Miranda Hart

by Sophie Johnson

  Shortly after Hart suffered a minor injury to her knee (while bending over to tie a shoelace), Stuart Husband visited Miranda’s flat for a Telegraph interview and said it told him a lot about her. ‘She values her family (multiple photos of whom are on display), friends… and enjoys defiantly lowbrow evenings in (evidenced by her DVD boxed-sets, not of The Sopranos or The Wire, but of Mistresses and Pineapple Dance Studios).’

  This seems to chime with her alter ego, but the big difference between the real and imaginary Miranda lies in their relationships with their families. In Miranda, Penny is nothing but a burden to her daughter, always pushing her to do better and saying how disappointed she is in her. It has led some to wonder how much Penny is like Hart’s real mum, D. Miranda reassured, ‘They’re not dissimilar in looks, actually, but yeah, they’re not alike character-wise.’

  D has never pushed Miranda about getting married or having children. In fact, Miranda says that the only similarity between her real mum and Penny is their constant use of the phrase ‘such fun’. Hart recalled, ‘I definitely had my ear to the ground when my mother had her friends round: “Oh, we must have a quiche! Such fun!” I love that language.’

  Even in the single episode he appears in, Miranda’s sitcom dad, Charles, steals a line from Captain David Hart Dyke. ‘There’s a line my dad always says,’ Miranda revealed. “I’m not excited yet but I’m sure it’ll hit me any minute…”’

  Miranda has bonded well with Patricia Hodge, and even refers to her as ‘Mum Two’. When Hart appeared on a special version of The Generation Game in David Walliams’ charity panel-show marathon 24 Hour Panel People in March 2011, she revealed that her on-screen mum even signs her text messages with it.

  For one red-button extra, Miranda interviewed both Hodge and her real mother. D revealed that people always think that Penny’s character is based on her. ‘It doesn’t upset me, but it is very hard to get across to some people that it isn’t based on me, and they can’t actually believe it – [Miranda] must have got the idea from somewhere and therefore it must be me.’ Nevertheless, D admitted that there are aspects of Penny that she would quite like to have: ‘I think she’s got a great sense of fun and does rather surprising things unexpectedly.’

  In an attempt to use her as some sort of reliable witness, Miranda asked D if she felt she had used a lot of her own real-life character for the fictional Miranda. D responded, ‘Not really, no. Although you were quite accident prone, you did trip over things.’

  Miranda was delighted – a note from her mum! ‘I’m so glad you said it,’ she grinned. ‘I spend a lot of time defending myself and going “sitcom me is not the real me” so I’m delighted that you’ve said it’s not.’

  Miranda’s sitcom family members cause her nothing but strife and this is established from the very beginning of the show in the introductory monologue to camera: ‘Previously in my life, my mother tried to marry me off…’ Even the show’s title sequence stresses her pressurised background, as co-writer James Cary has pointed out: ‘Miranda has a lovely, cheerful theme… but Miranda has pictures of her growing up and we begin the theme of family embarrassment and we’re already beginning to invest in her emotionally.’

  Another reason so many people love the character of sitcom Miranda – and something, to an extent, she has in common with the lady who created her – is her fabulous pratfalling. Miranda does her best to convince people that this trait is exclusive to the sitcom character but – sorry, Miranda – your mum’s already told us you were very much like that.

  Recent evidence came when Hart appeared on Alan Carr’s Chatty Man on 7 February 2011, and viewers were treated to a real-life stumble. As she entered the studio to applause, she lost her footing and fell down the stairs. Carr exclaimed, ‘You are so clumsy, what’s the matter with you, woman?’

  Highly embarrassed, Hart replied, ‘I spend my life saying I’m nothing like the sitcom character… I just fell down the stairs!’

  Once the interview was under way, Carr didn’t let her forget what happened. She was explaining why she wrote herself a part which is the brunt of such cruel comments. ‘I really do feel that I’m playing a character, so I don’t feel I’m writing it about me, weirdly. Which is, obviously, slightly odd because we look very alike,’

  Totally deadpan, Carr reminded her: ‘Yes… and you’ve just fallen down the stairs as you came on.’

