[Financial Times, 12 January 2007]

Her first word was “Merci”. Then came some moderately intelligible French patter, followed by a lot of huffing and puffing. That, for Dawn French, must have been the challenging bit. Thereafter, as the star of The Vicar of Dibley and other popular British TV shows strutted her stuff at Covent Garden for the first time, it became clear that the worlds of television comedy and operatic comedy don’t really mix.