Sally Phillips, who starred as Shazzer in Bridget Jones Diary says she drew on her own relationship woes to form the much-loved character. Sally, 56, star of comedy classic Smack the Pony, who split from her husband, Andrew Bermejo, in 2017, says: "So my marriage failed. There were many reasons it failed. But one of the reasons, I think, was that I was absolutely not prepared."I wouldn't talk about the possibility of it ending, so we could never actually talk about what was wrong. I would just shut down the conversation. I'd only talk about positive things we could do, like courses we could go on.”Careful not to apportion blame for her divorce after 14 years of marriage from businessman Andrew, she says: "I made him feel awful just by being me, and he made me feel awful just by being him. To continue in that was not successful."But Sally, who is now dating former British Army captain Ian Pilcher, who she met on a blind date set up by a friend, still co-parents her three children with Andrew - Luke, 17, Tom, 14, and Olly, who is in his early 20s and has Down syndrome and autism.‌She says: "I was so frightened of the marriage ending and me being on my own with one, two, three children. And I was so sure that I couldn't manage that. Turns out I can. So, I think I would say that divorce isn't always failure. And I suppose I've come to see life force as really precious."An outspoken advocate for neurodivergent and disabled communities, Sally went public in 2024 when Olly was excluded from a London trampoline park and told he needed a letter from his GP to take part. She says: “Olly is hilarious. Yeah, he's joyous and hilarious.”Sally, who also appeared in Miranda, is starring in a new BBC1 comedy, The Hairdresser Mysteries, which starts today (Friday), in which she plays Lily Petal, a modern-day crimper and 1970s enthusiast. She has left a smart London salon for a small but charming shop in a sleepy northern market town. But her tranquil life is disrupted when murders start happening on her doorstep and she turns amateur sleuth.‌Likening the show’s appeal to The Vicar of Dibley, she says: "The show is written by Jim Cartwright. There’s a poetry to his writing. One line I said was ‘I gave a mammoth's trim to a hairy old shaman type!’”But while fans see Sally as a natural comic, she says being funny hasn’t always been easy. She says: "When I started out I hoped to be, you know, Judi Dench at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I'm not that.”Instead, she is one of the funniest people on TV. And fans loved following her journey through 25 years as Bridget’s best mate Shazzer, opposite Renee Zellweger, in the four Bridget Jones films.‌One of her funniest memories comes from her audition, when she spotted Colin Firth, who played Bridget’s future husband Mark Darcy. She says: "Bridget Jones was such a heavenly world to live in. It was my 30th birthday on the day of the read-through for the first film."When I walked in I just thought ‘my career is just going to get better from here’. I then looked over and I was the only person in Britain who hadn't seen Pride and Prejudice. But when I saw Colin Firth I thought, ‘he's mine. I am in the right room.’ I thought, ‘my life is going swell’.”Sadly, Mark Darcy’s heart was won by Bridget - the role she initially auditioned for. Sally says "I remember Sharon Maguire, the director, saying, ‘the character needs to be drunk quite a lot. How do you think you'd do that?’ I said ‘I don't know, I might get drunk’. Which was the wrong answer.‌"We spent quite a lot of time trading stories about how we'd been dumped. At the time, I had just been dumped by an artist who told me that since he'd been dating me, he hadn't had enough time to go swimming."I was like ‘I am not stopping you swimming. Swim all you like. I'll meet you in the pool’. But yeah, anyway, so it was an unsuccessful audition for Bridget."But while she was very happy to settle for the part of Shazzer, she has some regrets, saying: “She doesn't get to snog Colin, Hugh or Patrick Dempsey. Consequently, my character spends 25 years saying, ‘f***!’ Colin and I are ships that have passed in the night. What could have been…"‌Sally discovered her genius for comedy after moving around to different countries as a child, because of her father Tim’s job as a British Airways executive. She says: “Whenever I came back to the UK, everything was wrong. People would be nice and say things like ‘oh, cool trainers. Where did you get them?’ And then you'd realise later they were laughing at you.”This meant she never felt she fitted in and became accidentally quirky. Still, Sally had the last laugh, leaving Oxford University with a first class degree in Italian and linguistics, before following her acting dream after a spell at clown school - one place where she felt her face definitely fitted.She says: "I did ballet when I was a kid and loved it, but I got told to give up because I was too fat. I wasn't that fat. I just have this image of myself watching Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House, this little tubby kid that was never going to get up there, wishing.“But when I discovered clown school it changed everything. I've been to lots of clown schools. The thing about it is that if you're someone who feels like you get things wrong in your life, at clown school, getting things wrong is getting things right.‌"So wearing clothes that are a bit wrong, that's correct. And if you get something wrong in an improv, people applaud. They applaud your mistakes. “Speaking about her career during an evening at London's Barbican Centre, Sally says clown school also helped her shed the ‘pound shop Barbie’ image she had of herself. She says: "When I started out, I thought I was a serious actress. I would play in Romeo and Juliet, I would die, and the audience would go, ‘oh bless’."I've wanted to be Barbie, but I'm kind of, you know, a ‘pound shop Barbie’. A bit rubbish Barbie, where the limbs don't move and maybe she's got a strange fringe, only one outfit, it's a nylon jumpsuit, you know? When I was auditioning to play serious parts, I couldn't get any traction, couldn't get anyone interested. The minute I started doing comedy, I got an agent, I started getting jobs."‌Now firmly established as one of Britain's great funny women, Sally admits to being just fine with her career, as it stands. She says: "I'm so lucky. Comedy is such a great life. It's actually been really brilliant. Yes I did hope to be Judi Dench, but I've had more fun."*The Hairdresser Mysteries is on BBC1, Fridays at 2pm.