‘My sketches wouldn’t all survive today’

DURING a career spanning five decades, Tracey Ullman’s comic characters have ranged from a Jamaican care giver to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, taking in Indian pharmacist Padma Perkesh.

But she has admitted that today’s political correctness means she would no longer feel comfortable recreating some of her most acclaimed skits.

Asked by Desert Island Discs presenter Lauren Laverne if she would now play so many parts where the age, sexuality and ethnicity was different to hers, she replied: ‘No probably not. It wouldn’t be the right sort of atmosphere for it, no. I think the late 1980s, it was just what you could do. It was what you were doing then. It would be different now.’

However, the star has no misgivings about her previous work. ‘No, I don’t regret anything and I don’t apologise for anything really. It’s pointless, you know – onward.’