Cindy Amass and Jacqueline Cox told to ‘laugh on the inside’ by management of Vue Islington before being asked to leave screening, along with two men from a separate party

Two women were asked to leave a London screening of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie for laughing too loudly, according to the Mirror.

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Cindy Amass and Jacqueline Cox, who told the tabloid that friends often refer to them as the “real-life Patsy and Eddie” said they were asked to “laugh on the inside” by Vue Islington’s manager, before being told to leave.

Staff at the cinema, which is screening the comedy four times a day, told the Guardian they had been asked not to comment on the matter by head office, but did say that the manager on duty took the right action.

Amass, who was enjoying her first day out in over a year, said she was “devastated” at being asked to leave.

“I had a heart attack and Jacqui’s daughter bought us the tickets, as I’m like her aunt and she wanted to do a nice thing for me,” she said. “We weren’t laughing that loudly, but it is a funny film, it’s not like we were watching anything serious”.

The Absolutely Fabulous movie, which was given three stars by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, has proved popular in its opening week at the box office. Starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as perma-sloshed PR women, it took £4.4m in its first weekend in the UK, the highest opening for a British film since the James Bond film Spectre.

A spokesperson for Vue told the Mirror that cinema management would not ask customers to leave for laughing too hard.

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“We love seeing our customers enjoy their big-screen experience at Vue,” they said. “However, in this instance we had a number of complaints about some customers talking too loudly … We would never ask our customers to leave for laughing.”

Amass and Cox said that the manager had been “standing around the corner near the fire exit to listen to us and said we were making too much noise”. The pair left, along with two men who had been sitting in front of them and had also been deemed too noisy to stay. All four were given full refunds, then went to a bar to have a drink.