You’re famous for impersonating people, but we gather you do animals too?
I was once employed to play everyone Warhol had known, or slept with, for a Radio Four show. It turned out the sound engineer had forgotten his dog tape, so I said I’d do the dogs too and he could put real dogs into the sound edit. As it turned out, I got that part too, as my dog impression was better. Well, so I thought – many of my canine friends ardently disagree.

You support the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). What makes them your activists of choice?
A lot of people talk the talk, but the extraordinary thing about the EIA is that they’re like green spies, or a green SAS. Their undercover investigations expose transnational wildlife crimes, especially poaching and the trade of body parts from elephants, pangolins and tigers. They monitor and record illegal logging, deforestation, polluting of our oceans and the factors driving climate change. You can’t put pressure on the people and corporations committing these crimes without this proof. Other agencies use their material. When you see evidence of some abomination going on, the EIA will have sent someone to get it. See their website, eia-international.org

Philip Pullman’s “Northern Lights” series introduced readers to daemons. What would yours be?
I have a vison of what I want this inner animal to be, something glorious like a panther. But I have a horrid feeling it would be a strange creature, not far along the evolutionary process, still sprouting feathers, with scales and furry bits too when all the other animals had sorted themselves out. A bit like a duck-billed platypus. Something that defies genres and bio-descriptive categories.

What did you want to be when you were a child?
A Mahout. I was and am obsessed with elephants. The first time I saw a live one was Edinburgh Zoo and it peed very loudly, with steam rising off the great yellow puddle, and I burst into tears. But by the next day I was OBSESSED with elephants. And then I discovered about mahouts – elephant handlers – and heard they spoke elephant language. Not a conversation about Proust, you understand; something more minimal but still enough to fuel my passion.

You co-run a production company with comedian Sally Phillips. If she was an animal, what would she be?
She says she’d be a squirrel shaman with the waistline of an owl and legs of the Polyphonic Spree. I think she’s more of a woodland creature. When we do comedy gigs together our physicality is so different that we have hours of fun talking about it. She says I’m the poor man’s Claudia Winkleman if she was stretched on a rack and dunked in bleach. I say Sally is a bargain-bucket Tess Daly (Tesco Daily) if she’d never taken any vitamins and was viewed on the wrong TV aspect ratio. I look like an alien horse, Sally has the face of – I’m still trying to work it out – a pretty stoat?

Have you ever tried to make a film about a dog?
We’ve been trying to make one forever. It’s hard because dogs are glorious and beloved of so many people. So, if you’re trying to make something that’s dark and funny, it automatically turns into something more like a family, Saturday-afternoon dog movie. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it is tricky to get the tone right on animal films in general. You invariably impose human emotions on canines and, before you know it, they’re talking to you.

Have you ever acted with an animal and regretted it?
Yes, I once had to wear a massive boa constrictor round my neck on a programme called The Geeks. The thing that really unnerved me is the speed at which a snake’s head moves. One moment it’s down by your thigh, the next it’s by your ear. I could tell this snake was insulted by my dodgy acting. I had the Helen Mirren of the snake world wrapped round me going, “Who’s this terrible hack?”

Favourite childhood pet?
Muffin, a tiny cocker spaniel: the runt of the litter. Her mum Candy was the dog world’s Mommy Dearest. She refused to feed her puppies, so Muffin had to be hand-reared on eye-droppers full of warm milk. She looked like a bad animator’s version of a reject from Lady and the Tramp. Needless to say, I loved her so much.

If you could bring one species back from extinction, what would it be?
A woolly mammoth, because who doesn’t love a cross between a highland cow and an elephant?

Do you own any pets now?
We’ve got two rabbits, who are like useless Instragram influencers. They do nothing and have gorgeous sepia colouring. We also have two cats. I was told they were half-pedigree, and one definitely has some Abyssinian. But the other “pedigree” is this enormous, fat black cat, who smokes Rothman’s, drinks beers and sits on my head. He has no feline etiquette. Needless to say, I love him so much.

Are you, or have you ever been, a vegetarian?
I was and then slowly got lured back into fish and then the fish lured me back into eating chicken. They said, “Don’t just eat me! Eat them too.” I hardly ever eat red meat.

Which politician would you not allow to look after a pet?
I would bar Gavin Williamson from pet sitting because if a dog was caught licking its bollocks, he’d threaten to expose it to
the tabloids.

Which politician would you entrust with your favourite pet?
I’d resurrect John Smith. The old-school, decent, middle of the road, non-hysterical, reliable pet sitter. A very well-balanced chap.

Born Free or Ring of Bright Water?
Born Free, because my youngest daughter is named after Elsa the lion cub. I was ill after she was born and got weepy after watching a programme about women being subjugated by religion. So I said, “This baby will be born free and won’t be oppressed like that.” Then along came Frozen and now thousands of little girls are called Elsa.

Ronni Ancona is an EIA ambassador, and award-winning comedian and actress. She co-owns the production company, Captain Dolly