'I think I got off lightly'

As a result of her disability, there are quite a few no-go areas in 26-year-old Francesca's life. She wouldn't, for instance, stand a chance as a waitress, and dentistry is well off the list of possible careers.

As for revolving doors? Don't get her started. Let's just say that when you suffer problems with co-ordination and balance, they are to be avoided at all costs.

"Me and a revolving door equals a bra in a tumble dryer," she says ruefully.

But as a stand-up comedian Francesca is in a strangely privileged position. Her daily encounters with the bizarre, absurd and downright wrong provide her with rich pickings for an act that has become one of the most sought-after on the comedy circuit.

It is perhaps her observations of other people's perceptions of her disability that are the most telling.

She has stories of being yelled at by outraged drivers who see her pulling into disabled parking spaces, people who berate her because they assume she's drunk and, most excruciating of all, the security guard outside a posh London shop who lambasted her for "pretending" to walk like a cripple.

Finally, when he discovered that she really was disabled, he was consumed with embarrassment and apologised saying that he hadn't realised because she was wearing such nice clothes. You couldn't make it up!

Francesca, who appears in Bournemouth on Friday night (Aug 19) in The End of the Week Show at the Pavilion Ballroom, says: "Hilarious situations emerge on a daily basis. I'm very lucky."

She says she hates being pitied and has spent much of her life fighting not to be patronised.

"It's the way you see yourself that sets the agenda," she tells me. "Obviously when I'm out on the street and people see the way I walk I can't stop them thinking 'Oh poor thing'.

"But if I meet someone like that I try my hardest to show that there is another way of viewing me, that there's nothing to be worried about and that I'm not going to bite their head off if they use a wrong word or something."

Misguided perceptions of her disability were also the subject at the core of her recent appearance alongside Kate Winslet in the new Ricky Gervais TV comedy Extras.

Francesca admits that she thought carefully about the script, which found her being mistakenly identified as both drunk and mentally ill.

She went with it, she says, partly because she has enormous respect for Gervais, who has long supported her career, and also because she believes that highlighting such stupid misconceptions can do nothing but good.

She feels even better about it after seeing the Les Dennis episode that ran the following week, saying: "Oh my goodness, I think I got off very lightly."

She hopes the Extras appearance will help her break into comedy acting, but says she would love a mainstream TV role in which cerebral palsy wasn't the main issue.

"It isn't something that's at the forefront of my mind all the time. I go days without even thinking about it. I'd really like to play a character that isn't defined by their disability, someone that goes through exactly the same day-to-day issues as other people.

"It doesn't have to be 'I am disabled and I hate the world'. But that seems to be the only way most able-bodied writers can see it."

Francesca says that until she was 20 she was paranoid and negative about herself, riddled with insecurities and fearful of the way others saw her.

"Then one day I met this guy (she later says he's "a very special person" and still a good friend) and he took me for a drink. I remember saying that I was brain damaged and he just looked at me and said 'No, you're just you'. I said 'But I walk differently'. And he said 'Of course you do. Everybody walks differently'."

"It was incredible. What he said was so true and that's really been my attitude ever since. I am just me. A completely unique human being, just like everyone else."

Francesca Martinez plays The End of the Week Show at the Bournemouth Pavilion Ballroom tomorrow. Telephone 0870 111 3000.

First publication: August 18