We all love Olivia Colman now - but I was there first

It's not as if the 39-year-old has been hiding her acting light under a bushel for the past 10 years.

Yes, she was one of the pivotal performers in ITV's riveting whodunnit mystery, Broadchurch, which got the whole nation talking.

And last weekend she enjoyed double success at the Bafta TV awards.

But to read some of the headlines, and the quite justifiably flattering comments about her role as the brittle, emotionally bruised detective in Broadchurch, you'd think she'd been plucked from nowhere, Susan Boyle-style, to become trumpeted as the next big, against-all-odds British talent.

There's a mountain of evidence which suggests quite the contrary. She's been utterly brilliant for years.

I offer, as exhibit number one for the prosecution, her breakthrough role in Peep Show, way back in 2003, in which she played the deliciously awkward Sophie who became the object of David Mitchell's hopeless and fruitless obsession.

Then there was her multi-award-winning role in Tyrannosaur, a harrowing portrayal of a battered wife which proved she can do pathos just as well as pratfalls. Powerful.

Let us not forget, either, the delightfully saucy vicar's wife called Alex Smallbone she played in Rev, or Hugh Bonneville's lovelorn PA in sporty satire Twenty Twelve.

Or, for that matter, the harrowed mother whose son was killed in a gang-related stabbing in Accused (yes, before you ask, that was yet another critically acclaimed, award-winning performance).

Hollywood hasn't overlooked her abilities either. The Iron Lady may have been an oddly offbeat take on the Margaret Thatcher story which divided the critics, but Colman's turn as Carol Thatcher was the stand-out supporting performance in that movie, standing up proudly against Meryl Streep's amazing scenery chewing, Oscar-winning antics.

And earlier this year, she played an amusingly uppity Queen Mother in political drama Hyde Park On Hudson, opposite Bill Murray. Another character portrayal which was right on the money.

Clearly, though, there are those who need to get to know more about Olivia if she's ever to register on their radar. So, for the record, here's a start: She's married to Ed, has kids and a dog, likes holidays in Umbria in the middle of nowhere, enjoys Sunday lunch and a good DVD, and her favourite folk to be stuck in a lift with would be Ant & Dec. ('I've always loved them on I'm A Celebrity,' she says. "When I met them recently I was sweating and blushing. But they're lovely and put me at ease straight away.')

So there you have it. Witty, self-deprecating, and despite being at the top of her game, happy to admit being star-struck at times. The ego has definitely not landed.To those who say Colman has the potential to become Britain's next Judi Dench, to quote one of Maggie's most famous lines, I say 'no . . . no . . . no'. She's been there for years.

Only a tiny handful of British performers, like Julie Walters or Hugh Laurie, manage to be equally at home in the worlds of intense drama and ridiculous slapstick, and Olivia Colman is without doubt among them.

She is to acting what Germany is to car making; technically excellent, utterly reliable, and frighteningly efficient.