Margaret Thatcher launched my comedy career remembers Katy Brand I am often asked when I am interviewed, "when did you first realise you were funny?" Some may say this is a redundant question, but the fact is, I do make a living as a comedian so personal tastes aside, it is legitimate. For the first few years of my career, I would impatiently and flippantly reply, "oh I made a brilliant existential quip the moment I was born, and the midwife absolutely fell about," but this was mainly because I couldn't actually remember when I had first made someone laugh and I knew I had to say something other than, "I don't know." The first rule of being interviewed is to be interesting; being truthful is way down the list. And so, perhaps out of boredom at a "day at the office" during a school holiday, perhaps out of a burgeoning sense that if you can make an adult laugh, you can probably make them do anything, and perhaps out of a sense of comic curiosity, I found myself trying this apparently fail-safe "Margaret Thatcher" voice out on Camilla. "Denis and I," I said in my deepest, poshest voice, "are delighted to meet you." The reaction could not have been more pleasing - Camilla yelped in delight, she clapped her hands, "oh do it again," she cried. But I had run out of material, mainly because I didn't really know who Margaret Thatcher was. "I'm Margaret Thatcher," I said, knowing it was weak, but feeling a responsibility to my audience. Camilla was thrilled, "oh that's wonderful," she said, and gave me a pound - a more Thatcherite gesture you could not imagine - I had become an entrepreneur, a self-employed individual with no need for society, although I didn't know it at the time. "There might be something in this," I thought. I need to work on it though - that wasn't nearly as good as I could do it. And so, for a few weeks I worked on my precious "Margaret Thatcher" voice, and tried it out on other captive grown-ups. They seemed rather impressed at the level of satire coming out of my six-year old mouth, but perhaps they were just being kind. I then found that when I combined my impression with the wearing of a badge I had found in a bowl of stuff at home that read, "I'm old enough to remember pre-Thatcherite Britain," (which I was, by five months), the effect was multiplied by a factor of about 10. And the addition of a little blue party dress I had with a fashionable pussy bow at the front elicited a dinner-party reaction so strong that I had to go and hide in the garden for a bit to calm down. So I learned the value of a prop and costume. "One day," I thought, "I'll find out who this Margaret Thatcher is and then I'll be able to do a REALLY good joke." Well, with the passage of time, I did find out. Margaret Thatcher gave me my first laugh, but I'm not laughing now.