"Compare this to being in the Fast Show tour," says host Arabella Weir when we ask her if she's enjoying herself.

"The Fast Show is a big f***** up family where everyone's trying to get the biggest portion of the pie, so being on the road with it was like touring with a bunch of rutting stags.

"I was literally crying most nights 'cos the boys would go off to lap dancing clubs and I'd be on my own in my hotel room eating a pack of peanuts that cost £8. Here there's zero competitiveness and, at the end of the night, we have a laugh and a few bottles of wine."

With the possible exception of a three-for-two on Chardonnay, there's no better medicine than humour. And, when it comes to laughing away their imperfections, women have always beaten men hands down.

So, in a move which Weir describes as "more inspired than sponsoring a swimming marathon," Dove has organised a ten-date tour of the UK featuring a revolving line-up of some of the country's top female comedians.

"None of us are just doing bottoms, cellulite and period humour," says Weir of the Brighton event, which features award-winning local girl Zoe Lyons, gossipy Aussie Julia Morris and Janice Connelly's Barbara Nice, a menopausal Stockport housewife well versed in the joys of Take A Break and Poundstretcher.

"Without wishing to sound too corny, I think it really was an attempt to celebrate the uniqueness of the different women," Weir says.

Inextricably associated with the words "does my bum look big in this?", the catchphrase of the permanently insecure Fast Show character on which she would later base her first novel, Weir is certainly no stranger to the subject of body image.

"That character grew out of me, as an actress, thinking my life would be perfect if only I was slim," she recalls. "If you're an actor you're ridiculously focused on your appearance anyway.

But when I started out there were either fat-and-ugly parts for the Hattie Jacques of this world or thin-and-pretty parts there was no in-between.

"Directors had no problem telling me to my face that I'd have to lose weight. It's still a very fascistic world where beauty opens the door more than anything else and slimness keeps it ajar."

Despite advances in science and the brain-cell count of male directors, women may still have to contend with what Dove so expressively refer to as "Buddha bellies" and "bouncy castle bums" ("plenty of people have bounced off my bum," Weir quibbles, "but not small children"). But they have, at least, mastered the art of self-deprecation.

"Men don't sit around going, 'Yeah, I've got quite a small cock', 'Ooh, me too'," says Weir. "Whereas a bunch of women who've only just met can talk about getting 'a bit baggy down there' after having the kids, because they realise it doesn't make them a lesser human being.

"Straight men are obsessed with knobs and the size of them and there isn't a man alive who's going to write a book called 'Does My Cock Look Small In This?'"