Art & Creativity Quote by Jennifer Saunders

There is a sly honesty in admitting you could quit the glamorous part of the job and still crave the most unglamorous ritual around it: sitting in an office, “pretend[ing] to write,” and laughing with your partner. Saunders punctures the myth that comedy is fueled by inspiration or output. The engine, she implies, is chemistry - the private, slightly absurd companionship that makes the workday feel like play, even when nothing gets made.

The line “even if we never produced anything” is the tell. It’s not self-deprecation for its own sake; it’s a pointed rejection of productivity as the sole measure of a creative life. For someone whose career has been so publicly legible - sketches, catchphrases, performances - she shifts the spotlight to the invisible process: the hours of false starts, bad ideas, and inside jokes that never reach an audience but still matter. Calling it “hilarious” elevates the mundane office setup into a comic premise in itself: two professionals cosplaying as writers because the act of trying, together, is the reward.

Context matters: Saunders’ long partnership with Dawn French (French and Saunders) helped define a certain British comedy of parody and performance. Here, she’s essentially saying the partnership is the art form. The subtext is tenderness, almost domestic - missing not applause, but the shared room, the shared pretense, the shared laugh. It’s a love letter disguised as a punchline, which is exactly the Saunders move.