Some funny girl

Hart herself can’t bear to say the name of her sitcom Miranda, because she feels it’s too close to home.

“I very much see Miranda as a character, I don’t see her as an extension of me. I do divorce it from myself, otherwise it’s too weird. I have to call it ‘my sitcom’ or ‘the sitcom’”, she says.

“And there’s something quite un-British about calling a sitcom your name.”

When Hart was developing the show, which evolved from her stand-up comedy and a BBC Radio 4 comedy series, she didn’t want to call the show Miranda, but relented when producers convinced her it was a good idea.

The Miranda in the series – a joke shop owner whose lack of ambition and single status make her a continual disappointment to her mother Penny – is based partly on the real Miranda’s experience.

“The through line of the comedy is ‘Miranda can’t fit in’. I was very shy until I was about 25. That experience of getting used to the world and being an adult, having a first job, first serious relationship, I use all that in the sitcom.”

She admits that, like Miranda, she feels as though she doesn’t fit in. It’s a reference to her height (she’s over 6ft), but also to the way she views the world. When designers started work on Miranda’s flat and joke shop, for example, she told them that there must be no magazines lying around (“Miranda just wouldn’t read them, and neither would I”).

“I don’t think I’ll ever fit in, but I don’t think I’d want to,” Hart says. “What are you meant to fit in to? I suppose there is still pressure to wear the right thing, earn the right amount. My generation is obsessed with kitchens and bathrooms, and getting the right rugs and cushions. Mine are all from Ikea and I’m quite happy, thanks.”

It’s been a big year for her. The sitcom did better than her “wildest dreams” earning a hearty share of viewers and some rave reviews., The second series was promptly commissioned, and she won a Royal Television Society prize for her efforts.

But she reveals that, for most of the year, she’s been cooped up at home, on those Ikea cushions, writing the second series.

“I think people think, ‘Your life must be so glamorous because you’re on the telly’, but actually I’m just there in my pyjamas in the afternoon, crying over my laptop,” she says.

The sitcom Miranda hasn’t had much luck with men so far. Along with her attempts to join a gym and learn the tango, she has also tried to woo the chef next door Gary (played by Tom Ellis).

There will be a few new men joining the cast.

Miranda’s old school frenemy Tilly (played by Smack The Pony’s Sally Phillips) gets engaged so we meet her finance. Viewers will also get to finally meet Miranda’s dad.

Miranda is also forced to contemplate her mortality, after a very Miranda-style brush with death.

“She falls into an open grave,” says Hart. “And she’s with her mother, which makes it even worse, who just walks off and leaves her there.

“Obviously, it was padded with crash mats, but it was still quite unnerving because normally I just fall straight to the floor, but this was considerably deeper so I felt like I was flying through the air for some time.”

After the location filming, Hart films the rest of the show in front of an audience – a format she insisted on, despite the extra pressure it puts on her.

“It’s considerably harder, which I don’t think people realise, because you’re trying to get a laugh out of the audience as well as thinking, ‘I’ve got to do a telly performance’. The stories have to be big and surreal and heightened, but I love it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And she’s hoping the response from the crowd will make her second series nerves subside.

“Once I’ve got the first one out the way and get the first laugh, then I’ll feel a bit better. That’s when I’ll start to enjoy it,” she says.

■ Miranda begins on Monday on BBC2, at 9pm.