I go towards danger, I'm attracted to it

Male egos, an accidental stint as a masseuse and cheating on Harry Enfield ...as a young actress in the 1980s, Helen Lederer had to negotiate tricky waters before achieving fame as a TV comedienne

- Jane Warren

WITH HER endearing, lopsided grin and large, quizzical blue eyes, she's the comic actress you know by sight but whose name may escape you. Yet, during the alternative comedy boom at the beginning of the 1980s, Helen Lederer was a regular fixture in top television comedy.

As a regular on The Young Ones, French and Saunders, Bottom and Absolutely Fabulous (in which she played the role of ditsy magazine journalist, Catriona), the stand-up comedian appeared on screen with the cream of British comedy talent royalty.

But now, with the publication of her candid and rollickingly funny autobiography, Not That I'm Bitter (the title, she points out, is ironic), Lederer, 69, is reflecting on never quite hitting the big time in the way she craved.

She reckons this had a lot to do with timing. "I was always ahead of my time," she asserts of the decade when one funny woman or, at most, a tight double act - was generally more than enough funny women for most TV programmers.

"You look back and say: 'Why didn't I get to nirvana? What could I have done more of?"" she says. "But then you remember that the top slots were already taken by Jennifer Saunders, for example and there was no more room for others who offered up their own writing.

"People would actually ask me: 'What is it like to be a woman and funny?' One is held accountable for being a female comedian and I've often been asked to justify it as a life choice. And not just that; I was funny and ambitious, which definitely wasn't seen as a comfortable mix."

Lederer says being able to make people laugh is the one certainty she has in life. "I always wanted to do what my mother referred to as the 'showing off'. I've written the book to prove that I was there, and not always as the bridesmaid. Partly, it's showing off to myself."