Karen Taylor

"Before we start, can I just get one thing straight," the comedian says, standing on stage and pausing for effect until the muttering has died down. "I have a magnificent pair of breasts." Who else could it possibly be but Karen Taylor?

"I walk about pointing at myself, going 'It's me! From ITV!'"

Karen Taylor has been standing up on stage and addressing the topic of her breasts since 1998, when she entered one of the heats for the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award, motivated mainly by the thought of the £2,000 prize money: "What with me being a student, I was in a lot of debt. So I thought I might as well do it, it's only five minutes." That year she made it to the semi-finals, and the following year went all the way to appear in the finals alongside the likes of Andy Zaltzman and Josie Long, but was eventually beaten to the prize by David O'Doherty. Stand up comedy wasn't something she had initially considered as a career option, she says. "I just sort of fell into it. It wasn't something I had dreamed of doing - not like Adam Bloom who knew he was going to be a stand up from the age of nine or something ridiculous like that. It's just something that, once I did it, I thought, yeah of course!"

Karen has every reason to be grateful to the Daily Telegraph, as her involvement in the Open Mic Award, as well as motivating her to step on stage for the first time, has also steered her career to where she is today. Steve Coogan was one of the judges at the Open Mic finals in 1999, and when his production company Baby Cow approached Avalon with a view to making a sketch show for the BBC, Karen was one of the names considered. She went along to meet the producers and, she says "because Steve is Steve, I was rude to him, and they thought I was great. So I got the job. I couldn't believe my luck, it was just ridiculous."

"I thought I'd sell out, make a bit of money and then get married and have kids. That's terrible, isn't it?"

The BBC went on to make a pilot, originally called 'Walking With Diana Dors', "but they turned it down, the fools. So they missed out there." The Sketch Show was dropped in favour of an in-house production that the BBC mistakenly assumed would be altogether trendier sketch show, 'TV To Go'. ITV saw their chance, and signed the team of Lee Mack, Tim Vine, Jim Tavare, Ronni Ancona and Karen up for an eight part series. Coogan has been quite out spoken with his criticisms of the treatment of this, the first show from his production company, claiming that the reason the BBC dropped the show is that they don't understand "populist" comedy. As it turned out, ITV also had a problem with initially working out what to do with its first sketch show. As with most comedy on British television at the moment, the programme was moved around in the schedules a lot, before finding a home on a Sunday early evening.

The show took an altogether more traditional approach to sketch comedy, adhering once again to all the rules that had been broken by predecessors like The Fast Show and Big Train. The team of performers were also heavily involved as writers, and so this first series was filled with Tim Vine's puns, Jim Tavare's one-liners and Lee Mack's manic and maniacal characterisations. "Basically," Karen laughs, "I just do me! I just go 'Ey up, I'm northern, me!' and that's about it." The move back to a more main stream approach - rather than desperately throwing about catchphrases, or trying to make everything seem surreal - proved to be an audience winner, and another series of the show is currently being written, and is due to return on ITV1 in the autumn, preceded by a repeat of the first series. The team are meeting up again to start the writing process, and new girl Kitty Flanagan has been brought on board to replace the departed Ronni Ancona. Karen says she is looking forward to getting back to work. "I've done nothing since, it's hilarious. I've just been sat around getting bored. I should have been doing gigs, but I'm too lazy." Shouldn't she have gone straight back to the circuit and cashed in on her new standing as someone from off the telly? "No, f*ck that," she laughs, only half joking. "I want to get my hair done and be picked up by a Mercedes."

"You do have to put yourself on the line, and I'm just not driven in that way any more. Now I've got a boyfriend and I'm happy, and I don't have to get up there and go 'F*ck you all!' anymore"

Karen is currently standing at something of a crossroads in her career as regards stand up comedy. "You do have to put yourself on the line, and I'm just not driven in that way any more. Now I've got a boyfriend and I'm happy, and I don't have to get up there and go 'F*ck you all!' anymore… You've got to have something to say, and I just thought maybe I haven't. So I thought I'd sell out, make a bit of money and then get married and have kids. That's terrible, isn't it?"

Having fought her way through the comedy circuit to the point of being considered as just another act, rather than being pigeon holed as a "female comic", Karen considers that being a woman in what is very much a man's profession is something of a double edge sword. "I think if you're good, it's easier to get noticed because there's less of us," she admits, "but you're always on with a load of men, because they're frightened that if you put two women on you're both going to be talking about tampons or have the same jokes. There are plenty of men that have the same jokes, but do it in different accents, but they don't bother about that." She has her own theory on why there aren't that many women who pursue stand up as a career. "I think it's a lot to do with the way the women socialise. If you sit in a group of men in a pub, the men will take it in turns to tell stories and take the stage. Whereas women communicate… Men can only concentrate on one thing at a time, hence football. Women are multi-layered and can actually communicate with each other and remember what they were talking about once someone else has finished what they were saying, and not get annoyed because someone has interrupted them."

"Men can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Hence football."

For now, Karen is happy to concentrate on her growing television career, and is leaving stand up comedy on the back burner at the moment. "It also helps that television pays really well and people do your makeup and make you look all nice and your hair, and you get to wear nice clothes and you get driven around in nice cars." She was recently involved in Head Farm, the Channel 4 pilot that was directed by Stewart Lee and starred the cream of the comedy circuit, including Barratt and Fielding, Johnny Vegas and Garth Marenghi. Despite footing the bill for what was one of the most expensive pilots produced for Channel 4 in recent years, they decided not to proceed to a series, something which disappointed everyone involved. "The fools! They're so stupid. They must be kicking themselves. All those talented people, they're never going to get those people in the same room again, ever. And it's such a waste because it could have been brilliant… I got really annoyed when it wasn't picked up. It just makes me despair. Channel 4 are meant to be the ones bringing in new, innovative stuff but they're just like "oh no, we'll just put another series of Graham Norton on". That is a great show, but the reason that it's great is because you gave it a chance in the first place. And if you're not going to do that, what is going to happen to comedy? ITV are the ones who are giving people chances at the moment, that's gone a bit bonkers, hasn't it?"

Right now, work is well under way for the second series of The Sketch Show, which Karen also writes for, along with boyfriend, comedian Karl Theobold, who she met while gigging on the circuit in London. "It's really good that you can get up and go, right, let's write for the Sketch Show now, rather than having the hassle of going anywhere. You can just do it in bed, it's great!" Although other people on the circuit warned her that dating another comedian would only lead to complications, she says that it has worked out very well for her and Karl. "If you have a couple of bad gigs and then one great one, you can still feel kind of shit - you get more from the bad gigs then you do from the good ones. So it's nice to be able to talk to someone and them understand that. And because the lifestyle is so weird, we can spend days together." Although they work together when writing on the Sketch Show, they have no intentions of becoming another showbiz couple, working constantly together. "If you were like Richard and Judy, if you worked together all the time you'd drive each other mental, but we don't work together all the time. We just chill out together."

"It was quite easy to go in and be all girly, and get the attention of everyone because they're gagging for someone to do something a bit different, instead of a load of white middle class boys rambling on about cricket, observing things."

Karen was also nominated for Best Newcomer at this year's British Comedy Awards for her part in The Sketch Show. The ceremony was held in LWT, in the same place where The Sketch Show is filmed, and the after show party was also held in the same building - in the canteen. "They just had sparkly stuff on the walls," Karen laughs. "It was a bit disappointing - my first showbiz party was in a canteen."