Miranda Hart

by Sophie Johnson

  She has that peculiar British brand of comedy – a combination of self-deprecation, sarcasm and slapstick. She blames being away at boarding school for missing out on seeing much of the alternative comedy scene of the 1980s but her influences have brought to the public a much-missed brand of humour: the light-entertainment style of the 1970s, a nostalgic kind of reminiscence for some of us, and something fun and new for others. Our beloved Miranda Hart was always destined to be a star of the comedy world – and wanted it more than anything – but, as we shall discover in the following chapters, it didn’t come easily to her.

  3

  GROWING PAINS

  ‘When I see a tall woman, I’m always slightly like, woah, it looks weird, but that could be because of my complex about it, my worry over whether it’s womanly to be that tall.’

  – Miranda

  Actress and comedian Miranda Hart is the star of Miranda, but her alter ego in the series – joke-shop owner – is the butt of most of the jokes, lots of them revolving around her appearance. There is much speculation about how autobiographical the sitcom is, and how similar Miranda is to her on-screen persona, but we’ll look into that more a little later. What is clear is that her appearance has played an important part in how she feels about herself, as well as being a source of comic material. Self-penned jokes about her size stem from a dark time in Miranda’s life. ‘In terms of my character, I did very much start from myself. Then I’d get too sad and morose and angry, so I had to find the fun side of my teenage angst.’ Unlike her happy-go-lucky schooldays of galloping around corridors and being a popular lacrosse player, her teenage years and early twenties were pretty low times.

  After winning the People’s Choice Award, the comic expressed her surprise at her new-found popularity. She had been so busy that she regarded the viewing figures abstractedly as mere numbers, and she hadn’t read any reviews. Why, though? Miranda hates the way she looks and journalists seem to fixate on her appearance almost as much as she does. ‘People are obviously going to mention what I look like, but it’s a shame it has to be a key part. I can’t just be Miranda.’ And who can blame her for avoiding reviews when papers have described her in such unflattering and even unpleasant terms as ‘lady-mountain Miranda Hart’, ‘a human stegosaurus’ or ‘huge and hugely unfanciable’. ‘One of those comments is OK,’ Hart has argued, ‘you can deal with it, but, if you read 60, even the strongest person would start feeling low.’

  While Miranda remains understandably sensitive about certain comments regarding her appearance, she is still dedicated enough to comedy to courageously send herself up so frequently in her act, with so many laughs reliant on her size and clumsy nature. She is mistaken for a transvestite, addressed as ‘Sir’ by a delivery man and constantly called ‘Queen Kong’ by her old boarding-school friends. Now, Miranda is happy in herself, but still avoids reading reviews as it takes her back to unhappier times. ‘I’m quite a confident person in many ways, but there’s only so much you can hear about being compared to Hattie Jacques. For the record, she was a comedy goddess, but she was 25 stone. I hope I’m right in saying I’m not in any way nearly 25 stone.’

  And she doesn’t appear to be embarrassed by her body, willing to bare all for a laugh. Social awkwardness and being naked in public seem to go together for her comic creation, and the big-knickered Miranda does it so brilliantly and in such a typically English fashion. Her dress getting stuck in a taxi door and being ripped off wouldn’t be nearly so funny if it revealed a supermodel figure in sexy matching undies, rather than the looming figure in galumphing pants we are treated to.

  In one newspaper interview, the journalist is interrupted by the comic’s PR saying that they need to start make-up. Grimacing, Miranda says, ‘They probably looked at the state of me and thought, We’d better get her over there as quickly as possible.’ It seems that, despite being branded ‘Crush of the Week’ in another paper, and her immense popularity across the nation, Miranda still hates the way she looks. ‘I’m happy socially and I’ve got good friends, but everyone has got their thing, haven’t they? And mine is I don’t like looking in the mirror.’ She has also said that she can’t imagine anyone finding her attractive. This insecurity came from years of feeling she was different and being told by casting agents she did not fit the mould of the business they call show.

