«There is no one on earth quite so wonderful»STEPHEN FRY«As outrageously entertaining as you'd expect»Daily ExpressBAFTA-winning actor, voice of everything from Monkey to the Cadbury's Caramel Rabbit, creator of a myriad of unforgettable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, MIRIAM MARGOLYES, OBE, is the nation's favourite (and naughtiest) treasure. Now, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story — and it's well worth the wait.Find out how being conceived in an air-raid gave her curly hair; what pranks led to her being known as the naughtiest girl Oxford High School ever had; how she ended up posing nude for Augustus John as a teenager; why Bob Monkhouse was the best (male) kiss she's ever had; and what happened next after Warren Beatty asked 'Do you fuck?'From declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave to being told to be quiet by the Queen, this book is packed with brilliant, hilarious stories. With a cast list stretching from Scorsese to Streisand, a cross-dressing Leonardo di Caprio to Isaiah Berlin, *This Much Is True* is as warm and honest, as full of life and surprises, as its inimitable author
Born in Oxford, England in 1941 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, MIRIAM MARGOLYES is an award-winning veteran of the stage and screen, and an internationally acclaimed voice-artist. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award for
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by John Murray (Publishers)
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Miriam Margolyes 2021
The right of Miriam Margolyes to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: Photograph © Claire Sutton
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN 978-1-529-37991-4
John Murray (Publishers)
Carmelite House
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For Heather
and
in memory of my mother and father
Suddenly I am eighty. How can that possibly be? Eighty is OLD! Eighty means maybe five, maybe ten years left. Where did my life go? There’s much I still want to do. What have I learnt? Have I done the best I could? Have I made a difference? Those are the questions that rush at me.
I am writing this book in an attempt to make sense of my life, to take stock. It’s been a full, if chaotic, eighty years. I was born in 1941 at the darkest moment of the war; my parents were convinced that Britain was about to lose. Despite this, the Holocaust and its horrors didn’t really impinge on my childhood; it’s only later I’ve come to realise how powerfully and inescapably that shadow has become part of my life.
Growing up in the post war period, with loving parents, I skipped from moment to moment. I’ve travelled through every continent bar Antarctica, I’ve slept with a curious variety of humans. I entered a precarious profession where a short, fat, Jewish girl with no neck dared to think she could stand on a stage and be successful. I’ve completed over five hundred jobs and relished every minute of them. But have I merely skimmed the surface? Why do I still feel so unsure about things? Might a certain level of uncertainty be a good thing? Complete confidence carries smugness alongside — and I do
From the beginnings of my coherent existence, a common thread has been the ease with which I could connect with others. Latterly I’ve found the joy of using that gift to make documentaries and
I’m quite sure you picked this book up hoping I’d make you laugh. That’s what I seem to have become best known for. I lack the filter others possess and out of my potty mouth pop filthy sexual anecdotes, verbal and physical flatulence on a grand scale. I swear, I fart, I draw attention to things best left unremarked — and it seems it’s made me popular. Please don’t think I’m unaware of my duty to both entertain and shock you, but I won’t allow my book to be just dirty talk. Let me tell you the truth about myself, too.
When asked, I said I had never made an attempt to write anything down before. This is not entirely true: when I was nine, in 1950, I wrote my autobiography in a large, blue book without lines. I wish I could find it, but in one of the many moves of my life, that youthful testament disappeared. Since then, I have simply lived my life to its fullest — until 2020 trapped me in Tuscany for eight months and I finally had the time to write it. With help from my loyal friends, many of whom have known me for most of that life, I’ve been piecing things together and teasing out memories from the deepest recesses of my mind. It’s been a fascinating process.
My partner of fifty-three years, Heather, finds such spilling out of all one’s deepest, most personal thoughts and fears, excruciating. She said: ‘Now, don’t let this book be like one of your Graham Norton interviews where all you do is talk smut — it’s got to be about things that matter, Miriam.’ Heather is a serious person.
