Dawn Porter's dreams - no laughing matter

The nerves don’t seem to be dissipating. My dreams have moved along from the classic naked ones to the more torturing sort where I go out on stage with nothing prepared and just stand there, paralysed and terrified.

Last night I dreamed that as I sat in an audience waiting my turn, David Walliams (who kept turning into Charlie from Casualty) ran in and out of the audience bleating like a sheep and shouting the word “Foot”.

The audience didn’t find him funny at all, so when it was my turn to go up there was an enormous pressure to save the night.

But I had prepared nothing, so just stood there looking out at everyone before telling a - sort of - funny story about an incident with a shopping trolley (I think the shopping trolley ran over an old ladies foot or something) and then I did a little dance.

Afterwards I was told that I sucked at comedy but was the best performer. I was mortified at the comedy bit, but obviously pleased to have been the best at something.

The thing is, this dream was quite representative of how I am feeling. I have confidence in myself as a performer, even though I have never really done anything like this before. I did a reading at a friend’s wedding this year and even though the nerves nearly had me chewing off my own arm, halfway through I really began to enjoy it.

Howeve,r it is the comedy stand-up part of all this that is freaking me out - the pressure to be funny is actually quite crippling.

People say I should talk about what I know, so I think the trick is not to be too clever and to keep things natural and fluid by keeping within a subject I understand.

I am very keen not to fall into the usual female traps of talking about my body image or my sexuality, but that is tough as my career has been largely based on those things, yet I want to try something new.

I was looking at this most unrealistically when I got asked to do it, I didn’t really take into account how hard it might be.

People tell me I am funny all the time - which I guess is why I said yes - but right now I feel that isn’t enough, or the right kind of funny to pull this off.

There are a few more weeks to go and this performance has become my obsession. I am not aiming to be the most hilarious, if I did I think I would explode. But I am aiming to be able to keep the audience with me for the entire four minutes, get a few laughs, and hopefully keep my clothes on until the end.

If I can do that, I’ll be laughing.

Dawn Porter is performing stand up as part of The Last Laugh session at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. For tickets and further information please go to www.mgeitf.co.uk