DAWN French likes a laugh, and likes it best of all when the laugh is on her – her new one-woman show, Dawn French Is A Huge T***, is the proof.

In the show, she will invite audiences to revel in the most excruciating gaffes and howlers of a 40-year career as a comedian and actress.

“The people I love are flawed,” she says. “Hilariously flawed, and I can relate to that.  If you think of the best laughs you have with people,  it’s when you say, ‘Oh my God, you’ll never guess what I did today.’ When you unzip and admit you’ve been a fool.”

As well as being funny, Dawn hopes to dig deeper into our human fallibility.

She explains: “We live in a time when we’re told we’ve got to be perfect, and we’ve got filters and selfies and all we ever present is the good part.

“That doesn’t appeal to me at all. I can’t relate to that because I know I can’t achieve it. I can’t look like that; I can’t be like that. I haven’t got that aspirational perfect life and I’ve got no time for it either.

“My mum used to say, ‘We don’t do perfect’ and she’s absolutely right. Don’t even aspire to it. Go on your journey knowing you’ll never get there.  And even when you do make progress, don’t get too up your a*** about it because the mistakes are what make people so endearing. What I want is for people to leave the show feeling like mighty, glorious w******!”

The Vicar of Dibley star says she hopes Dawn French is a Huge T*** will be like being at a dinner party with a bunch of mates all collapsing with laughter as the hostess reveals her true, inglorious self. 

For instance, it will include the story of how Dawn fell in love with an actor for 24 hours, a story that will chime with any of us who have experienced blinding, delusional infatuation for someone entirely unsuitable. Which of us hasn’t looked back at a passion and mused, “What was I thinking?!”

Dawn says she has experienced buttock-clenching humiliation in the company of Dustin Hoffman, Ben Elton and countless royals, and the stories will all be told.

The show will also include more serious moments from Dawn’s career, including how she brought about the end of the phenomenal French and Saunders TV show.

She says: “I was filming at the BBC and there was one sketch that went a bit wrong.  Lots of the choices were wrong but still, to this day, I don’t know what happened in my head. As I got in my car that night to drive home, I decided I could no longer do comedy sketches. 

“I had to call Jen [Jennifer Saunders, Dawn’s long-term comedy partner] and say, ‘I can’t do it anymore, I’m out of love with it’. It was nobody’s fault, but there was something that went wrong, and I never wanted to experience that again’.”

The decision turned out to be the right one for Dawn. She has gone on to enjoy success as an actress and four-time novelist, as well as revelling in the domesticity of her life in Cornwall with her second husband, Mark.

Though, of course, she has managed to be an absolutely superb t*** throughout…

Dawn French Is A Huge T*** will be at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking, on Saturday 15 October.