Fiona Allen on Smack The Pony, stand-up comedy and her late father-in-law Sir Michael Parkinson

After marrying Mike – and gaining Sir Michael Parkinson as a father-in-law – Allen had three children. She describes her life since as a whirlwind of “work and kids, kids and work, with a small bit of husband thrown in and a large dollop of mad Cockapoo”. With the children now teenagers, she decided it was time to do something for herself. So, after turning her hand to everything from swimming to yoga, she settled on stand-up and has spent the last couple of years perfecting her style on the club scene.

Now the star, who lives in Berkshire, is on the road with her debut stand-up tour On The Run. “I get asked stuff all the time – where’s my trainers mum? Where’s my hoodie? I feel like an Alexa who never gets asked to do anything fun,” Allen muses. “So it was a thing for me really, I know it’s work, but I love it, that gets me out of the house. Basically I'm a mum on the run.”

Allen’s first stint at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer marked the first time she had been apart from her family for such an extended period. After a dramatic start – her suitcase ended up in Los Angeles and Allen spent her first couple of days scrambling around the shops for clothes and essentials, she admits she savoured the time away, claiming in one interview “I’m not encouraging them to come and see me”.

"I’m not going to say I felt guilty,” the 58-year-old reflects now. “Yes I missed them, but I thoroughly enjoyed being away. I’d wake up in the morning and everything was neat and tidy. I worked every single day I was there...but I could go back and put my feet up and watch catch up TV. It was pretty blissful I’ve got to say.”

In the show, Allen shares her recent journey to the stand-up stage alongside her experiences of being on the road. She muses on being a mum, raising her kids in a world of parenting theories, and shares the stress of being a wife to a man who she claims still can’t operate the washing machine. Audiences are also introduced to her northern dad, Spanish mum and older sister, with whom she grew up in Bury, Lancashire.

There was a moment, aged seven or eight, when she decided she would become an actress, she recalls. “I remember being sat in my bedroom, listening to music and thinking about what I should do when I grow up...I loved singing but this tune was playing and the person’s voice was amazing and I thought I can’t sing like that, I’ll never be as good, what else can I do? I know, I’ll be an actress and I just stuck to it.”

“I never thought about stand-up,” she continues, “but when I think back to primary school, I would write jokes on post-it notes and make little joke books. I remember being silly and cheeky, not being able to keep my gob shut, making jokes in class. So really the signs were there.”

Her drama course taught her she “wasn’t one for performing Shakespeare in a corset” so after a stint in Manchester as part of the Tony Wilson empire of the Hacienda Nightclub and Factory Records, Allen moved to London and soon found herself winning two Emmy awards as a star and co-writer of the all-female sketch show Smack The Pony.

“It was just so much fun. I knew when I did the pilot that it was going to be good,” she says. It was so different. It was three women messing about which nobody had really seen before because things were pretty dominated by guys. People just really liked it. I didn’t quite think it would be a worldwide success like it was though. That was a lovely thing.”

Her many other screen credits include Coronation Street, Skins, Waterloo Road and EastEnders and Allen has also appeared in numerous films such as Gladiatress. Through it all, her father-in-law was a sounding board for advice.

“If ever there was something to do with work, I’d like to chat to him,” she says, speaking just days after the funeral of Sir Michael. “He could really cut through stuff. I think that’s him being a journalist. He could get to the crux. He was brilliant at giving advice. I spoke to him when I was in Edinburgh on the phone. He loved stand-up, he championed it, and he was saying what I was doing was great, crack on…It was funny when he got knighted. People would say hello Sir Michael. I looked at him like Sir Michael my arse and we both started laughing...We drove each other bonkers and made each other laugh.”

Sadly, he won’t get to see Allen perform for her forthcoming Yorkshire dates, but she is looking forward to spending time in the region and says she’s “genuinely loving” her first stand-up tour. “This isn’t an agenda show, I’m not changing the world, it’s not political, I’m not trying to be profound, I’m just having a laugh,” she says. “But if there’s anything in there, it’s that if I can do something completely different like this, I don’t see why anyone else can’t. Just go and do it.”

Fiona Allen: On The Run is at Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield on October 12 and Theatre@41, York on November 23.