“We’re not a celebrity couple – we’re not very good at all that,” Bhaskar says “We’re not the new Posh and Becks. Syal sighs that, although she is playing the lead in a new film about Joyti De-Laurey, the PA who stole £4.3m from her employers at Goldman Sachs, “I actually get very few offers because people think I’m too busy That’s one of the myths I’d like to remove I’m definitely available for work. At first, Bhaskar recalls, “we had to overcome the prejudice of execs who used to say to us ‘you want to do a comedy show? I didn’t know Asians could be funny’.” But “it soon gained momentum We were part of an explosion of British-Asian culture. The British-Asian community came of age in the 1990s, and that new sense of confidence was expressed through music, film and what we were doing.”They went on to collaborate on The Kumars at No 42, which is now going down a storm in the States, and is making a high-profile transfer to BBC1 next month.Despite the couple’s success, it hasn’t all been plain sailing.

I think that every woman will identify with one of these characters It’s not written for one specific audience. It should appeal to everyone.”The central theme – can friendship withstand the truth? – could apply to anybody. If people notice we’re Asians, great, but it’s a love story that should resonate with everyone.”The couple first worked together a decade ago on Goodness Gracious Me. That’s very flattering.”These three characters all reflect elements of my own personality. In my time, I’ve been all of them – the innocent blushing bride, the hardened media babe and the depressed mother.

I’m hacked off that we’re not seeing that reflected on our screens.”Syal doesn’t believe that Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee will speak only to a British-Asian audience. “Women have come up to me and said, ‘it highlights parts of my own life that I never thought I’d see in a book’. The book is all about getting in touch with your inner Kali.”As well as Sunita, Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee focuses on her two childhood friends from Ilford: the meek and obedient Chila (played by Ayesha Dharker from Star Wars II), who is marrying the suspiciously suave Deepak (Ace Bhatti), and Tania (Laila Rouass from Footballers’ Wives), a loud and opinionated “Asian babe” who works in the media. When Tania films her friends for a documentary about the area she left behind long ago, she opens a can of worms.Syal believes that in TV drama women such as her central trio have for too long been overlooked. “Part of my motivation was to show a generation of women who aren’t written about very much.

Everyone seems to be interested in stories about twentysomethings trying to get boyfriends – ‘ooo, is it going to be Mark Darcy or Daniel Cleaver?’ Well, I wanted to depict thirtysomethings who have got the boyfriends, but for whom it’s now all going horribly wrong. Where’s it all gone wrong? And is it too late to change?”As I sat around with friends, I’d think, ‘yes, you’ve got children on your laps, yes, your hair is greying and some bits are sagging, but you’re more beautiful than ever and you’ve got so many fascinating stories to tell’. “One day, I opened Eastern Eye and I saw two headlines side by side. One read, ‘Asian women top the graduate league’, and the other read, ‘Asian women top the suicide and self-harm league’. I thought, ‘what’s going on here? Why are we capable of creating so much and at the same time of destroying ourselves?’”In the Hindu religion, there are two manifestations of womanhood: Sita is the creative goddess of bounty, while Kali is a black-faced, many-armed demon, the personification of female anger. Kali gets into rages and drinks the blood of her victims.”Most women are expected to be like Sita, but there’s always a Kali within. If you’re made to behave like Sita, Kali will eventually explode.

Nobody suspects that anything is wrong until it all falls apart because Sunita has always been the one who copes.”She goes on to explain what inspired her to create the tormented character of Sunita in the first place. “They reckon most things can be cured by not talking about it over a nice cup of tea.” Syal’s dialogue is replete with these juicy one-liners.She explains that Sunita is “like an awful lot of women. She puts her life on hold for her husband and her children until she reaches a point where she thinks, ‘Is that it?’. Akaash is a drippy psychotherapist who has no idea that his intelligent but desperately unfulfilled wife is going into emotional meltdown. This is a marriage that has raised suffering in silence to an art-form.