Dawn French

Why don't the Olivier Awards have a stand-up category?

I was very honoured to be nominated for The Oliviers, and I'm absolutely sure The Red Shoes is a worthy winner of that category. But the reason I think my show was crowbarred into that category is: The Olivier Awards don't have a category for comedy. Well. They do. But it's comedy plays. There is no category for stand-up. Or, if you want to make that broader, one man/woman shows. So that means, for example, no category for Dawn French's beautiful Thirty Million Minutes, which played at The Vaudeville Theatre for ages.

The stage of the O2 in Greenwich is the new home for the Comic Relief charity fundraising extravaganza. Here the hosts include Lenny Henry, Jonathan Ross and Sally Phillips, while those doing a turn include Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and Ed Sheeran. We can also look forward to James Corden's Car Pool Karaoke with Take That, Greg Davies over on BBC2 and the cast of Love Actually in Red Nose Day Actually. Dig deep.

French & Saunders turned down millions to host Bake Off

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were offered £2.5million to become the new hosts of Great British Bake but turned the offer down.

Dawn French on her jealousy towards Jennifer Saunders

Actress and comedian Dawn French has opened up about being jealous of her French & Saunders comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, who went on to find further success with Absolutely Fabulous in 1992 after French left their joint sketch show to focus on her newly adopted daughter.

Rewind: Psychoville revisited

A third season of Inside No. 9 arrives on our TV screens this month, so let's take a look back at its creators' previous comedy venture, Psychoville.

Presented by the charming Victoria Coren Mitchell, this is an odd one: part interview, part vehicular rumination. The interviewee is asked to view their life through their cars, from their parents' to their current motor. Obviously a device, but it's a patchy one: the first episode, with chatty, confiding Dawn French, worked well, but Olivia Colman, this week, was pricklier. Coren Mitchell asked a couple too many yes/no questions, to which Colman often gave a one-word answer. In both shows I enjoyed it when the conversation expanded a little. Coren Mitchell made a great point about women feeling both safe and adventurous in a car. More of that, please!