New Best Friend

Edina (Jennifer Saunders) gets in an uproar over the impending visit of Max (Patrick Barlow) and Bettina (Miranda Richardson), a pair of impossibly hip old friends. Terrified that her cluttered house won't be up to snuff with these chic minimalists, she chucks things -- and people -- right and left. Pats (Joanna Lumley), feeling abandoned, sets off to find another lunch partner. She even turns up at her own office, hoping to find Magda but instead encountering Bubble (Jane Horrocks), who is there on loan from Eddy's office. Meanwhile, Eddy, dismayed to find that Bettina and Max have become the shrill, neurotic yuppie parents of a very ordinary newborn, escapes to an imaginary lunch date of her own. Pats and Eddy find themselves at the same hip London eatery, where each tries to impress the other with her dining companions; Eddy gloms onto '60s singer Lulu, while Pats forces herself into the company of Swedish actress Britt Ekland and outrageous fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Back at the Monsoon house, Eddy still can't stand the company of the hysterical Bettina, so she retires to bed. Strangely enough, so does Max. Originally broadcast on BBC 1 on February 24, 1994, Absolutely Fabulous: New Best Friend marked series two, episode four of this popular Brit-com. Although Richardson, star of such films as The Crying Game, played a fictional character, Ekland, Lulu, and Rhodes all portrayed themselves.