My acting career started at the age of six when I played the Angel Gabriel in the Christmas Nativity play at Whitehill Junior School. I have no recollection of this performance or whether I was any good but I do remember repeating the words "Fear Not" ad nauseam whilst in the bath.

I then went on to play a prostitute at the age of eight in the school production of Jonah And The Whale. I didn’t have any lines this time round but I got to wear a red silk dress with a split up the side and was required to put my leg over a chair and pull the dress up seductively. I hated doing this because I had to pretend that I fancied Paul Vickers who had sweaty lips. My Mum remembers this production as being "the closest thing to child porn I have ever seen".

My next outing was at ten in Joseph and His Technicolour Dream Coat. I wasn’t given any part in this production — please note that my contribution to school plays got smaller and smaller as the years went on — were they trying to tell me something? Instead, I was forced to play the recorder in the orchestra. I can remember being very bored during performances and came up with a cunning wheeze that I could just pretend to be blowing my recorder and no-one would ever know. So, my contribution was actually nil — apart from miming the recorder.

There was only one school production that I was in at Hitchin Girls School and that was as a sailor in Twelfth Night. I had a false beard — clearly the start of my long fascination with them. I was with my best friend Leah Pickup and we were terrible. All I had to do was come on banging a drum — except it wasn’t a drum, it was a painted cake tin — but as I was walking on, my "drum" got caught against a large old radiator so all anyone heard was a cake tin being bashed to get it unstuck. I then stood on stage laughing whilst my parents hung their heads in shame.

The drama teacher then left my school and there weren’t any other plays until I was in the sixth form when we put on David Copperfield. I wanted to be in it but wasn’t allowed by my History teacher Dr Robinson because I handed an essay in a day late. Bastard.

I then went to Oxford and here is an odd thing. At first, I was accepted to read History at St Catherine’s. If I had accepted this offer I would have been in the same tutor group as Richard Herring. As it was, I decided that I didn’t want to read History any more (see above for reason) and wanted to read English and I didn’t want to go to St Catherine’s which was a very modern, ugly college. So — I reapplied and was accepted to read English at St Edmund Hall where I was in the same tutor group as Stewart Lee. The fickle finger of fate is a strange mistress indeed.