ICONS OF COMEDY: TINA FEY

Andy Dawson salutes America's first lady of comedy

This week’s icon is a woman. That’s a pretty rare feat for our icon line-up, not because we’re a gang of sexist pigdogs, but because comedy is still dominated by menblokes. We could debate as to why that is all day long but we won't. All we know that it is wrong.

For example: almost everyone who appears on the male-dominated Mock The Week isn’t funny. Whereas, American comedy goddess Tina Fey is extraordinarily funny, almost beyond reason.

For another example: the boys on Mock The Week do lame topical observation humour that is as memorable as some discarded chips in the gutter of the least memorable seaside town you’ve ever been to. Whereas Tina Fey played a major part in the election of America’s first ever black President.

Some have said that it was Tina’s uncanny impersonation of clueless Republican running mate Sarah Palin that did for the John McCain campaign in 2008. The handful of appearances that she made on Saturday Night Live exposed Palin as the fool and the fraud that she undoubtedly was and will be remembered forever. Back on Mock The Week, we can¹t even remember what Russell Thingy’s surname is.

But enough of him. There’s Tina Fey’s day job to rave about. 30 Rock is approximately 300 billion times funnier than Dawn French’s new show - Roger And Val Should Just Get On With It And Do A Big Suicide Pact - that has just started on BBC2, yet 30 Rock is shunted away on to a cable channel, where let’s face it, all the cool people hang out.

Set behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live-esque sketch show, 30 Rock is a majestic piece of comedy, with more astonishingly well-crafted characters in one cast than has been seen in almost 40 years of Last Of The Summer Wine.

We’ll probably cover Tracy Jordan next week. And then Tracy Morgan, the actor who plays him, the week after.

Tina Fey then. Witty, perceptive, self-deprecating and probably the funniest woman to have ever lived.

Oh, and she's plenty foxy too. Hubba, and indeed, hubba.