Women making it on their own or an Ab Fab story

They simply had to be on the plane. I had spoken to Saffy, and she had assured me that both Patsy and Edina had boarded KM451 bound for Malta for the weekend. The crowds of passengers coming to Malta for a Christmas bash had flowed past smoothly and regularly and there was no sign of them anywhere. I was starting to get seriously worried and just about to phone Saffy again when two Muslim women in beautifully-embroidered blue burkhas pushing a vast amount of luggage helped by a huffing and puffing porter appeared at the door of the arrivals lounge. They stopped as if pausing for breath after a marathon. A swirl of smoke puffed merrily through the latticework that hid the eyes from the taller of the two.

"Sweetie darling, is that you," asked a familiar voice coming from the shorter of the two burkhas.

"Edina?"

"Oh yes darling. Oh what a relief. Where's Pats?"

"Just behind you, Eddie," I said as the taller burkha suddenly broke into a sort of St Vitus dance.

There was a horrible smell and a cloud of smoke.

"I think she's on fire, Ed."

Together, the porter and I helped Patsy out of her burning burkha. Another man poised to use a fire extinguisher stood over us. Edina sank to the floor in a billowing whoosh of blue. There she was; Miss Stone in all her glory. Blond hair piled up into a beehive, pillar-box red bee-stung lips with a broken cigarette hanging out of them and a tiny skirt; she looked not a day over... whatever!

"Thanks a lot," she croaked as she lit another cigarette and tossed the old one over her shoulder.

A security guard was making towards us purposefully. Edina was struggling out of her Burkha assisted by the porter and three other bemused bystanders. Ruffling her ringlets, Edina sat on the middle of a pile of Louis Vuitton and straightened her top, which had strange green protrusions placed at irregular intervals. "It's Westwood, darling," spluttered Edina seeing my alarmed expression, while discarding her tiered multicoloured wedges. Somehow, she was hauled into upright position. The security guard stopped and gasped as Eddie whipped the cigarette out of Patsy's mouth and inhaled... and inhaled. Two seconds later she tossed away a smoking filter that landed on the security man's cap.

"Pheeeew, sweetie darling," she squeaked, "you cannot imagine the torture."

"Yeah, torture," croaked Pats, now fully composed and looking somewhat amazing as she always does. "This dyke in a uniform stood over us the whole time to make sure that we didn't light a cigarette." The security guard stopped and gaped as Patsy lit up again and puffed a huge cloud of smoke in his face. "She came to the loo with me too, with a fire-extinguisher. Bit of a squeeze!"

"Eddie!"

We were walking as rapidly as possible out of the terminal; not an easy task having no fewer than eight bits of luggage and a mesmerised porter. The security guard was following us closely with a sort of hypnotised hangdog look.

"Why the burkhas?"

"Oh darling sweetie darling! Weren't they lovely? It was Bubble's idea. Incognito you know. Not to be recognised. Such a bore. Autographs, flashbulbs, paparazzi...!"

We piled into a long limo provided by the organisation that had thought that Ms Monsoon and Miss Stone would provide the kind of exotic attraction to make their conference entitled Women; Making It On Their Own a roaring success. There was the Bolly, chilled to a T.

"We've never done this before you know, Ken," said Patsy clinking her glass with mine and downing it in one gulp, "it was that b..., Saff, who tricked us into it."

Eddie was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

We arrived at the gin palace of a hotel the organisers thought the ladies would be as happy as sand-girls in. A bevy of starry-eyed attendants both male and female descended on the limo and in a trice both ladies were wafted onto the hotel leaving the job of sorting the Vuitton out and giving artificial respiration to the asthmatic driver to me.

The conference, I was told, was an unqualified success. Videoclips of Lulu and Baby Spice with Edina at Ascot wearing silly hats, drinking yet more Bolly at Newmarket and shopping at Harrods convinced a stunned audience that they were dealing with the best; or so Eddie assured me happily when on our third Bolly enjoying the sunset. Miss Stone was very quiet. Eddie had good reason to be on a high. She had wowed them; literally!

"Women; making it on their own," warbled Edina, "nothing could be simpler, darling. No squish squishes for us, naaaaaah!" Just get on with it, I say. I work so hard. Don't I Pats? Yes, hard, very! Work so hard we have no time for anything or anyone. Ask Saffy, ask Bubble!" I somehow had felt rather sceptical. Ed and Pats were old friends of mine but hardly the type I would have thought were shining examples for the budding executives that the title of the conference implied. I had imagined that all the young ladies who had so recently graduated in all sorts of faculties of our university would have heckled Patsy as she showed slides of anorexic models wearing the most torturous Jimmy Choos and shooing an uncomfortable amount of protruding bones. But no. There were no jeers as Eddie described her working day in the world of PR. The conference centre was actually full of a very different type of young women. I never imagined there were so many. No graduates but aspiring models and fashion victims that we have to admit exist too; young women attracted by the style, glamour and extravagance of a Patsy Stone or Edina Monsoon. Whether they "make it on their own" is another story. Many of them would end up by getting boring clerical jobs and even more would become housewives and mothers. The memory of a might-have-been break with the famous Ab Fab couple would, however, always linger fondly in their memory.

"They loved me didn't they, Pats," carolled Eddie, now on her second bottle of Bolly.

"Yeah they did, Ed," sniggered a very spaced out Patsy.

"We women have to stick together, hadn't we, darling sweetie? I mean, we can't let men walk all over us and tell us what to do all the time, do we? We have to show them, sweetie, who's the boss. Hmmmmmmmmm? Not you, Ken, darling, you're the sweetest, but it's those know-alls and those greaseballs. Can't bear them. The ones in pinstripe suits. Ugh! Mind you, Ken, some of those gels did ask some very odd questions, didn't they?"

"Like what, Ed?"

"Darling," snorted Eddie, "couldn't understand what they were gassing on about half the time. Imagine; one of them asked me how I could cope with a career and being a daughter, mother and grandmother at the same time? What sort of question is that hmmmmm? Sweetie! What does one have to do with the other hmmmmmmmmm? Very strange lot you Maltese are to be sure! You ask Saffy, darling. Yes, you just ask her, sweetie. Saffy knows what a doting mama I am; aren't I, Pats? Career girls like us can cope with anything, Pats, can't we? Hmmmmmmmmm? What questions? And she wasn't the only one either. I tell you I wonder why we were invited. They are all touched. I am sure. Touched in the head, darling sweetie!"

As I waved goodbye, feeling rather relieved, I was still wondering what the average Maltese girl with stars in her eyes must have made of the chief executive officer of the greatest PR agency in London and the editor-in-chief of the greatest fashion magazine. As they disappeared in a puff of smoke and the popping of yet another Bolly cork, the total incomprehension of either species could not be clearer. Malta is simply not ready for the likes of Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone. We can all, then, sweetie darling, breathe a sigh of relief!