Legendary British comedy star Sally Phillips has called out the BBC for its “heinous” number of female comedy writers on its projects.

The star of Bridget Jones and Miranda, Phillips, 56, is best known as one of the creators, writers and stars of legendary Channel 4 sketch show Smack the Pony, which was one of the first female-orientated comedy programmes to air on British TV.

Speaking to the Girls on Film podcast at Latitude Festival, Phillips said that while the number of women producing and “doing comedy” had increased in recent years, things were still “not OK” when it came to representation on the other side of the camera.

Joking “I’m never going to be employed by the BBC again” for calling them out, Phillips nonetheless continued as she pointed out that “the stats on women directing and writing TV comedy are pretty heinous”.

Philipps appeared to pointed to a 2025 report by Chortle which found that only 11 per cent of all TV comedies were created and written by women, with the percentage having not increased since a 2018 study by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

“We should have more things written and directed by women in general, particularly women of colour,” she said.

“Comedy is really, really dominated by white men, and it’s really hard to break away from that, because if you’re not given chances then you’re not given a chance to fail, actually.”

A BBC spokesperson told The Standard: “The figures quoted are industry wide and do not reflect the BBC’s comedy output.

“We are incredibly proud to work with many brilliant women writers, producers and directors, while recognising there is always more we can do across the industry. We take representation seriously, it should be judged across a full slate and our record on this speaks for itself.

While Phillips has worked in comedy for decades, the I'm Alan Partridge star last year admitted that she considered her inability to be seen as a “serious actress” to be one of her greatest failures.

Phillips revealed that she once cried for “about 15 minutes” in the toilet at a casting director’s house after missing out in an audition for a serious part because it was “this thing that I longed to be”.

“I thought I was a serious actress, I did, I thought I was,” she said. “When I was auditioning to play these 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. But I felt somehow that this was a failure of depth, like the gravitas thing, that there’s something about me that is not deep or serious, or received or something.”