Katy Perry is a big fan of 'French and Saunders.'

The 38-year-old pop singer was a new artist performing her now-signature hit 'I Kissed A Girl' at a small gig in London back in 2008 when she met BBC DJ Scott Mills, who now "cannot believe" that he spent several hours chatting to the now-global superstar before her career took off.

He recalled: "[Jo Whiley] invited me to one of her... gigs ... in North London... in 2008... asking me if I would like to introduce somebody at that concert... And on the email, Jo had put, ‘We’ve also got this new artist coming down called Katy Perry, and she’s got this new song called ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and it’s going to be huge, it’s already huge in America.’ So I said, ‘Oh okay,' I’d never heard of her, but yeah, [I said to Jo] ‘Sounds really good, I’ll see you there.'

"Katy Perry did the gig and I thought she was brilliant. You know when you can see star potential. And then she came backstage. And me and Jo Whiley were talking to Katy Perry for hours. Fast forward a year and she is one of the world’s biggest stars.

"But yeah, I think we were chatting to her for three hours literally about all sorts. And me and Chris [Stark] still say to each other now, ‘Can you believe we chatted to Katy Perry for that long before she became a megastar?'

Scott - who will soon begin his new afternoon BBC Radio 2 show - went on to describe Katy as one of the "funniest people" in music as he spilled that the American singer "loves" British humour and is a big fan of the legendary comedy duo, made up of 'The Vicar of Dibley' star Dawn French and 'Absolutely Fabulous' actress Jennifer Saunders, who had their own self-titled sketch show on the BBC for over two decades.

In an appearance on 'Tracks of My Years' on BBC Radio 2 with Gary Davies, he said: "She is one of the funniest people in the music business I think because she gets, and she loves, British humour.

"She watched all the kind of old comedy, the British comedy, with that dry humour in it. I remember, I think she said she loved 'French and Saunders', all that stuff. And I was like, ‘You’re amazing.'"

Listen to the interview in full on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001d4cw