  At 16 years old, she was already 6ft 1in and was very thin. People laughed at her gangliness and clumsiness. ‘I was always tripping over and knocking into things, because I didn’t realise how wide my wingspan was.’ She wasn’t too worried about her height, but family and friends kept reassuring her that it was OK to be tall, people kept referring to it, and she started to feel different. They would encourage her to embrace her height, and tell her that models were tall, but she started to feel uncomfortable with herself and the more it bore weight on her mind, the more it was mentioned, the more ill at ease she felt. Despite fitting in well, she never felt happy in her own skin. ‘Perhaps that’s being tall,’ she reflected later, ‘not being comfortable with men until my mid-twenties.’

  And, although she was happy at the time, Hart reflects that going to an all-girls’ school may have affected her confidence and approach to men: ‘I think, for a shy person – and I was very shy until my mid- twenties – having been to an all-girls’ school is not brilliant on the boyfriend front later.’

  She had reached her full height by the time she was in the sixth form, but looked different to the Miranda we know today: ‘I was also very, very thin, and people used to laugh at the gangliness rather than the precipitousness.’

  Everything in Hart’s life pointed her to comedy and performing, and she applied for stage-management courses but, under parental pressure, she went to Bristol Polytechnic (now the University of the West of England) to study politics. There were new people to meet, new experiences to be had and opportunities ahead of her. But being so image conscious held her back. ‘It was definitely like meeting a new species of people. Suddenly, at age 19, I was thinking, Can you speak to these people? I was very, very nervous.’ She was worried about not being attractive to men or, as she puts it, ‘of not feeling like your stereotypical girl’. But it is exactly this aspect of her personality that people find attractive. It is her truth that people relate to when they watch the show’s character – on-screen Miranda is very ‘warts ’n’ all’ – or the endearing honesty and humility of the lady in interviews. She has said that, in retrospect, she realises she was ‘God knows how many stones lighter’ and that friends she was at university with have since told her that they thought she was sexy and wanted to make a move. She wishes she could stop thinking of herself negatively, but it seems a weakness she can’t rid herself of. ‘It’s such a waste of energy, I know. And I still do it now. I’m an idiot.’

  She graduated with a 2:1 in politics from Bristol by ‘pretty much winging it with what amounted to a photographic memory’. But then she reset her sights and enrolled on a postgraduate acting course at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London (ALRA) in London. She told the Sunday Times how even the tutors couldn’t overlook her appearance. In ballet classes with her teacher Betty – ‘We called her Betty Ballet, which I thought was hilarious’ – her height was an issue. ‘She used to say, “A metre apart, please, at the barre,” and, with no sense of a joke, she added, “And two metres apart if you are next to Miranda.”’

  Miranda could see the funny side the first time it was said, but, as it was mentioned every lesson, the novelty quickly wore off. It set a precedent for the attitude of casting agents in the future. ‘Nobody would cast me as a lead in a sitcom and nobody would cast me as the girlfriend or the daughter. I was 6ft 1in and not of televisual frame.’

  Miranda found some solace writing sketches at university, but, after graduating, any work she could find was on the mundane side. Her first job was cleaning student flats, what she says is the worst job she ever had: ‘One flat’s sink was blocked and they were doing the washing up in the
bath. Oh yes.’

  She went back to Hampshire to live with her parents and, as she had to cope with the alien world of growing older, life became a little trickier. ‘I was getting used to being tall. And then in my mid-twenties I ballooned in size. Then I was tall and big, and that I found difficult.’

  Miranda was struggling with agoraphobia, anxiety and panic attacks, and it didn’t help that the anti-depressants she had been prescribed added to the weight gain of some five stone. ‘It all happened after university,’ she told the Guardian. ‘I think I was just very anxious. I thought the world was a bit scary. Some people get depressed for six months and then pull themselves together. I just hid in a room and didn’t go out for two years.’

  Although university and negative comments contributed to her depression, she has described it as her natural disposition. ‘It’s just bad genes, bad luck, really. I’ll always have to force myself to see the positive, because I’m wired badly, I’d say. I’m just naturally a bit under, a bit depressed.’

