In recent years, Holmes wrote for and appeared on The Now Show and The 99p Challenge. He won his sixth Sony Award for his work as a writer on Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive. Before their stint on Radio 2, he and Hart worked together on 2009 Unwrapped, a fictional review of the year show for BBC Two that Miranda hosted. The fake and re-edited archive footage was in a similar vein to Jon Holmes’s radio show Listen Against.
So, in 2011, the very tall lady and the not very tall man were reunited when Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie were leaving their mid-evening Radio 2 show for the new pastures of BBC 6 Music, and Jo Whiley from Radio 1 was about to take their place as a regular host. Hart and Holmes bridged the gap with three two-hour shows, for which they were joined by studio guests Stephen Fry, Will Young and David Baddiel.
The Head of Programmes at Radio 2, Lewis Carnie, told Radio Today, ‘The opportunity to pair two of the UK’s best-loved comedy talents was irresistible to us and I’m very much looking forward to hearing their shows.’
Miranda was overjoyed. ‘I am full of childish excitement to have the honour of joining the wonderful, and my favourite, Radio 2 for a few nights. Can I call myself a, what I call, disc jockey now?’
Jon, on the other hand, didn’t take things so seriously. His statement took the opportunity to gleefully spread some wild rumours: ‘Miranda and I have been conducting a clandestine affair for many years, so what better way to announce our union than by becoming broadcasting’s latest romantically linked couple after Richard and Judy, Radcliffe and Maconie, and Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz.’
One of the features on the show was a ‘getting to know you’ segment, where existing Radio 2 DJs asked Jon and Miranda questions as a sort of welcome. Jeremy Vine (whose brother, comedian Tim, appeared with Miranda in Not Going Out) asked Jon if he would like to be in Miranda and, if so, would he play the love interest. Diminutive Jon confirmed that he would like to do that, but Miranda interjected saying it would be quite hard to fit them both in a two-shot.
Die-hard Radcliffe and Maconie fans were upset at their departure. ‘Someone at Radio 2 obviously thought throwing a successful sitcom star and a Radio 6 DJ/comedian together would be the perfect radio show dreamteam to replace Radcliffe and Maconie,’ wrote Ricardo, a blogger on The Word magazine’s website. He concluded, ‘Maybe it looked better on paper.’
But many thought the show a triumph. Clare Heal, writing for the Express, said, ‘Their banter was only with each other and it felt a little like a party to which we weren’t invited. Miranda and Jon had games that the audience could get involved with, as well as a jovial chemistry with each other, Miranda’s unashamed goofiness making an excellent foil for Jon’s sarcasm.’
For the Guardian, Elisabeth Mahoney wrote that they were ‘sharp, funny and properly disgusting… an instant presenting yin-yang hit’, and made special mention of Miranda’s leftfield asides: ‘Holmes suggested that Radcliffe and Maconie are actually a pantomime cow off-air, but didn’t know who was at which end. “Jeremy Vine might know,” said Hart, quick as a flash, “because he milks them.”’
So, radio had been a good friend to Miranda during her years of stage performing, TV bit-parts and office temping. It laid the foundations for her big TV break in Miranda. She had only been able to give up temping in 2005, thanks to landing a co-starring role in a new sitcom for television called Hyperdrive. But her TV career extends further back than that.
7
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
‘I think dreams are better achieved with a fight – in retrospect of course!’
– Miranda
Miranda’s first memorable television appearance was alongside Arabella Weir in a ‘Nourishment not punishment’ Alpen advert, in which she famously ate cat food. Getting her foot in the door in TV was something of a battle, though. As well as putting herself out there at the Edinburgh Festival, Miranda was proactive, and she recalls sending ‘embarrassing letters to important people to persuade them to come and see me’.
Before her big break, Miranda was working as a temp in London to pay the bills. She was keen not to be seen as the posh girl who had it easy, so used to play down her upper-class accent. She told Dominic Maxwell in The Times: ‘I used to fear that people would think I’ve not had a problem in my life, that people would think: “Oh, Daddy’s bankrolling her.” And that wasn’t the case.’
In 2002, she was PA to the grants director of Comic Relief and once took the minutes of a meeting when its co-founder Richard Curtis was present. Seizing her opportunity, she approached him, asking, ‘I really want to be on Comic Relief, have you got any advice?’ He gave her the contact details of the casting director and was very supportive, but it was some time before Miranda would be doing ‘something funny for money’.
