It surprised a lot of people when Bubbles, the dippy personal assistant from Absolutely Fabulous, turned out to have a belter of a singing voice. Jane Horrocks showed off her chops in the 1998 film Little Voice having already conquered the stage with the lead role in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. (The part had been specially written for her by dramatist Jim Cartwright, who heard Horrocks singing Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey numbers as she warmed up for a role in his first stage play Road.)
Since then, Horrocks has become part of the fabric of the nation. On the big screen, she’s voiced a knitting-loving chicken in 2000’s Chicken Run and a duck opposite Bill Murray’s Garfield. In the flesh, she appeared in Dexter Fletcher’s Proclaimers jukebox musical Sunshine on Leith, and opposite Rob Brydon in 2018 sports comedy Swimming With Men. On stage she appeared in Stephen Poliakoff drama Sweet Panic and sang songs by Joy Division, the Smiths and Buzzcocks in If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me. On TV, she was a hologram with a particularly high sex drive in Red Dwarf (which was bad news for Rimmer) and became the voice of the Tubby Phone when Teletubbies was rebooted in 2015.
This Christmas you can catch Horrocks reprising her role at Babs the chicken in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, as well as a special edition of Blood Actually: A Murder They Hope on UKTV Gold. So get your festive thinking hats on on what you’d like to ask herand add your questions in the comments below. Deadline is 12 noon GMT on Tuesday 28 November and we’ll print her answers here and in Film & Music on Friday 8 December. Thanks!
• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is released on 15 December on Netflix