  This manifested itself as agoraphobia, but, rather than a fear of open spaces, it was more people and crowds that Miranda feared. Now, Miranda loves to visit the countryside. When she had finished filming the first series of her sitcom, she went on a road trip around Wales, Cumbria and Yorkshire. ‘I love being in the middle of nowhere and looking up at the stars – it gives me this incredible feeling of peace.’

  She said that people are often surprised that she enjoys being among these vast expanses because of her former agoraphobia, ‘but the condition is nothing to do with a fear of open spaces. Agoraphobia goes hand in hand with crowds, so I’d have a panic attack in the theatre when I felt I couldn’t get out, or in a supermarket queue.’

  During one appearance on Have I Got News For You, they asked her if her agoraphobia was the reason she choose to do the sitcom Not Going Out. ‘Now that’s funny. And may I congratulate you because you are the first one to make said joke. How satisfying for us all. Oh and no, it’s not the reason.’

  But it turned out there was some pertinence to the question. ‘Although I have to say, on a more serious note, when I did still have agoraphobia, I found a theatre or a TV studio total bliss to be in – dark, soundproof, total escapism from the world.’

  It seems that some good came out of this unhappy situation: Miranda began to write. ‘I started writing comedy around that time because it was more fun inside my head than in the real world.’

  There is a theory that putting one’s problems down in words can help you overcome them. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2008, author David Lodge said, ‘I find most writing therapeutic,’ and Graham Greene famously said, ‘Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear, which is inherent in a human condition.’

  ‘The Hills Are Alive’ was Miranda’s attempt to put the situation to bed by telling her story. Broadcast in October 2006 as part of BBC Radio 4’s series Inner Voices, it was a character monologue, written with the help of her sister Alice, and was inspired by her time of suffering from agoraphobia. The description, ‘Imprisoned in a bedroom, you can only dream of going on a Sound of Music coach tour’, suggests that her sense of humour about the situation meant she had moved on to some extent.

  ‘I’ve been there and done that,’ she has said. ‘I’m not a Stephen Fry, it’s not going to be with me forever.’

  Fry is one of four million people in the UK with bipolar disorder, which has affected him throughout his life. He attempted to break the social taboo of discussing mental health with his BBC Two documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive, talking to other sufferers of the condition. He says that, when he was diagnosed at the age of 37, ‘I had a diagnosis that explains the massive highs and miserable lows I’ve lived with all my life.’

  This idea of the sad clown is one that echoes throughout comedy history. The list of comedians who have suffered from depression is a lengthy one, and includes Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Lenny Bruce and Tommy Cooper. Other sufferers of bipolar disorder who went on to be comedians include Tony Slattery, Russell Brand, Bill Oddie, Ruby Wax and Spike Milligan.

  Milligan’s co-star in The Goon Show, Peter Sellers, was probably one of the condition’s most famous sufferers. The film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (based on Roger Lewis’s book) was devoted to his struggle with his mental health. The pressure of Goon deadlines and a sick wife became too much for Milligan, as he later recounted: ‘One day I was with Peter Sellers when something inside me snapped. I tried to kill him with a potato knife. Either that or I just wanted to peel him.’

  Tony Hancock was another comic hero who was consumed by a sense of despair. He took his own life in 1968, aged just 44. Years later, Spike Milligan said that Hancock was a ‘very difficult man to get on with. He used to drink excessively. You felt sorry for him. He ended up on his own. I thought, He’s got rid of everybody else, he’s going to get rid of himself, and he did.’

  Even Miranda’s hero Eric Morecambe was prone to bouts of mild depression.

  Across the pond, outspoken comedian and broadcaster Sara Benincasa developed a one-woman show in 2009, documenting her experiences with agoraphobia and panic attacks. This is now being made into a book called Agorafabulous! to be published by William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins.