When Miranda appeared on Fern Britton’s Channel 4 chat show in March 2011, Fern suggested, ‘But that’s the wonderful thing about having a slow burn on a career is that you can learn so much while flying under the radar.’
Miranda agreed, saying that she ‘wouldn’t have it any other way now’. So, how did this slow burn go?
Smack the Pony offered Miranda Hart her first comic acting role on the small screen. In 2001, she appeared in three episodes as part of its third series, most famously as part of the regular video-dating sketches. These saw singletons talk to camera about themselves, hoping to inspire someone to get in touch and take them out. Miranda’s most memorable speech was this: ‘I’m very, very experienced. I’ve had men. I’ve had a lot of women. I’ve done plus-60s; done a lot of Saga holidays. I’ve done under-21s. All the in-betweens. Oh, and I’ve done some animals. I mean, to be honest, I’ve got a fanny as big as a bucket.’
Appearing in Smack the Pony was a real coup for Miranda. It was a hugely respected show within the industry, was a big success internationally and was seen as something of a showcase for Britain’s comedy actresses. It was written by and starred Doon Mackichan, Fiona Allen and Sally Phillips, with regular appearances from Sarah Alexander (Coupling), and with Darren Boyd (Kiss Me Kate) taking many of the male parts.
Other early TV cameos for Hart included the BBC legal sitcom Chambers (starring John Bird, James Fleet and Sarah Lancashire) in 2001, and, two years later, the BBC Three series This is Dom Joly. But it was in 2004 that Hart began to make more regular appearances on TV. She played Penelope, a small part in the second series of William and Mary, an ITV comedy drama starring Martin Clunes as an undertaker and Julie Graham as a midwife. She was more of a leading character in Mothers and Daughters, a black comedy written by David Conolly and Hannah Davis, and with Lynda La Plante as executive producer. It looked at the relationships of families in different situations, ‘a dilapidated North London council house, a middle-class dinner party in a Fulham mansion block and an expensive psychiatrist’s couch’. The synopsis of the show asked: ‘Drug-fuelled sex with a vicar and lustful longings for other women, are there some things a girl shouldn’t share with her mother?’
As we already know, Miranda’s first solo Edinburgh show in 2003 had impressed Abigail Wilson, a producer who worked with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. This eventually led to her appearing in the Christmas special of Saunders’ Absolutely Fabulous, broadcast on Christmas Day 2004. In this episode, ‘White Box’, Eddie is desperate to find the right interior furnishings for her new kitchen. With Patsy, who’s typically more interested in the free champagne than the furniture, she visits Terence Conran (who plays himself) and another designer called Kunz (played by Nathan Lane). Hart played his assistant, an eccentric girl called Yoko who wears an elaborate outfit and a crudely drawn-on monobrow because, as she explains, ‘I’m Japanese.’
Just a week later, she appeared alongside Saunders’ comedy partner Dawn French in a New Year’s Day special of The Vicar of Dibley. Her character, Suzie, was a small role in an episode celebrating Geraldine’s 40th birthday. The villagers buy the vicar a ticket to a speed-dating event, but when she arrives they turn out to make up most of the availab
le dates. The episode also guest-starred the gorgeous Cristian Solimeno, best known as Jason Turner in Footballers’ Wives.
This stamp of approval from two of the biggest names in British comedy did wonders for Miranda’s profile. More speed-dating laughs were on the way via a Comedy Lab pilot for Channel 4 in May 2005 called Speeding, which was based in the upstairs of a pub. A bit-part in BBC sketch show Man Stroke Woman followed, and then she proved she could embrace the darker side of comedy by appearing as Beth in the second series of Julia Davis’s Nighty Night. Miranda, speaking in 2005, said it was her favourite job to date: ‘I had a very small part but was in Devon (where it was filmed) for a couple of weeks. It was beautiful weather, amazing location, and I had the most wonderful company in Georgie Glen, Julia Davis, Mark Gatiss and Ruth Jones – we just laughed constantly.’
