If you censor comedians, you're on a slippery slope

Comedian, actor and writer Dawn French reveals all, including how she has learned to accept her flaws and faux pas.

- HANNAH STEPHENSON

DAWN FRENCH keeps a stick at the side of the stage on her current UK tour, just in case her 'crumbly knee, as she calls it, needs support in her two-hour one-woman show, which she does standing up. So far, she hasn't used it.

Today, on a Zoom call, the award-winning comedian, actor and writer, 66, is adamant that she'll be taking the show to Australia and New Zealand in April, even though her knee replacement surgery is scheduled just before Christmas and she's doing the tour against her surgeon's advice.

"He said, 'You'll just make life worse for yourself, so that when it comes to the knee operation which I'm going to have in early December it might be that you've done more damage!

"But a knee surgeon has no idea about the preparations for a tour, which you start booking a year earlier. So tickets are already sold by the time he's telling me not to do it."

She injured her knee while appearing on The Paul O'Grady Show in 2009 when she recreated the famous Vicar Of Dibley scene, in which she jumped into a comically deep puddle - only on the second occasion, the stunt involved a 10ftdrop on to thin crash mats and she twisted her knee on landing.

The knee issue, temporarily relieved by steroid injections, is one she writes about in The T*** Files, her hugely witty memoir which charts her many gaffes and faux pas over the years.

Today, her smile is wide - in the book she self-deprecatingly calls it a rictus grin - and the grey bob she has after years of dyeing her hair (she stopped during Covid) suits her. She seems truly content.

"Why has it taken me 66 years to come to this understanding, which is that, along with all the mistakes we make in life comes embarrassment and shame, and actually if we could get rid of that, it would only be fun?" she muses.

"It only makes us human, fallible and serves to connect us better.