Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders almost died while filming a show in Spain in the 80s (Picture: Comic Relief via Getty Images)
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders narrowly escaped death in a terrifying incident in Spain.
The comedy duo, known as French and Saunders, were forced to crawl to safety after realising they were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Dawn, 66, was filming in Spain with friend and co-star Jennifer, 65, where they were staying in a Villa which they later learned had a faulty boiler.
She writes in upcoming memoir The T**t Files that the pair had a 6am wake-up call to continue filming for The Comic Strip – but when she woke up she instantly knew something was terribly wrong.
‘I duly woke up and, in an effort not to fall back to sleep, I attempted to sit up,’ she writes in an excerpt seen by The Mirror.
She said she felt ‘as if I’d been thwacked in the face with a frying pan … I was groggy and confused.’
The comedy duo travelled the world for their careers, with Dawn remembering a terrifying near-death experience in Spain (Picture: Getty)
She managed to ‘roll on to the floor’ and crawled across the room, opening the door, ‘and shouted to Jennifer’ who was in another room.
‘She mumbled something and then I heard a thud. None of us could stand up, so we crawled outside.’
She revealed that they later learned ‘we were being poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty boiler.’
Dawn credited the early wake-up call for saving their lives – as if they hadn’t woken up at that time, ‘the gas would’ve finished us off.’
Dawn worried that she and Jennifer would have died was it not for the incredibly early wake-up call (Picture: BBC)
The revelation comes after Dawn reportedly admitted she was plagued for years by an injury obtained recreating a Vicar of Dibley scene (Picture: ITV/Shutterstock)
Actress and comedian Dawn also recently shared that she still feels the effects of an injury obtained in an iconic scene from her show The Vicar of Dibley, which ran from 1994 to 2007.
The scene sees Dawn as her character Geraldine jumping in puddles with her boyfriend – but she jumps into a puddle much deeper than it first appears, leaving her up to her neck in cold muddy water.
The scene became so famous with viewers that, years later, Dawn was asked to recreate the moment while guest-hosting the Paul O’Grady Show, but jumped 10 feet on to ‘two very thin crash mats … with a flat concrete floor.’
She told the audience at her one-woman show in Exeter it was ‘the last time I had two functioning legs.’
Dawn required a knee replacement for the injury, which she underwent last year after initially struggling through the pain with injections while filming Death On The Nile.
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Dawn credits an early wake-up call for saving their lives.