Sally Phillips on Bridget Jones, her role in ABC’s Austin and Hugh Grant

Sally Phillips on playing Shazza in Bridget Jones, her role in the new ABC comedy Austin – and mending a rift with Hugh Grant.

Sally Phillips. Picture: By Pip

As the beloved Shazza - one of Bridget’s best mates in the hugely successful film adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary and its sequels - you got a taste of Hollywood mania. What are your recollections of the 1990s?I don’t miss the paparazzi. It wasn’t good for my love life having potential dates tailed by paps and photographers – but the flip side is that if anyone’s interested, it means your show might not be terrible. I do miss the sketch shows of the ’90s. They just don’t happen anymore – sketches happen all the time in the form of TikToks but nobody gets paid for them except the Chinese government.

You once revealed that your Bridget Jones co-star Hugh Grant, who played the wildly unreconstructed Daniel Cleaver in the films, was so aghast at your “indiscreet drunken behaviour” on set in Thailand that he stopped speaking to you. Is your relationship still in the deep freeze? He is now speaking to me, thank you for asking. He’s very gracious.

Were the Phillips family a funny lot? We were definitely comedy fans. My parents took me to see Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, which I think is an 18+ now, when I was about six – at the British Council in Bahrain. “Holding forth” wasn’t exactly encouraged but there was always positive reinforcement for funnies. And there still is.

Who is the funniest person you’ve ever met? You’re asking the wrong person – I have very unsophisticated comedy taste. I love comedy in the wild, such as You’ve Been Framed or Animals of TikTok. I completely lost it at the first trailer for the movie Cats. I laughed so much I was nearly sick.

You work in Australia often. What initially forged your connection to this country? We moved to Sydney in 1978 and I loved it. I remember being the only kid in class who couldn’t climb a rope – and then heading back to the UK and being one of only two kids in my class there who could.

For a time your father was president of the All England Club in Wimbledon. Did you take as much advantage of this as you could have? Members get options to buy tickets for the [Wimbledon] Championships and my Dad always bought his full allocation. My first final was Borg vs McEnroe in 1980 – so long ago that a man chain-smoked cigars in the seat in front and I went home with a migraine.

Your son Olly, 19, has Down’s Syndrome and in 2016 you presented the BBC doco A World Without Down’s Syndrome?, which examined non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) . Why is this such an important topic? NIPT is a staggering technological advance but was brought in without proper ethical consideration, and the inevitable has happened – more than 80 per cent of all identified pregnancies in the UK are terminated. Women’s choice matters but a smaller community of people with Down’s creates a vicious circle. People fear the unknown. People withDown’s not being known in turn means more terminations.

How can we minimise discrimination against people with a disability? Make friends with someone. Most people have never had anyone with a disability in their home.

Sally Phillips stars in the new ABC-TV comedy Austin, which premieres on Sunday at 8pm.