British Film Institute. Absolutely Fabulous returned for three special episodes which were originally aired on to mark the show’s 20th anniversary. The episode broadcast on Summer Olympics which were being held in London that week. A film based on the series was released to theatres on , Saunders announced that the series had ended.
I don’t want to be in some sort of cyber-space-hypervirtual bloody reality
Eddie: Ooh. [reflects for a second] But Pats, sweetie. That is all *true*. Your mother never loved you at all.
Eddie: Yeah I was gonna’ make a- [taps microphone] Testing. Testing. -Yeah I was gonna’ make a speech, but I just can’t be bothered anymore. I mean, this used to be like fun you know; yeah it used to be fun, but I’m getting bored of all the ‘fun’ bits now. You know, your endless bloody lunches and launches, you know, no-career celebrities and party desperates. And what for, huh? Some colony of crap tags and mags! Well I’m sorry there has to be a little more than that doesn’t there? [slams her handbag down] Hmmm? You know I had a speech, you know, my. my integrated-projected-global-tele-network system bloody system-system. But you know, if that’s what the worlds coming to I don’t want to be in it. No I don’t want that. I don’t want that- exchanging e-mails with some old age bloody hippies with more information at their fingertips than is safe to know about. I don’t want that! What kind of reality is that, huh, you know, with a thirteen-amp plug on the end of it? Huh? Huh. That can be un-plugged like that? Come-on I’m going. [She turns to leave, but. ] No I’m not going yet! No, you! [points to her competition, Claudia Bing] You, you, just sit there like your velcroed to some bloody add-man! You know those crap-head add-men over there, you know, those kings of bastardization that have just taken everything that was ever real and genuine and honest and original and attached it to a toilet cleaner! Whereas I, I. Like a bird on a wire. Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free. [Then she sings] Like a bird, on a wire.
Eddie: [singing]. Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free. [Claudia Bing and her colleagues are laughing] Yeah you can laugh, but you know something- I don’t want more choice I just want nicer things! And you, you can take that look off your face, sitting there with your. with your wheels and AIDS and starvation. You know, skimming a neat profit of the whole of human misery. Labeling us all with this- with this global guilt. Well it may not be all great and good but it ain’t that bad, so cheer up world it s her bag down again] Come on I’m going. [Edina walks off making rude farting sounds at everyone in the room]