Why Grumpy Old Women have cynicism running through them like Blackpool Rock

If the comedian, novelist and Loose Women panellist is not doing the solo rounds with How To Be A Middle Aged Woman (Without Going Insane), she is teaming up with actress Susie Blake and singer and actress Kate Robbins in Grumpy Old Women.

The latest Grumpy outpourings have been extended to a fourth leg of "knocking some sense into the nation" in Fifty Shades Of Beige, whose final tour arrives at the Grand Opera House in York on Thursday night.

"It's got to be healthier to be angry," reasons Jenny, now 56. "You get much more done if you're angry. You just curl up into a ball if you're anxious, though I go from one emotion to the other."

The latest tour has added no fewer than 48 gigs to a show that reflects how a wider "grumpiness" is spreading. "There's a massive great rolling stone of furious women growing moss as it goes, and if you need to call up an army, you just need to call up the nation's grumpy women," says Jenny. "Are we grumpier than before? I think we're dissatisfied, and it's easy to be dissatisfied because we have a vision of the idyll."

Fifty Shades Of Beige spans such subjects as learning the art of Grumpy Grooming; the joy of large pants; a free nagging master-class; and beards for women: which style will suit you?

On the agenda too will be a Complimentary Anger Management workshop; the rules for middle-aged drinking; voluntary euthanasia versus retirement; tips on how to customise an unwanted pole dancing kit and a mercifully brief Zumba demonstration.

Jenny Eclair: "You get much more done if you're angry."

"The show is not two hours of whining because that would be boring," says Jenny. "It's a weird hybrid of sketches and stand-up. It doesn't have a narrative arc, but it's theatrical in its elements."

Jenny and her fellow Grumpies have "cynicism running through us like Blackpool Rock". "Though I have too much," she says. "It makes me very judgemental, which helps in writing shows like this but it takes a lot to knock me off my feet, so it would be nice to be more easily impressed."

First aired in a book by Judith Holder and then as a television series, Grumpy Old Women progressed into a stage show as a riposte to Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. "We decided it would be a show where the women were on their feet, and from the first show, we lifted it from something that could felt have small in scale to being much more theatrical with music and lights," says Jenny.

"The first tour, Grumpy Old Women Live, was an introduction to the Grumpy genre; the second, Chin Up Britain, had us dressed in slightly military wear and had a sort of military theme with our Grumpy headquarters in a kitchen.

"The current one came out of Fifty Shades Of Grey, but we've taken some of that out because it's kind of past it now, as the show's coming up for three years since we started it, and there's now an element of space travel that we've added."

Fifty Shades Of Beige will be laid to rest this year and it is too early for Jenny to say if and when there might be another Grumpy show. "I have two book deals for next year with Time Warner," she says, outlining her next priority. "I'm writing a book of short stories and a novel, and I also have my own show, How To Be A Middle Aged Woman, to tour."

Grumpy Old Women in Fifty Shades Of Beige, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday, 8pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york