Philip’s actions inspired her to go one step further and stick up for others like herself. He remembers Sarah coming home one day grinning from ear to ear. ‘I remember her telling me that the teacher had asked her to pick the netball team, and she picked everyone who’d never been picked before – the fat ones, skinny ones, short-sighted ones… She said: “Dad, we got hammered 26 nil, but it was the best day of our lives.”’
When she grew up Sarah wanted to be either a pixie or a stripper – because she thought they’d both be glamorous dancing roles. But her first real ambition was to be a vet, because of her love for animals. As a child she nicknamed herself ‘The Hamster Squeezer’, because she had a tendency to hug her pets that little bit too hard.
In her teens she went for work experience at a veterinary hospital, where she genuinely thought she would spend her time handing out medicine to sick pets. ‘It was horrific,’ she has since said. ‘I thought you just stroked rabbits, you know, gave them tablets. Then they said, “Do you want to sit in on some operations?”’
Watching someone’s treasured pet go under the surgeon’s knife put paid to Sarah’s veterinary ambitions, as the reality of a vet’s job was revealed in all its gory glory.
Sarah was – in her own words – a late developer, and boys weren’t a big part of her teenage years. ‘I liked boys,’ she told the Scotland Herald in 2010. ‘But they didn’t really like me. And the boys who did like me, I didn’t like. One boy bit off his wart and showed me it. Somebody leaned over and said: “He loves you”. That’s apparently why he did it. It had an impact. I’m not sure it was the impact he was looking for.’
And Sarah did her best to throw off any advances that did come her way. ‘I’d get asked out for drinks but I thought if a boy buys you a drink you had to have sex with him and I wasn’t going to do that, so I made bloody sure I had a drink of my own,’ she explains. ‘I had a slightly ice maiden quality, which I liked, because I don’t think you ever meet anybody you’re truly meant to be with in a lairy nightclub when everyone’s hammered, you can’t hear what anybody’s saying and the only thing you’ve got in common is you’re both in the same location.’
It was a wise observation for one so young, but it did mean that her experience of dating was limited – a fact that would bring her heartache in the years to come.
She recalls one disastrous occasion when she brought a boyfriend home to meet the family. The story she tells about that time is teeming with exactly the kind of black comedy that Sarah insists comes from her parents.
‘My mam has a picture of Marilyn Monroe dated 1953, and – as if it’s the most normal thing to say in this situation – she turns to him and says, “That’s the year I got polio.”’
The family actually celebrated that anniversary in 2003, with a cake with ‘50’ piped on it. Confused diners at the restaurant they were in thought it was her mum’s 50th birthday. As Millican herself says: ‘And she wonders where I get my dark humour from…’
In an attempt to bring her shy daughter out of her shell, Sarah’s mother got her a Saturday job at the local WH Smith, where she carried out her duties as diligently as her schoolwork. Blossoming into a creative and intelligent woman, Sarah wanted to go to university, but knew that her family’s finances wouldn’t stretch to such a big expense.
When the strikes were over, Philip had gone back to work at the mines, but the family had continued to struggle financially. Millican didn’t complain. ‘I knew that the only way they could afford for me to go was if I stayed at home, and I knew part of university was to make beans on toast in a bedsit and have parties. My dad was working seven days a week and I didn’t want to put any more pressure on him.’
Sarah saw her family as a close-knit team, and as part of this special group there was no room for selfishness. If something that she wanted would make life difficult for the rest of her family, then she would simply stop wanting it.
From the tender age of 15 Sarah knew that she wanted to work in the media in some way. When someone unhelpfully pointed out that she needed a degree for that kind of career, she just ignored them. So after her A levels, Sarah did a course in film and television production as a way of keeping up her creative interests – but with no thought of putting herself in front of the camera. She tried to get into television production in nearby Newcastle, but there were few jobs, so she was unsuccessful. Then followed a stream of unfulfilling roles in jobs that couldn’t even begin to challenge the clever comic-to-be.
She worked in a call centre, and then as a producer for audio books. She is still amused by the title of one Mills and Boon book she recorded in the course of her work: Once Upon A Mattress.
‘It seemed to happen that we always read sex scenes on a Sunday morning,’ she has explained. ‘Which seemed so wrong in so many ways.’
When she turned 18, Sarah found work in a local cinema, with people she had never met before. It was a fresh start for the once shy girl, who suddenly found herself popular. She was astonished by how many people liked her and is remembered by her former colleagues as a feisty and funny character.
She continued to fill her spare time with creative projects, taking several night classes each week in subjects like creative writing and film editing. She regularly wrote a film column for her local paper, and made numerous short films with her new friends.
Her subject matter always had a funny angle to it, because that was what she enjoyed. It was obvious that Sarah was bursting with creativity and needed an outlet…
CHAPTER 2
Life Begins At 29
‘Can you imagine if he hadn’t left me? I’d still be in a job I hated, watching telly in a damp flat. I had to go really low to come back up.’
When she turned 21, Sarah was still living at home and working in the local cinema. But her spare time was filled to the brim with creative exploits and her ambition was raging.
