COMMENT:
I have the same gut-based anxiety about Phoebe Waller-Bridge's career trajectory as I did when I returned home to find my son atop the scaffolding on our building eating a Mars bar. Then, as now, I was quickly surrounded by a crowd of neighbours shouting: "Be careful up there", "It's dangerous, you know", "All it takes is one wrong step". Because almost everything Waller-Bridge does or says, is watched by an audience multiplying quicker than Scott Flansburg. And we know where that ends for successful women at the top of their game. (See: Lena Dunham and Twitter screaming, "Kill yourself!")
Such is the white heat of Waller-Bridge that Private Eye has a running gag over the random use of her photo: "Is this article justified in using a photo of Fleabag?" it jokes. "We hope you don't mind us using a photo of the hit 33-year-old whose award-winning series has revolutionised comedy for ever." She is reported to have signed a deal with Amazon worth £15m a year, and be collaborating on a new film with her sister, Isobel. And she has just been named "most powerful person in television" by the Radio Times.
In a "rare public appearance" (really she is television's snow leopard) the actress/writer/comedian/creator of Killing Eve appeared in an on-stage chat at the Royal Festival Hall to mark the publication of Fleabag: The Scriptures. Revelations included: the "hot priest" in Fleabag was based on a real monk called Father William; she and Andrew Scott ("hot priest" actor) will work again. Plus much (justified) pant-wetting over her involvement in the new James Bond, No Time to Die.
![Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag. Photo / Supplied](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/DEGTZNUBVJAYQHAF2WCXXWZV7A.jpg?auth=08a3862d955bcd2b4da95d46da2399d15cd4e8add30f46e16af778ee970c3655&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)