Aging & Wisdom Quote by Dawn French

The joke lands because it treats sexual identity like a career aspiration, not a confession. Dawn French plants her flag in emphatic denial ("I repeat, NOT") then instantly undercuts it with a mischievous reversal: she "would like to be one when I grow up". The punchline isn’t just surprise; it’s the way she borrows the language of childish self-invention to puncture adult anxieties about labels. “When I grow up” infantilizes the whole argument, implying that the culture’s obsession with categorizing desire can be as silly and performative as a kid announcing they’ll be a firefighter.

The intent is twofold. First, it’s self-protective comedy: she anticipates the rumor mill and swats it away with theatrical overkill, because in the public eye even mundane intimacy becomes public property. Second, it’s an affectionate nod toward lesbian identity as something enviable rather than stigmatized. That’s a sly inversion of older punchlines that used queerness as the butt of the joke; here, the “insult” is replaced by a playful admiration, hinting at solidarity and curiosity without claiming an identity that isn’t hers.

Context matters: French came up in British comedy that often thrives on cheeky confession and taboo-testing. The line performs a kind of allyship before it was branded as such, while still keeping the comedian’s escape hatch: it’s flirtation with the idea, not a statement of fact. The subtext is: stop policing my persona, and maybe stop treating queerness like a problem to be denied.