Mrs. Crupp Dawn French David's London landlady, Mrs. Crupp declares that she will look after him as if he were her own son. Her fondness for "peppermint cordial," however, renders her not entirely able to fulfill her promises. Actress Dawn French, best known to American audiences as The Vicar of Dibley, didn't feel remotely nervous about taking a part in David Copperfield. "Absolutely not, no," she laughs. "Especially when they're really good like this. With comedy," she says, "it depends what's up for the piss-take. Either the actor, the character or the story -- or the props. Or just the era. We knew we'd enjoy being in those costumes and make something of it." Mrs. Crupp was something of a mystery to French when she was considering whether to take the part. It was a character she couldn't remember from the book, which she had read to her at bedtime when she was about 13. "It had such very funny people. Micawber was one of the best inventions ever. And Uriah Heep is like a character out of Pinocchio or something like that: a kind of genuinely seething, bubbling, jealous, angry bomb waiting to go off. "Mrs. Crupp may be an old soak, but she loves David and loves all the young kids. It's not like she's evil. There are plenty of other characters for that."