Helen played the dippy ‘Catriona’ in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ alongside Jennifer Saunders in the TV series and more recently ‘The Movie’. She created the ‘Girl at the Bar’ in the BBC comedy sketch show ‘Naked Video’ and is known for her unique wit and observational humour. A comedy writer with a portfolio that includes writing and performing her own material, not only as a stand-up comedian but also as a comedy novelist and contributor to various publications.
Helen was part of a group of early 1980’s comedians, including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, the late Rik Mayall and Ben Elton who made their names at London’s Comedy Store. She was a guest on ITV’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ with her solo comedy act as well as performing at the first ‘Just for Laughs’ comedy festival in Montreal with Lenny Henry. TV appearances span such shows as ‘The Young Ones’, ‘French and Saunders’, ‘Happy Families’, ‘One Foot in the Grave’, ‘Bottom’, ‘Love Soup’, ‘Miss Marple’ ‘Hollyoaks’ and ‘Midsomer Murders’ . Children’s TV includes the ‘Miss Bowline-Hitch’ along with Bernard Cribbins for CBeebies’ ‘Old Jacks Boat’. She starred as Rich Aunt Ruby in ‘Horrid Henry: The Movie’.
On BBC radio she has written and performed her own comedy series ‘Life with Lederer’ and ‘All Change’. She has a weekly humour column in Best Magazine.
Theatre work includes ‘Educating Rita’, and Alan Bleasdale’s ‘Having a Ball’. She has been in ‘The Vagina Monologues’, ‘Calendar Girls’, and ‘The Killing of Sister George’, in London’s West End. Various fringe plays including her One woman Show at The Kings Head and the previous New End Theatre in Hampstead. Her first comedy novel ‘Losing It’, published by Pan Macmillan, was nominated for the PG Wodehouse comedy literary prize. Helen set up her own Comedy Women In Print Prize (CWIP) in 2018 in order to celebrate and enable witty women’s writing and create a platform for women’s wit – procuring a publishing offer for the winner of the Unpublished Fiction category. Since then, CWIP has enabled many new authors to become published. https://comedywomeninprint.co.uk/.
Her memoir ‘NOT THAT I’M BITTER’ is Published by Mirror Books and is also on audio.