15 Things We Love About Tina Fey

It's the delightful Ms Fey's birthday today.

For the third year running, we tried to deliver a cake to her New York office in person but were told that the restraining order remains in effect until 2015.

So here's 15 things we love about the Mean Girls/30 Rock star...

1. She studied comedy from a very young age

“When I was 13, I remember me and one other girl in my 8th-grade class got to do an independent study because we finished the regular material early," she told The AV Club. "She chose to do hers on communism, and I chose to do mine on comedy."

“We kept bumping into each other at the card catalogue. The only book I could find was Joe Franklin's Encyclopaedia Of Comedians, which stopped in the '50s, so I read up on guys like Joe E. Brown.”

"People were just staring at me in the hall, all these extras and background people and nerds wanted to talk to me all of a sudden. Guys have a real weird thing for that outfit.”

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Fey jokes that she's saving all of the magazine clippings in her attic so she can show them to her daughter and prove that “there was a time when people thought your mother was a sexy bitch.”

Talking to Us Magazine, Fey unloaded on Paris Hilton, who she found truly difficult to work with after an appearance on SNL.

“She's a piece of shit. The people at SNL were like, ‘Maybe she'll be fun, and maybe she won't take herself so seriously.’ She takes herself so seriously! She's unbelievably dumb and proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close.

“She was awful. People never come in and say, ‘I'm not doing that...' So, this guy Jim Downey wrote a really, really funny sketch. It was supposed to be SNL boss Lorne Michaels just finding out that Paris had a sex tape and telling her she couldn't host the show because SNL has standards.

“So she was like, ‘I'm not doing it!’ and refused to come out of her dressing room. She just wanted to make fun of all the girls she hates. She was like, ‘I want to play Jessica Simpson, I hate her.’ She would come in the room and say, 'You should do a show about Jessica Simpson because she's fat.’

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10. She helped stop Sarah Palin from becoming Vice-President of the USA

Fey's uncanny transformations into Alaskan governor and VP candidate Palin were both screamingly funny and devastating for Palin's political credibility.

But Fey herself wasn't keen - she had to be cajoled into the impersonation by SNL chief Lorne Michaels. But once the glasses were on and the hair stacked up, the take became indelible - smart, funny, subversive and devastatingly satirical.

12 She made Tinkerbell funny with just one glance

Even Disney couldn’t manage that in Peter Pan .

Fey agreed to appear as the fairy alongside the likes of Jessica Biel and model Gisele Bundchenin a rack of portraits shot for Disney (the 'Dream Portrait' series).

The images were shot by celeb photographer Annie Leibovitz for the Mouse House’s attempt to project a classier ima. Fey tweaked Tinkerbell's pristine image with a wonderfully world-weary side-glare.

13. She gives good speech

She deserves to win more awards, if only so we can listen to her make more terrific acceptance speeches.

"I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities,” she said at the 2008 Emmys. “Well done - that is what all parents should do!"


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Season 2 of 30 Rock is out on 25th May. More details here .