THE Tour de France circus may have left town but there will still be a French presence in York this weekend.

Dawn French is appearing at York Barbican on Saturday in her first solo touring show, 30 Million Minutes, so called because this is roughly how long the 56-year-old Welsh actress, comedian, writer and, oh yes, canine advert star has been alive.

"I'm enjoying the fact that I can't categorise exactly what it is. It's not a stand-up show. It's not a play. I guess it is a monologue because it's just me talking," says Dawn, who opened the tour in Sheffield in early June.

"It's a slide show to an extent but not just a slide show. It's not like your awful, most feared auntie who's just come back from Egypt, where you have to sit and watch everything."

In a nutshell, 30 Million Minutes is "quite autobiographical". "I show you the people that have made me, so to speak. There's quite a lot about my mum and dad," says Dawn, whose grandmothers, "Good Granny" and "Evil Granny" pop up too.

Although "Evil Granny" stole from her, she was aware the nickname was a joke. “In fact she coined it. She thought the other granny was so good,” Dawn says.

The show takes her into new territory on stage, having toured previously with partner in comedy Jennifer Saunders and starred in a one-woman play, Geraldine Aron's My Brilliant Divorce, in 2003 at the Apollo Theatre, London.

This time she will be playing more 60 gigs nationwide in two blocks of dates. "I've just eaten a little bit of the cushion with my bum thinking about it," she says, contemplating the prospect. "I’ve always wanted to [do it] and I think I’ve dodged it a bit because I’m aware that it's a risk,” she says.

Assisting her in dealing with that risk has been director Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible and the Donmar Warehouse in London.

"I could have asked Fatty Saunders, but I thought, ‘I’m actually going to ask a proper grown-up theatre person'," she says. Nevertheless, the months passed since she first approached Grandage and she took other jobs, even a role as a judge on Australia’s Got Talent.

She may have written an autobiography, Dear Fatty, but perhaps Dawn was "scared" – her choice of word – at the prospect of being more revealing than previously on stage.

Indeed, once rehearsals dawned, she was still not at ease with 30 Million Minutes being all about her.

“It’s a little bit, ‘Aren’t I interesting?’ I kept saying to Michael Grandage, ‘I need to take this out,’ and he said, ‘Absolutely not . That's the whole point. Do not push it away from you. Absolutely own it and be completely strong and confident about that’'. And so that’s what I’ve done.”

Dawn is doing the tour for three reasons: she has things to say, reckons it could be fun and has not done it before. "I don't need loads of positive strokes for just being alive. What I want is people to turn up and see whether what I've written works," she says.

She does, however, admit to attention-seeking being an element of performance.

"It's the child in us that's saying, 'Mum, Dad look at me.’ It's a need for approval, which I think all humans have. But performers have it in a needy, slightly sick way. I've had it and I've understood it as that. I don't think you can get up and do what I do without a bit of that going on, but I find it very unattractive – in myself and in other people."

Dawn confesses to "always seeing people in their nappies". "Comedians, actors, whatever. I see them as a baby going, 'Mummy look, look!' And if I watch Simon Russell Beale, Mark Rylance, Judi Dench, people who inhabit their characters properly, I don't see them in a nappy. I watch their character and that's that.”

Among the subjects in 30 Million Minutes will be her father, Denys, who committed suicide when she was 18. Dawn and her brother had been shielded from his depression while growing up.

"It was just like a bomb went off in our family. My mum of course would have known there was danger. He'd lived his whole life with it but this was in a time when you didn't say you had mental illness if you were the head of a family," she says.

"I still have sadness about it. Massive sadness. And I think it's been a centre point of my life what happened with my dad."

Soon after her father’s death, Dawn took up her place on a teaching course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. It was there that she met Jennifer Saunders and you know the rest; French And Saunders, The Vicar Of Dibley, theatre roles, an autobiography, two novels, and her marriage to Lenny Henry that ended in 2010.

Now you can learn more than the rest you already knew. One key moment in her young life, for example, was when her father gave her confidence as she left a party.

"I've always been a big girl and shouldn't really have been wearing hot pants,” says Dawn.

"But he told me I was completely beautiful and how amazing I looked in them and that I would get loads of attention. So my dad gave me a sort of telling off that was about totally infusing me with confidence and I went on cloud nine to this party and I've actually never left that party. It was armour."

The armour will be shed on Sunday when Dawn takes her York audience through the lessons life has taught her and the things she knows for sure.

"At last, I have one of my three genie wishes granted, which is that I finally get to work with Michael Grandage. The other two wishes are as yet unfulfilled," she says.

"They're secret obviously, but suffice to say, one is about Barack Obama in Speedos. The other is about me in speedos, with cheesecake involved. Enough said."

Dawn French presents 30 Million Minutes at York Barbican on Saturday at 7.30pm; doors open at 6.30pm. Tickets update: still available on 0844 854 2757 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk or from 2pm on the day at the box office.

Dawn also plays Leeds Grand Theatre on September 2, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com