She wrote plays and poems, edited short films and had even had one of her half-hour plays performed at Newcastle’s Live Theatre.
She didn’t know exactly what direction she wanted her future to take, but she knew that writing made her feel as if she was going somewhere. It was also an outlet for her vast intellect. In defiance at not being able to go to university, she was giving herself the kind of higher education she craved.
Leaving her school days – and those soul-crushing bullies – behind, she had blossomed into a feisty young woman with numerous friends and talents.
It was at this youthful peak that she met her husband-to-be, Andrew. A colleague at the cinema, he was first a friend, then a loving boyfriend, and a mere two weeks later, Sarah’s fiancé. It was, as she herself admits, a whirlwind romance. ‘He was my first love, I suppose,’ she explained in a recent interview. ‘I worked with him. He was funny.’
In her youth, Sarah had a very romantic view of love. She didn’t really understand one-night stands and believed that love was for life. Having grown up in such a close family, she had seen her mother and father’s strong marriage weather numerous storms and based her own relationship desires on their dedicated devotion.
She was limited in her dating experience and although she’d had boyfriends before, it was the first time she had really been part of a couple. She loved being part of something special.
Having only really just set out on her journey to self-discovery, with Andrew she found herself easily defined – as a wife. ‘I was under the impression that once you met someone that’s it done, that’s sorted,’ she told The Herald in 2010. ‘That’s the love life sorted. Let’s concentrate on my career. So when I met my ex-husband, that’s how I felt.’
Sarah always participates with her audience when she performs her stand-up shows – and regularly asks them personal and probing questions. One of her favourite things to ask on stage is, how do you know when it’s love? ‘You never know what you’re going to hear and it’s always unpredictable and funny,’ she told The Liverpool Post, early in 2013.
Over the
years, the answers have been varied. During one show, one woman said: ‘A kiss before you go to bed…’ Her husband responded to the question by saying: ‘If she hasn’t changed the locks…’ Sarah told the couple, who revealed they’d been married for 30 years, that she loved the power balance between them. She quipped: ‘She just wants a kiss – you’re worried you’re never gonna see her again, or any of your CDs.’
One young man sweetly said of his girlfriend of three months: ‘I miss her when she’s not here…’ Sarah’s response was: ‘Aw, I can’t take the piss out of that – I really want to but I can’t.’
Others answered: ‘leaving the toilet door open’, ‘butterflies in your tummy’, ‘flowers’ and ‘presents’, to which Sarah responded: ‘Money-grabbing whore!’ One lad even shouted out ‘depression’, to which she replied: ‘You’re single, are you? You must be happy then…’
But for Sarah, it was enough just to be in the cosy world of coupledom, and after her wedding in 1997, she quickly settled down to married life. Moving out of her parents’ home and into a small flat with her new husband, Sarah was content. ‘She loved being married and she loved her little home,’ her dad Philip recalled in an interview in 2011.
Andrew was supportive of her writing talents and Sarah has always been keen to point out that he wasn’t oppressive or in any way a ‘bad’ husband. But whereas before she would spend her evenings and weekends scribbling away at some play or another, suddenly she had a new way of occupying her time – spending it with the man she loved. ‘He wasn’t all “do the dishes, woman”, but I was like – “I’d rather play out with you”,’ she has explained.
But the comfortable routines of marriage eventually took its toll on both Sarah’s ambition, and her self-image. She started working at the local job centre and spent her spare time watching the telly and cosying up with her husband.
Sarah spent her working days helping a steady stream of jobseekers to find work. Some parts of the role she found she very much enjoyed – boosting people’s confidence and putting them back on the right path. She enjoyed seeing them grow from being, as she describes it, ‘quite broken’, to getting a job and being back on their feet.
But overall, for Sarah, who admits she’s very sensitive under her sweary exterior, it was tough being surrounded by so much fear and sadness.
She would often come home crying, and worried that she would one day become hardened to the work. ‘I used to say, “I’m going to write my way out of this shithole”,’ she said in a 2011 interview with The Observer. ‘And I didn’t mean so much the place I was living or working, just the job I had. I never felt fulfilled, so that’s why I wrote, to get that out of my system.’
But, as the years of married life passed, she stopped writing altogether. She said later: ‘I just stopped doing it for a bit while I carried on living, having a job and being married and all those sorts of things.’
Slowly her feistiness disappeared, and she became quiet and almost mouse-like again. But she liked being married and was content with the lifestyle she had. For her, the seven married years passed by very happily. She wasn’t looking for adventure or thrills – she truly believed she had everything she needed.
The couple bought two cats, and Sarah thought her life was complete – even if somewhere deep down, she knew something was lacking… ‘I was too quiet, too meek and mild,’ she has since said. ‘I’d go out with my sister and her friends but I’d make them go to an Italian and I’d have a margherita pizza. Maybe potato skins as a starter if I was feeling posh.’
Together the couple planned out their future, right down to their retirement plans. Sarah hated her job, but she was counting down to the time when they would both finish their working lives and could just be together, unfettered by responsibility. In reality, she was coasting. But it was only with hindsight that she could see her twenties for what they really were: a life on hold. And sadly that hindsight would come about very painfully.
