"I'm very much what you see is what you get, I'm not dark and deep. Mostly what I write is about me," she explains,, before pausing to correct herself. "No," she adds.. "It's all about me. I suppose I must think my life is so amusing and interesting that I don't have to pinch other people's stories.

"But I think the absolute difference between men and women, and the great thing about women, is that they can like themselves but still go 'yeah, but I've got a fat arse'. I think that's impossible for men because they're always protecting themselves from weakness.

"They find it much more difficult to go 'I haven't got a very nice stomach, but I still get laid all the time'. They're much more defensive; they think they've always got to be perfect and great and a winner."

Arabella admits she favours her character style of comedy to conventional stand-up. "Because I'm a bit wet," she smiles, "and stand-up is much, much harder."

She'll be combining the two, though, when she comes to Liverpool next week to host the Dove Bodywash Naked Truth Comedy Tour. It's an all-female stand-up show, featuring some of the UK's hottest women comics including Lucy Porter and Janice Connolly.

Arabella, for her part, will be presenting and she says "trying to be as amusing as I can".

No doubt somewhere in the night she'll be agonising over her bum, although she's amused by a website quote which proclaims: "there is a lot more to Arabella Weir than a rear end".

"Oh that's very nice, what a touching tribute," she laughs.. "But wait until they see my rear end; there really isn't much more to me than that. So it's touching ... but wrong."

* The Dove Bodywash Naked Truth Comedy Tour comes to Baby Blue, Albert Dock, on Thursday, September 22. For information visit www.dovenakedtruth.co.uk