Ross King chats to Megan Mullaly about the comeback of comedy Will and Grace

BASIL Fawlty, Norman Stanley Fletcher, Edmund Blackadder and Father Dougal – just a few of my favourite sitcom characters.

One person who doesn’t get enough credit as a TV comedy legend is Karen Walker, from Will and Grace.

Karen, a spoiled, gold-digging, hard-drinking New York socialite, was played brilliantly by the fantastic Megan Mullally.

She was responsible for the show’s best one-liners.

When asked about her boozing, she quipped: “Honey, I’d suck the alcohol out of a deodorant stick.”

And when it comes to having a difference of opinion with someone I often quote her line: “You say potato, I say vodka…”

Megan starred as Karen more than 200 times – more than Basil and crew put together!

The sitcom ran until 2005 and that was that, until Megan and her fellow stars decided to reunite for a ninth series last September.

I bumped into Megan and we had a chat about the revival of one of the most successful US TV comedies of all time.

They often say you should never go back, so I wondered how easy it was to return to something as successful as Will And Grace.

“Gosh, it’s lovelier the second time,” she told me. “We appreciate every second so much and it feels like we never left.

“But at the same time it feels miraculous that it came back and we’re super-appreciative.”

Often when you go back to things you’d left behind there’s a little regret. Are things really as good as the first time around?

It’s a bit like the last time I returned to the leftovers from a Chinese takeaway.

But Megan seemed delighted to have returned to the hit sitcom, which has now been renewed for two more series.

“We got along really well the first time so it wasn’t uncomfortable,” she said. “There were a couple of people on the crew who replaced people we really loved.

“So I was a little passive-aggressive with the new people for a couple of days. I was like, ‘Who are you? Where’s Karen?’

Megan also told me how she loved Dear Old Blighty, too.

“I’m obsessed with the British and the UK,” she said. “I’m a late-blooming anglophile.

“I love the people, the style and the restaurants. The shopping is dangerous in Britain! I could live there, my husband Nick and me.”