After seven years, Sarah was used to her married life and still loved her husband dearly. But without her even noticing, the couple were growing apart. One day, without a word of warning, Andrew finally told her the truth: he wasn’t in love with her any more.
There was no one else, but he wanted something more from his life and Sarah wasn’t making him happy any more. ‘I wasn’t expecting it at all,’ she recalls. ‘It came quite out of the blue. And it was emotionally shattering.’
That day was Mothering Sunday, 2004.
As the rest of the country was sleeping soundly, in her small, damp Newcastle flat, Sarah’s world was ending. At 2am, Philip received the most heartbreaking phone call of his life. His daughter was sobbing in the street, wandering listlessly outside her once happy home. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Can I come home?’
‘Anytime you like darling,’ he replied. ‘You’ve always got a home here.’
Safe in the bosom of her family, she fell apart.
Her feelings during that time have been much documented, both as part of her stand-up routines and in countless interviews with national newspapers.
‘We had plans for the rest of our lives and it’s just like somebody has rubbed everything out,’ she told one newspaper. ‘I was 29 and I had thought my marriage was fine,’ she told another. ‘So it was an odd time because I’d never been properly broken-hearted before and for a while I didn’t want to do anything except cry my eyes out all day.’
For a long time, that’s all she did.
Being the ultimate ‘home-girl’, Sarah felt she’d had everything ripped out from underneath her. After all, she’s a woman who still takes a photo from the view of her sofa away on tour with her, and still likes nothing better than to curl up on the sofa, with a blanket across her feet. But now her home was a place of sadness.
‘I bullied him into going to Relate, where I paid £70 for a man to tell us he could do nothing for us. They were the most expensive tissues I’ve ever snotted into,’ she recounted on a Radio 4 show in 2008.
Despite her husband’s devastating admission, the couple had to remain living together until they could sell the flat that they had once planned to make their family home. Now estranged from her husband, Sarah couldn’t bear the thought of going back each night after work. So she turned to a once familiar outlet to occupy her time – writing.
Searching around for something suitable, she enrolled in a new writer programme at her local theatre. ‘I would go there straight after work. It got so the staff knew my name. They kind of saved me in a way.’
Flexing her writing muscles once more, the next few months were a mixture of pain and exhilaration. Some days her life felt utterly broken and she thought she would never recover. On others she felt alive again, and free to do as she pleased. ‘I had what I call my She-Ra moments,’ she has often explained, referencing the popular eighties cartoon figure – a symbol for girl power long before The Spice Girls existed.
‘If somebody said, “Climb that mountain”, I would go, “Well you’ll have to get us the right shoes but I could probably do that.” I’d never felt like that before. I had only ever had the middle ground – and to go from so low to so high was exhilarating.’ She cut her long hair soon afterwards, an act that many people associate with a break-up.
Sarah stored up her painful memories of that time and retreated into the comfort of her family’s arms, as she tried to make sense of what was happening to her life. The house went on the market and eventually sold. Finally the day came when she and her husband had to say their last goodbyes. Packing up the last of her things into a small box, she handed over their cats and shut the door on her once cosy life.
Sarah would have loved to take the pets with her, but her parents were allergic, and it was to their house that she was now headed.
As she walked away, she was understandably reflective. She had lost her husband, home and feline family and was moving back in with her parents, aged nearly 30. She wandered through the park near their home, crying yet more exhaus
ting tears. Then her phone rang and the simple conversation that followed would prove to be the catalyst for a career change that would soon transform her life.
CHAPTER 3
Laughter As Therapy
‘Stand-up became my therapy, where I felt valued. The idea of making strangers laugh… it was a euphoric sensation.’
Linda Smith was a waspish and beguiling stand-up comic, who died in 2006 after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. Voted the Wittiest Living Person by BBC Radio 4 in 2004, Linda’s extremely popular style was based around deadpan diatribes about every day irritations – much like Sarah’s would be.
Her earliest stand-up appearances were benefit concerts in the 1980s, staged in solidarity with the striking British miners. She was a lifelong socialist, with a no-nonsense attitude.
Sarah Millican had never been to a stand-up comedy night, but she did enjoy watching comedians at the theatre. One of those comedians was Linda Smith, and it’s easy to see how the late comic had a huge influence on Sarah’s style.
There are other parallels to be drawn between the two. When Linda died, her fans were shocked. She had kept her illness a secret, because she didn’t want to be thought of as a victim. Instead she carried on performing and appearing on television, overcoming her fear and suffering – and using comedy as a coping mechanism.
Sarah also used comedy as a coping mechanism, and she used the pain of her divorce as a springboard to success. She took her overwhelming sadness and used other people’s laughter to beat it into submission.
The night Sarah and Andrew sold their home, they walked out of the flat in totally different directions, both metaphorically and physically. And bizarrely, on that lonely last walk through the park from her flat, it was Linda Smith who inspired her to begin the long and difficult process of rebuilding her life – though Linda herself would sadly never know.
Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy Page 2