Julie Hesmondhalgh says Dawn French is a 'proper human being'

Julie Hesmondhalgh has praised Dawn French and described her as "a proper human being."

The former \'Coronation Street\' actress - who played transgender character Hayley Cropper from 1998 to 2014 - has struck up a friendship with the \'Vicar of Dibley\' star after teaming up for drama \'Glass Houses\', and she can\'t get enough of Dawn\'s witty humour.

She told the i newspaper: "[Dawn] is everything you hope somebody is when you\'ve only seen them from a distance - she is a proper human being and I love her.

Dawn French pens her fourth novel

"Sometimes with famous people there\'s a pane of glass you can\'t permeate but she doesn\'t have it at all - and she is piss funny."

Dawn stars as village gossip Maggie - who gets herself into trouble after blabbing about her neighbours to a radio reporter - in the new ITV series, while Julie takes on the role as her best friend Jill.

The on-screen BBFs are set to appear on screen together in the new year, while Julie has kept herself busy after pleading her with her playwright husband to work on her ideal script.

Sir Lenny Henry: 'Some girls wouldn't dance with me because I was black'

Julie - who married Ian Kershaw in 2005 - asked him to write her new show \'The Greatest Play in the History of the World!\'.

She asked: "Write me a one-woman show, and make it non-age-specific because then I\'ll never be too old to perform it, and something low-tech so that we can travel around the world performing it into our dotage."

The couple took to Edinburgh Fringe last summer where the play instantly became a hit and are now set to perform at Trafalgar Studios in London on Tuesday (26.11.19) until the new year.

Sir Lenny Henry's daughter given suspended sentence for harassing ex-boyfriend

Julie added: "It\'s set at Christmas and we\'ve performed it at Christmas before, so it\'s a bit of an alternative Christmas show. [It was] sort of an enforced Christmas present [from her husband]."