Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My My castaway this week is Dawn French. If you like funny, then you like her.

Double Act Partner, sitcom Star, sketch show performer, writer, actress.

It doesn't seem to matter how she makes us laugh.

She just does.

Her career started way back when Dungarese were considered a legitimate fashion choice and she's built her

reputation on borderline surreal skits and glowingly warm characterizations.

She was brought up in a forces family and had to move schools a lot, making people laugh,

helped to make them her friends. Since then, it's made her a household name, and if she's not very

careful indeed, she may be moments away from being given the queasy making status of national

treasure. So does she ever feel overwhelmed by people's expectations? Well she

says I tell myself that I'm the sort of person who can open a one woman play in the

West End so I do I tell myself I am the sort of person who writes a book so I do.

People and I'm thinking of you, everybody you come into contact with,

cabbies, shop assistants, me, we all want Dawn French to be funny for us.

That must be a constant and daily pressure when you're just going about your business.

I guess it is, but on the other hand, it's the best fun you can have with your clothes on,

and actually even with your clothes off, laughing't it and it's the glue that has

banned my family certainly the family I grew up in and the family I've raised.

You said in your memoir dear Fat, that as a child you were

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