  Busted. Then again, sitcom Miranda displays exaggerated clumsiness. Real-life Miranda does not tumble over any cardboard board box in her path, nor does she fall over when a man enters the room; nor does she knock over a hat stand every time she leaves a room. Occasionally, though, just occasionally, she falls down studio stairs when on television.

  What drags the sitcom’s slapstick into the present day are the embarrassing social situations – something we all have to cope with. While some of the incidents in the show were completely fictional, many were drawn from Hart’s real-life experience, and sometimes ridiculous things happened to her she thought too unbelievable for the sitcom. The most memorable example from the show is near the beginning of the very first episode – when a delivery man calls her ‘Sir’. This has happened to Miranda but, as she has reassured, ‘Luckily, in real life, they look at me and say “Sorry, Madam”, but obviously in the sitcom he looked at me and carried on calling me sir, but that didn’t happen in real life.’ Some writers have criticised the show for its seemingly implausible storylines, but, as Miranda emphasised on Twitter, some of them really happened to her: ‘Just got called sir in a shop. Yes, happens. Journos said was ridiculous to have that happen in a sitcom. My life too sitcom for a sitcom.’ (It’s worth noting that this tweet was sent on 20 August 2010, nearly a year after series one was broadcast, so the accusation had clearly been made before.)

  Other situations drawn from Hart’s real life appeared in series one’s finale, ‘Dog’. She told the regular panel on TV’s Loose Women of actually ‘getting locked in a park when it went dark and then not being able to fit through. In the real-life version there was a hedge and a gatepost and I tried to fit through and I couldn’t. So I had to remove my jumper and sort of scrape through. In the sitcom version, obviously I got stuck just in a bra.’

  So these things do happen to Hart, but they make up such a small percentage of the show. She builds on them, exaggerates them and creates more disastrous situations for this heightened version of herself. Yet she is still honest enough with interviewers to offer them a nugget of awkwardness such as this: ‘I did go to the loo just now and walk into the men’s by mistake. So I am still a bit of an idiot. But then I’m hoping, aren’t we all?’

  And this is perhaps the key to Miranda’s appeal. In Seinfeld, Subjectivity, and Sartre, author Jennifer McMahon writes, ‘Our favourite fictional characters and events are generally the ones who impress us with their realness. Successful fictions resonate with us. They tell us something about reality. Through the characters and situations they present, works of fiction offer us insight about human nature, ourselves, or our times.’

  This may go some way to explain why shows featuring comedians playing exaggerated versions of themselves are so popular. Tony Hancock started the trend in Britain with Hancock’s Half Hour, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, in which Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock lived in a rundown part of East Cheam. It started on the radio in 1954, co-starring Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams before transferring to television in 1956. Hattie Jacques also co-starred with Eric Sykes in Sykes, about an immature clumsy man who lived with his unmarried twin sister. Its run on the BBC from 1960 to 1979 was only brought to an end with Jacques’ untimely death in 1980 of a heart attack.

  The format of a star playing a version of themselves is especially big in America, perhaps because of the huge celebrity status many of its comedians hold. One of the earliest stars was Lucille Ball, who was the star of a number of eponymous sitcoms – I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Here’s Lucy a
nd Life With Lucy. She worked for most of her life, first acting in the 1930s and still making films right into the 1970s. Other female American performers with their own show include Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres and Cybill Shepherd. Roseanne’s character, like Miranda’s, started out as a stand-up comedy routine. But the series ran for nine years and became the most watched television show in the US from 1989 to 1990, according to the Nielsen ratings. Ellen is a particularly interesting example of the formula, because the comedian’s life informed what happened in the show. In 1997, DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly afterwards in her sitcom, DeGeneres’ character Ellen Morgan told her therapist (played by Winfrey in a special cameo appearance) that she was gay.

  It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was notable for breaking down the fourth wall, allowing characters to address the audience. It starred the comedian Garry Shandling as himself – a neurotic stand-up, but one who knows he is a sitcom character. Even the supporting characters know they are in a show and many of the storylines involved the studio audience. Shandling’s run of success continued with The Larry Sanders Show, where he played a talk-show host and celebrities played versions of themselves – much like in Ricky Gervais’s subsequent series Extras. Having formerly hosted The Tonight Show, Shandling had experience to inform his performance. The Larry Sanders Show ran from 1992 to 1998 on HBO and was ranked in numerous lists as one of the best TV shows of all time.

