Edina Monsoon
Edina Monsoon is the main character in the BBC programme Absolutely Fabulous, played by Jennifer Saunders, who is also the creator of the show. The character is known for her extravagance and various attempts to follow new crazes and trends. Character history
Edina was born Edwina Margaret Rose Monsoon on 6 August 1951 in London; her parents' only child. She later changed her name to Edina and is nearly always called Eddie; only her mother and ex-husband Justin call her Edwina. According to Patsy, Eddie's teenage nickname was "The Shredder" due to her addiction to eating "huge amounts of tissues"; "whole toilet rolls", Eddie's ex-husband Justin verified. It seems that this stems partly from her being at the right places at the right times, and around the right people, from the late sixties to early eighties. In several episodes, including "Fashion" and "The Last Shout", Edina demonstrates the creativity, organisational ability and shrewd business sense that have made her successful. Eddie's self-image is based on 1960s counterculture and the world of fashion and celebrity. She is fixated on self-indulgence and her ideas of self-actualisation. Eddie subscribes to every trend that arises, including New Age spirituality—she calls herself a Buddhist—and feng shui. She aspires to move in the highest circles of creativity, fashion, and celebrity. She considers herself a follower of the latest trends, but, having no real sense of style of her own, Eddie is actually a fashion victim, parading the latest fashion trends without understanding them or understanding what looks good on her. She is a die-hard fan of Christian Lacroix and is quick to point out "It's Lacroix, darling, Lacroix". She lives in a nice Holland Park house, which she claims cost £1.5m, (see episode 'Hospital' series 2) with her daughter Saffy, and owns a public relations firm whose only steady client is 1960s pop singer Lulu, whose professional relationship with Edina is hanging by a thread. In later years, this was switched to model Twiggy and Spice Girl Emma Bunton, who also went to school with Saffy. Edina is desperate to give off the aura of success, wealth and fabulousness. Her outrageous but always expensive wardrobe is one of her ways of doing this, as is the constant renovating of her home. She is extremely status conscious, loudly clarifying that her house is in Holland Park whenever someone identifies the neighbourhood as Shepherd's Bush. In an early episode, Edina says that she has always voted Labour, but she notes her disdain for New Labour in the 4th season. She collects hefty alimony payments from her two ex-husbands, Justin and Marshall. Saffy's father Justin is homosexual and for a time has a boyfriend named Oliver, who runs an antique shop with him. Marshall Turtle, Eddie's first husband, is the father of her homosexual and almost perpetually off-screen son Serge. Marshall later marries brash, scheming New-Age Californian Bo Chrysalis (Gaffney), who effortlessly rules over him. There is confusion about the order in which Edina married her husbands, but she states in the 2005 episode "Gay" after marrying Patsy in a mock civil partnership that her spouses were "Gay man, straight man, woman". Homosexual men play an important role in Edina's social self-image, as tokens of fashionability and political correctness. She asserts the former by claiming that "gay men love [her]" and the latter by claiming that "all [her] friends are gay". However, on one occasion, she seconds Patsy's accusation of a "gay mafia" conspiracy to explain their professional failures. In one episode, Patsy and Eddie marry in an unofficial civil partnership in New York. Although Eddie was unwilling at first, she beseeched Patsy to be married to her for the remainder of the holiday, explaining she'd never even come back from her honeymoons and still been married. Edina claims to be a Buddhist, practising, in her words, "almost religiously". She also identifies as a vegetarian although she is seen eating meat on a few occasions. For dramatic purposes she had been described as being two stone (28 pounds) overweight. She frequently moans about being too fat; however, she hasn't the willpower to stay on any diet for long. She often says that one method she has used is to go shopping for clothes two sizes too small for her. Weak-willed as she is, she spends much of her life caught in an emotional tug of war between Patsy, her lifelong friend and corrupter, and Saffy, her sensible goody-two-shoes daughter.
