'Kissing an actor I'd never met was odd - I've had therapy!'

Actress Dawn French talks about awkward first encounters with the cast of new comedy show Can You Keep A Secret?

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The one thing Dawn French knew she didn’t want to do next on TV was a sitcom.

But the Vicar Of Dibley star says that when the script came through for new BBC One comedy Can You Keep a Secret?, s Ant and Dec he couldn't help but jump at the chance of playing bossy Debbie Fendon.

“I definitely didn’t want to do a sitcom, that was for absolute sure,” she laughs. “I just thought, ‘Oh God, I'll have to read this and make embarrassing notes about why I can’t. Ooh, terminal disease, anything, anything, to not do it!’ And then I read it and it was good. So I had to do it then.

“I just loved the family and I loved the problem and I loved how much heart it has in it and how flawed the characters are. And I just prayed that from Simon's first script that it wouldn't change too much before we were able to make it.”

Writer Simon Mayhew-Archer was helped in securing Dawn's services by being the son of Paul Mayhew-Archer, one of the writers on her long-running hit The Vicar Of Dibley. Dawn says, “Paul phoned me directly and said, ‘I know I shouldn't do this, I'm supposed to go by your agent and everything, but you know, I've got Parkinson's. I'm old now. I don’t give a s***. And it's my son.”