Nighty Night contained some extremely black humour. Davis’s character Jill is a beautician whose husband Terry is dying of cancer. In response to this news, she proceeds to abandon him, chasing after her neighbour Don (played by Angus Deayton), whose wife Cath (Rebecca Front) is suffering from MS. The British Comedy Guide website points out that episode one of the first series alone features ‘…suicide, asthma attacks, multiple sclerosis, cancer and some horrible put-downs by the monstrous Jill (who makes David Brent look like an angel, seriously she is pure evil – you’ll hate her). Don’t let this put you off though, it’s well worth watching if you can stomach the bleak premise and Jill’s painfully embarrassing behaviour.’
By the end of Nighty Night’s first series, Jill has committed mass murder, but manages to frame her new boyfriend Glen (Mark Gatiss) who gets put in a mental institution. The second series sees her chasing Don and Cathy, who have moved away and are trying to patch up their marital difficulties. The series has achieved cult status, with die-hard fans even meeting up for a Nighty Night Night, on Great Portland Street on 8 December 2010. Attendees were treated to a screening of series one, DJs and ‘A celebration of all things dark, moronic and hilarious’.
The show was produced by Baby Cow, a production company set up by Steve Coogan and Henry Normal, which also made Rob Brydon’s Marion and Geoff, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin & Stacey, Saxondale and the animated comedy I Am Not an Animal.
As well as her television appearances, Miranda developed her career by appearing in a stage play called Cruising. Written by Alecky Blythe, it ran at the Bush Theatre, London, in the summer of 2006. Miranda took the lead role, Maureen, a geriatric looking for love. All the characters are played by actors some 30 years their junior. The show’s website described the play thus: ‘After 33 blind dates, 12 cruises and one broken heart, she is still determined to find Mr Right. But when best friend Margaret beats her to the altar, Maureen has her doubts – is Margaret just on the rebound and, more importantly, will she lose her pension?’
It received great critical acclaim. Time Out, which made it a Critics’ Choice, praised its ‘gloriously idiosyncratic dialogue, which even the most skilful writer would struggle to devise’, while Metro called it ‘a heart-warming piece of theatre’.
British Theatre Guide reviewer Philip Fisher praised its innovative style: ‘All five actors, playing numerous parts in Cruising, have expensive looking Sennheiser earphones on throughout the play. Rather than broadcasting to the hard of hearing or even listening to Gnarls Barkley or Sandi Thom, they are listening to the original speakers, whose lines they are delivering, verbatim, seconds later.’
That same year, Miranda appeared in a short film called Don’t Even Think It!, written by the novelist Jasper Fforde. She plays Ginny Singleton, an upper-class lady who, along with her husband Neville, stops to pick up Boz, a hitchhiker with a certain talent. Boz is a medium who can read the thoughts of her drivers. She thinks they’re snobs, so gets her own back by revealing the secrets the couple are keeping from one another. The short was screened at at least five international film festivals and is the only filmed Jasper Fforde script to date.
When it arrived in October 2006, Jack Dee’s sitcom Lead Balloon was often seen as the UK’s answer to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. It stars Dee as Rick Spleen, a stand-up comedian grappling with life’s petty annoyances. It later transferred to BBC Two, but the first series was initially broadcast on BBC Four. The very first episode finds Spleen needing to find a christening gift for a friend’s baby, Trixiebelle, and so visits a posh shop stocking baby clothes and gifts. Miranda played the shop’s owner, Maureen. Astonished by the shop’s exorbitant prices, Rick settles for a pewter christening cup and tries to haggle with Maureen over the cost of engraving, because it costs an extra £5 for any name longer than eight characters. She insists she can’t change the policy very politely, but, as he keeps hassling her, she snaps and barks at him, ‘I won’t do it!’ Through a mixture of spite and frugality/meanness, he settles for the engraving of the shortened ‘Trixie’, but, when his partner insists he take it back to get the full name, he tries to engrave the remaining letters himself. Of course, he makes a botch job of it, and passes the blame.
As well as these high-profile parts, Miranda took on most things that came her way. This included The Everglades, a 20-minute comedy short for a planned series which was ultimately never commissioned, despite BBC Comedy asking for a half-hour script and a rehearsed reading of the script. The premise of the show was to follow the lives of people shopping and working in a South London mall called The Everglades. The cast also included Ruth Jones and James Corden, who would soon write and star in Gavin & Stacey.
