ACCORDING to Zawe Ashton, there’s an inch of hair which separates her from her Fresh Meat character Vod. Since cropping it last year to play the wayward party animal in Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong’s C4 student comedy, the 28- year-old has worn her hair short too – but insists on the extra inch so there is some distinction between the two.

“I need to get my own identity back,” says the actress.

As she speaks of the “extreme self-belief and extreme self-doubt” felt by most actors, the mentoring work she does with women in prison, and a short film she’s writing and directing, it’s obvious Ashton is far more poised and intellectual than scene-stealer Vod, who nearly got kicked off her English Literature course in the first series due to her excessive partying and minimal study.

But she admits there are some similarities too. “I live for the moment, I’m pretty minimum effort, and I’m fiercely protective of my friends,” says Ashton. “I partied a lot when I was a student and went to a lot of gigs, I was pretty wild, my dress sense was wild, I was the one who wanted to screw the system and screw drama school.”

She has great affection for the role, especially coming as it did after a string of intense parts such as Joyce Vincent, a woman who lay dead on her sofa for three years before being discovered, in art-house film Dreams Of A Life, and the title character in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome.

“I’m used to playing complex and damaged roles on stage and on screen, but Vod’s convinced me that some people are just really quite straight-forward and quite simple,” she explains.

Ashton says it’s a “relief” to work with actors such as Whitehall because, quite incredibly, she doesn’t see herself as a comedy actress.

“Fresh Meat is not a comedy in my head. I can’t be in a comedy,”

she says. “I know everyone around me is being funny and I know what I’m saying is funny but I haven’t been able to go into a scene and say, ‘I’m going to be funny’.”

She loves Vod’s costumes.

“Vod is an old school punk meets the new wave of young people who are discovering Bowie and groups like The Slits and Bikini Kill. There’s also the Grace Jones-y and New Romantic influences coming in, so a lot of extreme looks, it’s so much fun.”

As for her favourite comedies, she lists Roseanne, Ellen, Cybill. “They’re all retro, it’s so sad,” she says. “I grew up when there were women in title roles in their own series.

These shows have dwindled away but I want to live in that time again.”

Fresh Meat is unusual, she says, because of its three strong female characters: Kimberly Nixon as Welsh dentistry student Josie, Charlotte Ritchie as intellectual rich girl Oregon, and Ashton as her beloved Vod.

“That hardly ever happens and so I don’t think I could move on to something which was less well written, and if you’re not going to wait, then you’ve got to write your own,”

she concludes.

She’s decided her sitcom would be about “being a woman now” and “living in a digital age”.

“There are lots of opportunities for comedy: internet dating, Twitter, Facebook stalking, trying to be like your parents and get a house and a job and a sturdy life. That’s in my head, definitely,” she says.