Helen Margaret Lederer (born 24 September 1954) is an English comedian, writer and actress who emerged as part of the alternative comedy boom at the beginning of the 1980s. Among her television credits are the BBC2 sketch series Naked Video and BBC One's Absolutely Fabulous, in which she played the role of Catriona. In 2015 her comedy novel Losing It was published by Pan Macmillan. It was nominated for the P. G. Wodehouse Comedy Literary Award and the Edinburgh Book Festival First Book Award. Early life Helen Lederer was born on 24 September 1954 in Carmarthen, Wales to an English mother and Czech-Jewish father. Her father was born in 1926 in Teplice, Czechoslovakia, and many of her relatives did not survive the Holocaust. Lederer's paternal grandfather, Arnost, worked as a clandestine listener to German prisoners of war at Trent Park in North London during World War II. She was raised in Eltham, south east London and was educated at Blackheath High School (then a direct grant grammar school) and the Central School of Speech and Drama. She also studied at University of Hertfordshire. She has a BA in applied social science and received an honorary doctorate from Middlesex University. Career Lederer was the only woman to write and perform in BBC Radio 4's In One Ear. Produced by Jamie Rix with Clive Mantle and Nick Wilton, it won the Sony Award for best comedy and progressed to the TV version called Hello Mum. Lederer established a stand-up act at the Comedy Store in London and then won minor parts in episodes of The Young Ones, which had been written by her Comedy Store contemporaries Ben Elton and Rik Mayall. She would be linked with this scene for the rest of the 1980s, with a supporting role as housemaid Flossie in Happy Families and numerous appearances in related shows and live performances. Lederer broke from the Comedy Store wing of the alternative scene in 1986 to take part in the BBC2 sketch show Naked Video, which had originated without Lederer on the radio in Scotland. Lederer played various roles, including that of a newsreader linking spoof headlines into clips which acted as punchlines, and a drunk Sloane who performed a monologue in each episode from a wine bar. In the 1980s she reprised her Sloane role in a series of television adverts for Warninks Advocaat, with voice-overs by Stephen Fry. In