Miranda’s debut film role came in the form of 2007’s 12 in a Box, written and directed by John McKenzie. The film is set in a remote country house, where a dozen people attending a school-reunion dinner are offered the chance of a million pounds each – all they have to do is stay closed off in the mansion for 96 hours.
The synopsis teases what transpires: ‘They were only 96 hours away from collecting a fortune. It was as simple as that. Then someone dropped dead – and things started to get a bit more complicated.’
Miranda plays Rachel, the fiancée of Barry, one of the 12 due to cash in a million, but they are due to marry within those designated 96 hours, and so, when she arrives and goes berserk at the suggestion of postponing the wedding, he locks her in one of the bedrooms.
Producer Bruce Windwood explained that he and the writer were aiming to return to the British film industry’s glory days. ‘We are fans of the classic Ealing Comedy movies, and felt that it was time to revisit that style of movie; a style which simply sets out to entertain.’
And entertain they did. The LA Times called it ‘a nicely calibrated romp peppered with more than a few genuinely funny moments. The cast performs with comic aplomb as McKenzie ratchets up the stakes before going for broke in the final reel. It’s jolly good fun.’ 12 in a Box went on to win Best UK Feature Film at the Los Angeles British Film Festival 2009, Best Original Screenplay at the 2009 Boston International Film Festival and the Audience Award at the 3rd Zurich Film Festival.
Miranda’s silver-screen CV also expanded with bit parts in Mitchell and Webb’s Magicians and I Want Candy, starring Tom Riley and Tom Burke. Also, in 2007, she appeared in Tim Plester’s short film World of Wrestling. She played Klondyke Kate, a wrestler who was known as ‘hell in boots’.
Meanwhile, her television career continued to thrive. She took a role in Rush Hour, not the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker martial arts romp, but a BBC Three sketch show set among the traffic of the trip to and from work. With the likes of Charlie Brooker and Adam Buxton involved, comedy fans’ hopes were high, but many believed it did not reach its potential. One user, tigers_hungry, commented on IMDb: ‘Instead of utilising the potential of the show’s set up… for sharp observational humour, the premise is reduced to little more than a gimmick through which the show defines itself against the legion of mediocre British sketch shows. I do fear that I may be judging the show too harshly, but I feel like a disappointed teacher that expected better of her pupils.’
Other voices disagreed, such as John Beresford at TV Scoop. ‘Like a cross between The Fast Show and Little Britain, Rush Hour is assured a place in the nation’s psyche, once it finds its way out of the digital backwater that BBC Three still is.’
Still, the bad reviews dominated and BBC Three decided not to recommission the show for a second series.
Miranda’s return to terrestrial TV exposure came with a small role (as a casting director) in BBC Two’s Roman’s Empire (2007), the writing debut of brothers Harry and Jack Williams. The series starred Mathew Horne as Leo, the ex of Nikki, the daughter of businessman Roman Pretty. He tries to win the family’s favour and ultimately get the girl by attempting to reveal her new boyfriend’s dodgy past.
That same year, she also got a part in Angelo’s, often considered a hugely underrated sitcom on Five, written by and starring Sharon Horgan. It got low audience ratings and the channel has stopped developing scripted comedies, so it is unlikely to return. However, critics loved it. The British Comedy Guide says of it: ‘Angelo’s is a warm, subtle comedy with the characters right at the heart of it – something many recent sitcoms have neglected… Miranda Hart as the taxi driver, Simon Farnaby as the mime artist, and Kim Wall as the unemployed Russell are our favourites – they don’t even need to speak to raise a smile – their characters’ backgrounds and mannerisms are enough alone to do this.’
Hart portrayed illegal minicab driver Shelley, who is man-desperate and who has founded a club for virgins called ‘The Promise Keepers’. She tells her clients that she is waiting for ‘the one’ to pop her cherry, but in reality she’s waiting for ‘anyone’. In an attempt at wooing, she plays romantic music when she has male passengers and even set up a blind date with one who left his wallet behind.
Writing in the Independent, Gerard Gilbert said of the show’s creator: ‘“The funniest woman you’ve never heard of” and “late starter” are two tags that have followed the Irish comedian Sharon Horgan ever since the riotously and filthily funny Pulling attracted just enough critical attention to ensure that it didn’t become the most underrated sitcom of the Noughties. (That dubious honour arguably goes to Horgan’s later Channel 5 series, Angelo’s.)’
Miranda Hart Page 7