Now let's get this straight. Emma Chambers is not a dozy verger, although it seems the rest of the nation seems to think so.
As Dawn French's foil in The Vicar of Dibley she has won the hearts of the nation but, alas, it's also typecast her as a village idiot.
In the flesh she's far from it of course. Bright as a button with large blue eyes and the sort of grin which melts the hardest heart. The actress who stars in recent Julia Roberts hit Notting Hill loves working on any project, as long as the cast and crew are okay.
"I've got this thing at the moment about working with nice people," she says with a grin. "Because it's the quality of life that's important isn't it? More than anything else." Unlike Coronation Street's Les Battersby, Emma hates life on the dole and watching Richard and Judy can beat the blues for only so long.
"I get bored and frustrated," she confesses. "I don't think I'm very good at unemployment. I do voice-overs which is very nice when you're unemployed because it does make you feel human." Emma has been honing her craft since the mid-Eighties. She's toured the country starring in Tartuffe, As You Like It and a number of Alan Ayckbourn plays.
"I did theatre for 10 years and I did some small TV roles such as The Bill. However, Martin Chuzzlewit was the first time I'd done a nice big juicy part on the box."
By the time The Vicar of Dibley came along a few years ago, people sat up and took notice. Emma puts the show's success down to a mixture of great scripts and chemistry between the stars.
"I felt such an empathy with Dawn French. I just think we work really well together. There's just a comfiness between us." However, when it came time to learn a particularly difficult scene, French gave Emma very little slack.
Reciting a mind-bending script in which Alice couldn't believe I Can't Believe It's Not Butter... wasn't butter, was hardly the sort of dialogue that melted in her mouth.
"Dawn said: 'You're never going to be able to learn that and I'm not going to help you. Okay? When you have to do it in front of a live audience I'm going to put you off'. "So I went home after the last live show and I drove down to the country with my husband. Before we'd even started rehearsing on the Monday I had just got it off to a fine art. I had done it about 150 times in the car on the way down to my mother's. And it was just so delicious to go into rehearsal and I did the whole thing on Monday morning. I had until Friday to do it. Dawn couldn't believe it.'"
Critics have praised Emma Chambers for her natural comedic abilities but she says there's no secret to cracking up millions of viewers.
"I do not think in terms of gags. I'm an actress and I just go whichever way the journey takes me. I'm very untechnical, that's one of my failing