  One of the best-known and most popular eponymous sitcoms, perhaps ever, is Seinfeld. In the show, its star – comedian Jerry Seinfeld – even pitches it to commissioners as ‘a show about nothing’. It was created by Seinfeld and Larry David and was set in Manhattan, following the chaotic lives of Jerry and his friends George Costanza, Elaine Benes and Cosmo Kramer. Larry David went on to make his own show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. He lives with his wife Cheryl and burdens his manager Jeff with the problems of his life – often having to apologise for offending or annoying people in social situations.

  Skipping forward to more recent US sitcoms, there is Two and a Half Men, where the lead character Charlie Harper is largely based on Charlie Sheen’s reputation as a womaniser and hedonist. He lives in his beachfront house in Malibu with his uptight brother Alan, and Alan’s idle son Jake. Meanwhile, the provocative comedian Sarah Silverman played a fictionalised version of herself in The Sarah Silverman Program. Her character is an unemployed woman who spends her time managing to insult everyone around her. Many, though, preferred Silverman’s stand-up work, and the show was cancelled after three seasons.

  Still running, however, is Louie, a comedy series on FX starring the American stand-up Louis CK. The Emmy-award winning comic writes, directs, edits and stars in the show – it features his stand-up sets and sketches inspired by things that have happened in his life. But arguably the biggest star vehicle in US comedy at the moment is 30 Rock. It stars Tina Fey as Liz Lemon and is based on her experience working on Saturday Night Live.

  The glut of American shows of this nature inspired British comedians to do the same. In 1992, Sean’s Show, starring Sean Hughes and shown by Channel 4, was similar in style to It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. It was set in his home and used devices to break down the fourth wall such as addressing the audience and walking through the set to get to other locations. It was nominated for Best Sitcom at the 1992 British Comedy Awards and he later had a series of programmes called Sean’s Shorts before becoming a team captain on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Other comedians followed suit with their own shows – I, Lovett starring Norman Lovett (best known as Holly from Red Dwarf); Baddiel’s Syndrome where David Baddiel plays an architect who regularly sees his therapist (played by Stephen Fry); and So What Now?, a slapstick-fuelled comedy starring Lee Evans as himself.

  A recent success of the genre is Lead Balloon, where Jack Dee plays a disgruntled, cynical comedian called Rick Spleen. Comparisons have been made with Curb Your Enthusiasm, largely because of the way most of the episodes see the comedian plagued with petty arguments and social embarrassments. As already noted, Miranda Hart played one such annoying character in Spleen’s life, when she refused to negotiate on the price of a christening gift.

  When comedians play versions of themselves, they can alter the public’s perception of them. They have the creative control to rewrite themselves to how they want to be seen. In most cases, though, comedians don’t take advantage of this as it’s funnier to be ruder, louder, sillier or, in Miranda’s case, more awkward versions of themselves.

  Miranda’s character is so real that it makes her appealing, as we can see a little of ourselves in her. We can laugh with her at the things we identify in ourselves or those around us, or we can laugh at her in the more ridiculous, surreal moments. Even Miranda can laugh at the character, as she has enough distance that it doesn’t upset her, but it is based on how she was in the past: ‘Now I’m socially competent, but in my twenties I was as scared as that sitcom character. In a comedy way I can be big, I can embrace my height, I can be posh, I can fall over, make a tit of myself socially, and it’s all fine.’

  Clare Balding, a fellow Downe House alumnus, recognises this trait: ‘I think there is a part of all of us that is insecure, goofy and socially inept, and so we feel affection for and attachment to Miranda, the hapless heroine.’

