HOTSEAT We are all reaching after that magic sketch formula

Self-confessed comedy nerd, Sally Phillips, 48, joins some of the nation’s top comedians to look back at their most-loved funny scenes for the celebratory show My Favourite Sketch. finds out more can’t just keep shooting it all in an you have to keep performing. And I office. You have lots of different also think, on some level, with a set-ups, lots of different wigs, special needs child, I feel slightly less costumes and locations. It’s just all guilt because I need a break. really expensive. So if you could do a A recent Panorama revealed that so live sitcom with one or two sets, a live many parents and family members of audience and cameras where you’re people with any kind of disability are essentially doing the editing as you having to give up work to deliver so shoot it, it’s so much cheaper that much of the care themselves, so it people want to do that. feels quite important to keep going if

you can. WE re-enact one of [the 10] with varying degrees of success, I have to say. But you could say that would define a great sketch – in that it couldn’t be redefined by anyone else other than the original people. So we put the sketches to the test and most of the sketches win. I’d say sketches five, us one.

For me, it was really interesting to see how the sketch worked from the inside. It’s a different type of comedy. I’M really hoping Michael Palin will do it; I’ve just interviewed him for something else and he is just a dream. He’s delightful – he’s such a nice man and he’s also so skilled. People forget that because he’s older, but obviously he can really, really do comedy. Also I love Celia Imrie – she and Julie Walters are such a key part of British comedy. It would also be important to get Catherine Tate. A HUGE change. It’s fantastic. They’re so funny and so ballsy and so confident, but it’s still much harder for them and the way in which it’s harder is not immediately obvious, but once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

The fact that the BBC will turn stuff down because they say, ‘We’ve already got a women’s thing’. And it’s not just me that’s happened to.

The person that has made me angry, in a way, is Aisling Bea, who’s so funny, so beautiful and so talented and at 34, has only just now had something commissioned. She’s been writing with Sharon Horgan, who is a known presence, and you just go, ‘I know if she was a guy, she would have already had three series’. I know that for sure. I ENJOY being busy. It’s like and not like athletics – in that, having stopped while I was having kids, I did get really rusty.

If you want to be a good performer,