ON a short break in her ever-increasingly busy schedule, Helen Lederer is talking to me about her first novel between mouthfuls of bagel.

 

I'm delighted to hear the comedy writer and actress, who has appeared in Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders as well as the legendary Naked Video series, isn't on a diet.

Losing It, the tale of magazine agony aunt Millie who is a divorcee up to her eyes in debt and about to lose her home, hilariously mirrors Helen's attempts over the years to lose weight.

Millie is thrown a lifeline when she is offered the chance to front a new diet pill, but the weight doesn't shift and she quickly realises it will take more than a magic tablet to solve all her problems.

"I have tried everything: the powdered diet, the amphetamine pills, the injection in your bum. All the things Millie does, I have done. Even colonics, that does nothing," giggles Helen, who is currently appearing in Hollyoaks as eccentric midwife Mariam.

"At the moment I'm literally racing up to Liverpool and back to London doing Hollyoaks. Yesterday I went to Marks & Spencer at the station in Liverpool, got a can of gin and tonic and by the till there were these little tiny chocolate Easter eggs.

"I snuck down in my and I swigged back a G&T and it was very nice. I thought, 'Oh God, if anyone saw me, what would they think?' It's all that thing of, it's the end of the day and you're thinking, 'I deserve a treat'."

Ask Helen how she feels about herself now and she is emphatic: "I'm fat."

She adds: "When am I coming to Glasgow, April 18? Well I might have lost some more weight by then. Who knows? It's like buying a new notebook, there's always hope, isn't there?"

Helen, who makes an appearance at this year's Aye Write! Book Festival to give a reading and a talk about Losing It, has filed the novel in a new genre she calls mid-lit.

"It's not chick-lit and it's not medieval literature," she quips.

It may have been a cathartic experience to write about her own diet experiences over the years through the tale of the hapless but endearing Millie. Does Helen still think she needs to lose weight herself?

"I'm too heavy for my height," says the 60-year-old who is married to a GP and has a grown-up daughter Hannah.

"I know I've been slimmer and I've been fitter but honestly, while I'm doing the book festivals and Hollyoaks, If I'm not on a train I'm on a set or I'm learning lines. I haven't been this busy for about 20 years.

"I can't book- hear my excuses - a session, the thought of going to the gym on top of this. I just go, 'No, I can't do it'.

"But maybe when it finishes I might suddenly go back into that lonely cross place of having a trainer. You just start to hate them, going round the park, forcing you to run."

She says the reaction to the book has been incredible with readers telling her they can hear her voice telling the story of Millie.

Helen puts that down to her early years doing stand up at the infamous Comedy Store in London in the 1980s.

"I abandoned two novels before this because I didn't feel they were genuine, I can't do anything unless I feel it's right," she says.

"I know with comedy the moment you know someone is forcing it you kind of disconnect. Then we don't laugh. If people like it they get that voice, which is possibly speaking to them."

After a lifetime of what she describes as being "all shapes and sizes", Helen says there comes a time when you have to accept yourself.

"That's another thing about getting older. You go, 'OK, the world is a huge place, if nothing is fair, instead of thinking what I haven't got or haven't done or can't achieve, what can I do well? I can write a book.'

"It's like, why do you do stand-up comedy? Because I can, I'm not saying I love it or hate it or anything, it's not easy. It's just about what you can do. So I'd rather just get on and do my bit. That's quite a simple thing, I don't know why I didn't think about it before. It is what it is, if you can't infiltrate the establishment that's OK, do your own thing."

To champion female comic writers, this year Helen is planning to launch a new award: the Comedy Women in Print Prize. With experience judging on the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Costa Book Awards, Helen has much to bring to the table.

"Comedy fiction by women, there isn't that much. What there is, it is great but it's like everything. We're behind everyone," she says.

"There are wonderful male comedy writers, like John O'Farrell and Ben Elton, but there just isn't a prodigious set of women doing it.

"I just feel if I do nothing else I'd quite like to highlight something before I pop my clogs. I think I deserve to be the one to do it having done stand up and all that in the 1980s. I've done my time, I've got my spurs."

The visit to Glasgow for Aye Write! will be Helen's first trip back to Glasgow since her days living in the city while filming the Naked Video sketch show with Gregor Fisher, Elaine C Smith and Tony Roper 25 years ago.

She has happy memories of living in the West End near Byres Road and frequenting the Ubiquitous Chip.

"It will be so exciting, I remember I hadn't been out of London that much at that time and Glasgow was the first new city I got to know," she remembers.

"I loved it. I always split up with a boyfriend every time I came up because I was away from home. I found it a lovely, friendly place and I have really happy memories."

Aye Write! Scotland's premier book festival will return for its 10th year at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow from April 17 - 25. Helen Lederer: Losing It, is at the Mitchell Library on April 18. Visit www.ayewrite.com.