  This was proved by Miranda’s legion of fans when the BBC blog asked for their ‘real-life cringeworthy moments’ based on this one from Miranda: ‘I was out shopping yesterday when a gorgeous shop assistant asked me if I needed any help. As I turned around I felt a sneeze coming on. When nothing came out I panicked and persisted to scrunch up my face every few seconds, as if having a facial twitch was less embarrassing than sneezing. And OBVIOUSLY, as I was mid one facial scrunch, my ex walked past.’

  My own personal favourite response came from Jess, who said, ‘Being hated by your P.E. teacher can be very embarrassing, as I found out last week, when I was told to come up to the front of the class, and demonstrate how to serve in badminton, I swung the racquet, and hit myself in the face, causing my glasses to fall off, everyone thought it was hilarious, even the teacher… no wonder I hate P.E.’

  More replies to Miranda’s request came through via Twitter. Here is a stonker from @JonnyRiverhorse: ‘Cough outrage Tuesday when, in a vain attempt to get to the corridor, I overstrained and broke wind with frightful venom!’

  These are just two examples of the many answers that show Miranda is not alone in flirting with social awkwardness. Recognising our own everyday behaviour through comedy can also come from stand-up comedy acts. Just as we shout ‘You do that!’ to our loved ones when Michael McIntyre describes some aspect of human behaviour through observational comedy, so we watch Miranda and think to ourselves (though perhaps few would admit it out loud), ‘I do that too!’

  Miranda is proud of how she has turned out and wouldn’t change anything about her nature. ‘I’m sometimes hideously embarrassed at social occasions for being so ill-informed, especially because a lot of comedians are clever people… But I’m pleased about it, too, in many ways; it means I’ve been able to hold on to a kind of innocence.’

  She takes the punch so that we can laugh without having to admit we do it too. ‘No one goes, “You won’t believe what I did yesterday,” but I think that happens to everyone. I see my role as being the friend you can laugh at and think, Well, at least I’m not as bad as her!’

  Her looks to camera only endear her to the audience further – we’re in on the joke, and she’s confessing to us. Writing in The Stage, Mark Wright pointed out, ‘Crucially, we like her in a way we don’t like David Brent. We sympathise with her, we want her to succeed, and we laugh – both with and at her.’

  When Kira Cochrane went to interview Hart for the Guardian, she discovered: ‘Every woman I have told about this interview has almost swooned, before wondering aloud how much Hart resembles the character she plays. I wonder too, and in the early minutes of our interview it seems simple. Hart is warm, fri
endly, quietly funny – like a much lower-key, much more grown-up version of her screen persona.’

  It’s not surprising that the sitcom character attracts men. Hart wrote on her BBC blog how, in episode three of the second series, she had to convince people that it is realistic that three different men would try it on with Miranda. ‘I have to go, “I think Miranda has enough charm for him to be interested.” And it all gets a little surreal and awkward!’

  She went on to imagine that fiction might become fact. ‘Hopefully, the three suitors might be prophetic in my real life – that would be nice. Well, I hear George Clooney is still single for one, and I’ve always had a penchant for Tennis champ Goran Ivanisevic, if anyone knows him…’

  Three might be asking for two too many, but there is a certain someone in the show who seems to have taken a shine to Miranda: her knight in shining RAF cadet uniform – Gary Preston.

  14

  THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  ‘It’s nice to be involved in something like this – I don’t think I’ve ever had this much attention from people in the streets as I do since I did Miranda!’

  – Tom Ellis

  Oh, Gary. Poor Miranda has had a crush on him for years, one which has only intensified. But it never quite seems to work out for the two of them. When he becomes the chef at Conky’s Grill, the bistro next door to Miranda’s joke shop, she can’t get away from him and becomes obsessed.

  Being so tall, Hart found it tricky to find the right actor. Tom Ellis is 6ft 3in, two inches taller than Miranda. But this was not the only reason he got the part, Miranda says it is ‘because he’s marvellous, obviously’.

  Sorry, ladies, but let’s just get one thing out of the way: Tom Ellis is not available. He is married to Tamzin Outhwaite and they make a great couple. When they won the Christmas edition of the ITV celebrity game show All-Star Mr & Mrs, on 20 December 2008, they showed they knew each other better than the other couples on that edition: Ronan Keating and his wife Yvonne, and Terry Venables and wife Yvette.