Jenny Clare Hargreaves

Jenny Eclair (born 16 March 1960), born Jenny Clare Hargreaves, is a Malaysian-born English comedian, novelist and actress, best known for her roles in Grumpy Old Women between 2004 and 2007 and in Loose Women in 2011 and 2012. She was born to English parents in Kuala Lumpur, where her father, Derek Hargreaves, a major in the British Army, had been posted in 1952. The family lived in Malaysia, Singapore and Germany before settling in Lancashire.

She is said to have adopted the surname Eclair in her teens, when she pretended to be French at a disco in Blackpool. She studied at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama and joined a cabaret group referred to as Cathy La Creme and the Rum Babas. After moving to London she worked as a life model at Camberwell Arts College and found work doing punk poems. In 1995, Eclair was the first woman to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for her show Prozac and Tantrums.

Eclair helped develop and appeared on BBC Two's Grumpy Old Women and its spin-offs, and in 2006 starred in the stage show Grumpy Old Women Live! with Dillie Keane and Linda Robson. In 2001 she published her first novel, Camberwell Beauty. She was a panellist on Loose Women, joined the 2010 series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, finishing third, and was a contestant in the fifteenth series of Taskmaster, aired March to June 2023.