  Regarding her own experience of agoraphobia, Miranda is honest about her experience but prefers to keep it below the radar, prefacing answers to interviewers with: ‘I won’t bore you with it, because it wasn’t very nice…’

  And, unlike many of these cases, Miranda’s was a temporary condition that she has moved on from: ‘Though I’ll always be a fairly anxious person,’ she admits. ‘I have a good old cry at bad news and get rather down. Pessimism is my default setting.’

  In 1993, Miranda picked herself up and moved to Scotland – to Edinburgh. She lived there for a year, writing comedy and preparing herself for the 1994 Festival. This wasn’t cosy Hampshire at Mum and Dad’s house. It was a challenge. ‘I went to live in Edinburgh for a year and forced myself out of feeling sorry for myself. I had no heating, so that’s enough to wake you up.’

  Coming out as a comedian to her parents was a turnaround moment. She had been working as a PA in the charity sector when she told them what she really wanted to do. ‘They weren’t discouraging,’ she told the Guardian, ‘but they weren’t fully encouraging – which they are now – and that helped in a way. They just said, “Why don’t you stick with being a PA, you’re good at it,” and that made me, in a teenage way, go, “You just wait then, I’ll try and prove you all wrong.”’

  Determination combined with resilience meant that, no matter what people told her, or however few people turned up to see her, she carried on trying. ‘There must always have been a sense of “I’ve got enough to carry on”. You know, however much I’m terrified and think I look and sound ridiculous, there is a confidence that keeps me going. Every comedian has to be like that. You wouldn’t get on stage if you didn’t think that you were good.’

  She even managed to accept the way she looks. Or, at least, she found a way to make the most of her height by adopting a certain Python’s style of slapstick. ‘Anyway, look at John Cleese. Why not use those limbs if you’ve got them? If he contained himself, he wouldn’t be nearly as funny.’

  Still, she says she would like to be a little less tall. ‘I’d like to be 5ft 10in. That would be very nice, because then you can wear a heel and not look like a transvestite.’

  Of course, this is not the case. As well as old university chums, many fans have admitted to finding her very attractive. When one newspaper even named her ‘Crush of the Week’, her response to the Guardian’s Kira Cochrane was typically self-deprecating: ‘Shut up! That’s very worrying. But I can guess what they would say – something like, not the obvious choice, not the conventional choice, but for some reason C
rush of the Week.’

  Charles I, a user of Digital Spy’s, was one smitten fan. He asked his fellow discussion-board friends: ‘Does anybody else find her attractive? I think I’d like to sit on her lap.’ We should probably leave it there quoting Miranda’s fans’ fantasies, but it proves a point. Hart told Stylist magazine that, since she has become famous, men’s reaction to her has changed: ‘I was out for the first time recently and there was definitely a palpable difference in response, which was lovely, but I haven’t had time to reflect on any offers of marriage yet. I’m bound to get more…’

  Miranda has been single for three years because she’s been working so hard and hasn’t had time for a relationship. ‘I’m much keener to be with people than I used to be and I can definitely see myself sharing my space in future… perhaps finally I’ll go on a road trip with someone apart from Peggy – I’m open to offers, write in!’

  But this tongue-in-cheek invitation came with a caveat: ‘The relationship will only work if my partner understands I need the odd day on my own from time to time. I’ll be the perfect wife: “Of course, darling, please go and have a weekend with the lads at football. Please get out of the house!”’

  So who’s the perfect husband for her? She told Stylist magazine that the main thing she looks for in a man is funniness. ‘I don’t need to be the funniest in a relationship; in fact, it would be really nice to have someone entertain me.’

  In the main, Miranda has conquered her appearance complex and has put her above-average height to good use, entertaining the nation with her fabulous pratfalls. But before she got there, she had to conquer Edinburgh and the radio. It was quite a struggle for the Queen of Comedy.

  She went from contented schoolgirl, showing off in class for laughs, to disaffected twenty-something, desperate for affirmation and a career in comedy. She is a strong woman and a role model for many young women, but who are the sisters of comedy that came before her? And is she alone in her suffering?