Emma Thompson has been part of my life for over twenty years. In fact, the Thompson family has been part of my life since the day I watched The Magic Roundabout on TV. Not only is she an excellent actress and a great presence but she is also an excellent person. I was going to write a lot of stuff on just why she’s a top person but I thought this list would say it better:

• Action Aid ambassador
• her work against sex trafficking for the Helen Bamber Foundation – I won’t directly link to the video I am Elena because it really upset me
• her support for the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS
• her support for Alone in London
• her willingness to portray herself as a lesbian and an Ohioan in Ellen
• her support for actresses and eating
• naming her daughter Gaia
• she usually sports a short hair style
• writing the best big screen adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, Sense and Sensibility
• being in two of my favourite TV series from the 80s, Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War
• being absolutely the only redeeming thing in Love, Actually

Her best performances include A Passage to India, High Tide, Impromptu, Barton Fink and Life With Judy Garland.

This picture was taken outside court during a recent libel case so I guess she is under stress but I think she looks splendiferous.

So I am moving on to my next favourite left-handed person I love admire who is Tina Fey.

My appreciation of Tina Fey is based on Mean Girls and 30 Rock and nothing else. I’m British, I have never seen Saturday Night Live but since I know stuff and thence I do know that it’s not actually my sort of thing and that would seem to make my like of 30 Rock a touch baffling since it is about a programme rather like SNL. But actually, it’s not really baffling at all, Jack and Kenneth and Liz and Tracy and Jenna are hilarious comic creations from the mind of Tina. And her mind is brilliant because it thinks of lines like “Those shoes are definitely bi-curious” (more quotes below) and when she’s interviewed in Playboy she says things like

But for some of these other chicks, the closest they can get to a body like that is to remove everything that’s there and add a little something on top. It’s like the ladies you see in Playboy.

And she wears glasses and she has a scar. Read Dorothy Surrenders and she’ll explain better.

Jack: Sure…I gotcha. New York, third-wave feminist, college-educated, single and pretending to be happy about it, over-scheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image’ on the cover, and every two years you take up knitting for… a week.
Pete: That is dead on!
Liz: What, are you going to guess my weight now?
Jack: You don’t want me to do that.

Liz: If I’m gonna be with someone, it has to be a guy.
Gretchen: You sound pretty sure about that.
Liz: What can I say, I love a bald spot and a hairy back.
Gretchen: You’re alone there.

Jack: Human contact is important Lemon. I can tell from your stress level that you have not been touched in any way in quite some time. Not caressed, not massaged, not even groped on the subway.

Liz: I hate going up to Donaghy’s office even for something normal. I always feel like I’m entering the Death Star.

Liz: No, Tracy took advantage of my ‘white guilt,’ which is supposed to be used only for good like over-tipping and supporting Barack Obama.

Gentleman: Excuse me, is this seat taken?
Liz: [Sighs] Really dude? I got to move my coat? There are like 4 empty seats over there – can’t you just be cool?
[Gentleman leaves]
Jenna: That guy wanted to buy you a drink!
Liz: Really? But I already have a drink. Do you think he’d buy me mozzarella sticks?

Liz: [on the phone] Hi, my name is Liz Lemon and I received flowers from your shop tonight and I can’t tell who they’re from. [pause] No, no, I did read the card but it’s not signed…. no, I’m not with so many men that it’s impossible for me to guess…well, that is just…oh, well you know what, I found the card, actually, they’re from your mom, so tell your gay mom I said thanks! [hangs up]

OK, she isn’t credited with writing all these lines but she’s in charge.

And proof she is left-handed is in this compilation of all her scenes in Mean Girls (PS Lindsay Lohan is so lovely at the beginning of this film).

*However, if you are going to draw Tina Fey then maybe glasses would help and please give her a waist!

Julia Sawalha is famous for playing juveniles both when she was a juvenile and when she was well past that age.

She played fifteen year old Lydia in Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty seven and it didn’t seem wrong. So it was with a bit of shock when she turned up in the first episode of Cranford looking like she was in her late thirties (which she is). It was okay for me to say that but I felt that Sir Charles Maulver (played by Greg Wise) was a real meanie for saying so in her hearing.

For most people, Julia Sawalha is Lynda Day from Press Gang or Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous. I find AbFab rather tedious and it seems superfluous talking about great she is as the steely and caustic Junior Gazette editor. So I’ll talk about the two roles that I think she thoroughly shone in but don’t come instantly to mind when she’s mentioned: Ginger in Chicken Run and Carla in Jonathan Creek.

Chicken Run is a Nick Park creation which passes the Bechdel test with flying colours (pun intended). The voice acting is superb with Miranda Richardson quite marvellous as Mrs Tweedy. However, Julia holds it together as the leader of the hens who is not deterred by all the setbacks that beset her and her fellow inmates. She may be a little spiky in a Lynda Dayish way towards Rocky but she does exasperation so well.

Jonathan Creek‘s charm was partly due to the relationship between Jonathan and Maddie (Caroline Quentin) so when Quentin left it felt like the show was going to suffer. However, Julia was a delight and seemed to really enjoy the role-playing that being Jonathan’s sidekick demanded.

There is warmth, genuine niceness and an air of decency about her acting which I admire and enjoy. She is also splendidly shaped.

And I’ll be nice and forget she was ever in Second Thoughts which is a classic ITV sitcom. Classic that is in the sense of being entirely unfunny and atrociously acted by a cast that included James Bolam and Lynda Bellingham.

And here is the proof she is a lefty: