Fresh Meat star Zawe: 'I don't have a TV'

Fresh Meat star Zawe: 'I don't have a TV' (Image credit: PA)

Fresh Meat star Zawe Ashton says she doesn't have a TV because she never got around to getting one. The actress plays resident slacker Vod in the university sitcom, but has to get her fix of TV shows through box sets. She admitted: "I don't have a TV... I just never got one." Zawe said she want to create her own TV show in the future, and said her favourite comedies were Roseanne, Ellen, Cybill, adding: "They're all retro, it's so sad. "I grew up when there were women in title roles in their own series. These shows have dwindled away but I want to live in that time again." Zawe said that Fresh Meat is unusual because of its three strong female characters: Kimberly Nixon as Welsh dentistry student Josie, Charlotte Ritchie as intellectual rich girl Oregon, and Zawe as her beloved Vod. "That hardly ever happens and so I don't think I could move on to something which was less well written, and if you're not going to wait, then you've got to write your own," she added. The new series of Fresh Meat begins on Channel 4 on Monday, October 8.

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.