Hart plans move to stage following awards success

(GETTY)

The comic Miranda Hart plans to use her success at the British Comedy Awards to move into theatre, and hopes to make her West End stage debut. Hart, who on Saturday picked up three prizes, for Best New TV Comedy Show, Best Female Comedy Actress and the People's Choice Award, has already been commissioned to write and star in a new series of her eponymous BBC2 sitcom. The last series of Miranda averaged 3.7 million viewers and it is expected that a third run of the sitcom will move to a prime-time BBC1 slot. She is also scheduled to appear in a Comic Relief sketch in April.

"To just do something completely different would be really nice," she said yesterday. "What I'd love to do is make my West End debut. That would be lovely and then I could write in the day."

Hart, the daughter of Captain David Hart-Dyke, who commanded HMS Coventry when it was sunk during the Falklands War, spent yesterday celebrating with her parents. Asked where she would keep her awards, she said: "I will probably actually put them in a cupboard as I'm essentially too middle class to be a true show-off."