Fed up with Nigella's perfect pout? Well, don't worry, there's a new domestic queen on the scene, and her crown isn't always on straight. Amy Sedaris, the champion of kitchen kitsch, talks to Kimberly Cutter Martha Stewart's evil twin.

This is how some people describe Amy Sedaris. Others prefer 'psychedelic gourmet' or runaway bestseller in America, and that A-listers such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Philip Seymour Hoffman and David Letterman are all regular guests at her raucous, kitschy New York dinner parties.
'Oh, she's been inviting me for years,' says Sedaris, 45, an actress, playwright and comedienne who is the younger sister 'But I always said no until my book came out.

Then I figured I'd better do it.'
Indeed, with the unexpected success of I Like You, Sedaris - who would want to have anything to do with her. She appeared on Oprah last autumn.

Natasha Richardson gives her home-made plum jam. Susan Sarandon invited her for Thanksgiving. 'It's weird,' she says.

'I'm glad the book is flying off the shelves, but I never thought about that while I was writing it. Suddenly I telling me they love it.'
do an entertaining show of her own, which brings up an interesting question: is Amy Sedaris a rising (if subversive) lifestyle expert?

Or is she a brilliant comedienne whose life is a kind of non-stop, Initially, Sedaris's Greenwich Village flat seems to provide the answer for her. It's a snowy afternoon, and Sedaris is icing cupcakes in her cosy living-room, which is decorated with her collections of stuffed squirrels, plaster meats, books on skin disorders, fake cakes and antique correctional shoes.
A fireplace glows cheerfully with fake rosy-red flames.

At once ghastly and seductive, it feels like a cross between hide-away. 'I collect all kinds of weird stuff,' says Sedaris, a small, pretty, sad-eyed blonde with a penchant for full-skirted 1950s hostess dresses. One of her cupboards contains four fat-suits (along with sequined leotards, fake teeth and likes to wear for her guest appearances on the David Letterman show.

However, at the mention of the word 'comedienne' Sedaris's face pales. 'I hate that word. It's too much pressure,' she says.

'It's like, if you say laugh.' Of course, Sedaris does make audiences laugh, but the expectation of humour distresses her. 'Labels set up too many expectations.

It's like when people ask me if my book is a joke cookbook. It is definitely not. I hate joke cookbooks!

' In the very seriously; entertaining in my home, my style. It may not be the most proper way, or the most traditional, or even legal, but it works for me.'
someone's basement, I Like You may well be the funniest 'Put marbles in the medicine cabinet.

Nothing announces a nosy guest better. Plus you'll know which guest is a junkie whore.' And: 'It's always a good idea to stock your neighbour's apartment with the basics (alcohol, ice, corn chips) so when you run out at three o'clock in the morning, you know whose door to knock on.

' One childishly decorated cake reads dad come home in chocolate sprinkles; another, for a coming-out party, is shaped like a butterfly.
Still, Sedaris insists that she did not set out to be funny. 'It was more like I'd be thinking about hot lunches,' she says, 'and I'd think, "Who eats hot lunches?

" Well, lumberjacks do, so I'd write about how to entertain a lumberjack.'
(in oversize print), which advises, 'Turn up the heat, turn down the music, serve a bland meal around 4pm and thread some needles for them to take home.' In the chapter called 'Grieving' Sedaris suggests, 'Pre-crack all your liquor bottles.

No one wants to be the first, especially at a wake.