asks Sally Phillips three minutes into an interview thats supposed to be about her role in new family animationFerdinand.
Look at the expression!
Very, very miserable, tambourine, excellent eye make-up says Phillips, delighted.
I thought, well, its slowly, slowly happening, Im turning into a Finnish Shaman.
The reactions shes had from Minnas countrymen are mainly good, she says.
Theyre very classy people, Finns.
I think its because ofVeep.
I had a year and a half of only playing European characters.
I think there was a terrible misunderstanding that I might be [German accent]mitteleuropean.
Thats the challenge of doing an animation.
and then the accent went Finnish, or Swedish or Danish or whatever.
There are far better reasons for Phillips to have been cast inFerdinandthan her knack for accents.
Its such a perfect junket story, I say, it almost sounds too good to be true.
Entirely true, Phillips assures me, It was my dads favourite book when he was a kid.
I was brought up abroad, she continues.
I was back in the UK and the only kids book in the house wasFerdinand.
The day before our interview takes place, Phillips took her dad to theFerdinandpremiere.
It felt quite moving to go with him and three kids, she says.
On discussion of the films bigger themes, Phillips takes issue with the party line.
As in, Donald Trump is just being himself isnt he?
Thats the authentic him!
So I think sometimes theres a good argument for not being yourself if yourself is… that.
There is a bigger message that isnt about the individual isnt there?
Beauty is more powerful than the sword!
Shes been stopped in the street about it.
People either go water cooler!
Or they stop me and hold me and go your birth movie was somoving!
Taskmasterwas lots of fun, says Phillips.
One task involved the contestants having to make Marmite from scratch.
On Phillips ingredients list was a bottle of absinthe.
Thatwas one of the funniest things that has ever happened, she laughs.
She laughed so much makingTaskmasterthat the show put togethera super-cut.
The absinthe made me laugh, she lists on her fingers.
The cat flip-book, but you had to be there.
Oh, the Bob shit!
she remembers, even more delighted at the memory than she was at the Finnish shaman pictures.
Would she consider donating a sample?
I think Id feel a bit shy about donating.
Id have to mind my diet for a bit before I did.
Phillips wasnt disappointed not to win her series and take part in the Champion of Champions Christmas special.
I think the real winner of the last series was Nish, wasnt it?
Since appearing on the show, Phillips has been recruiting fellow comics to take part.
Ive been mounting a campaign for Nina Conti to do it.
Getting to know fellow contestant and comic Aisling Bea was one of PhillipsTaskmasters highlights.
I dont know, says Phillips.
She didnt mention that.
She told me, dont apologise for yourself.
I think your generation are so much better at that than mine.
I find it so encouraging in a way, how its changed.
What does she mean?
It was like what has just happened?
They used a kind of code.
That happened with GQ as well.
Thats not the norm now says Phillips.
Plenty of comedians do tell Phillips thatSmack The Ponywas a comedy inspiration.
Lots of girls and quite a lot of boys too.
I dont know if theyre just being polite, theyre probably just blowing smoke up my arse!
Im proud of it.
Not that any of us are particularly normal!
I think all three of us inSmack The Ponylook like childrens drawings of people, she laughs.
It sort of opened up, or re-opened up the old ways of laughing at women.
It became unsafe to laugh at women in the sixties and seventies.
And I usually comelast.
Smack The Ponywas a kind of apprenticeship on which Phillips developed a taste for the comedy of vagueness.
Her favourite sketch saw a character stack an entire supermarket with Toilet Duck.
It was a new way of being funny.
The university revues Phillips appeared in were all written by guys so I was playing boys.
If you wanted to be funny, she continues, you had to pretend to be a bloke.
Then it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if youre pretending to be a man, theres another obstacle.
Of course, youre going to be less funny.
Someone may manage it, but most women are funnier as women I think.
Would she cite French and Saunders as a comedy influence in her early days?
I think when youre small you just define yourself as different, dont you?
IwishI were like them now.
You know, on a good day, Im Celia Imrie.
Celia Imrie would be a good day for anyone!
Celia Imrie is under-sung, I think shes absolutely amazing, really, really amazing.
If you fly them out, they die, so there are all kinds of sloth-care problems with this.
The film came about after Phillips had her first child.
Im not as devastated as I once was, she says about the film.
Im not particularly proud of it.
It plays well on a telly.
I learned, donotwrite a movie unless you absolutely love the subject matter.
It was about celebrity weddings and I dont really care about that at all.
Television also has its frustrations.
So its just all shutting down creativity.
I might have a go at stand-up, she says.
Id like to do my proper job with Aisling [Bea].
Id like to act with her.
Perhaps in a sitcom about Finnish shamans, I suggest?
Ferdinand is out this weekend.
