Patricia Hodge, Miranda Hart and her real-life mother: What happened when they met | Daily Mail Online comments Everywhere Patricia Hodge goes, people quote her giddy catchphrase – ‘Such fun!’ – at her. It comes from her role as Miranda Hart’s pushy and downright embarrassing mother, Penny, in the eponymous BBC2 sitcom – a runaway hit that has triumphed at the British Comedy Awards and is due to return for a third series later this year. ‘It makes me smile,’ says Patricia. ‘Except when they get it wrong and say, “What fun!” Now that’s irritating. I want to stop them and say, “No, it’s such fun! But I don’t really mind, because it’s all rather wonderful for me. To be able to make people laugh is like finding a bar of 24-carat gold at the end of the rainbow.’ Not many serious actresses with a CV like Patricia’s – who had cornered the market in playing upper-class ice-maidens – find themselves becoming a cult comedy figure at the age of 65.

She’s worked with our biggest knighted theatre directors – Peter Hall, Nicholas Hytner and Trevor Nunn – and is about to open in a classic comedy, Dandy Dick. Such fun! Patricia with Miranda on the set of the sitcom where she plays her embarrassing mother, Penny The show is in Brighton at the start of an eight-week tour and there are plans to transfer to London’s West End later this year. Then there’s her formidable list of TV dramas, ranging from doomed romantic novelist Mary Fisher in The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil and the title role in Jemima Shore Investigates, to young barrister Phyllida Erskine-Brown in John Mortimer’s Rumpole Of The Bailey. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share But it’s as the eccentric Penny Hart, loosely based on Miranda’s real mother, Dee Hart-Dyke (‘the catchphrase is hers, and some of the eccentricities, but, unlike Penny, she’s definitely never wanted to marry me off or been disappointed in me,’ Miranda has said) that Patricia has found herself elevated to national treasure status.

She fell for the 6ft 1in comedienne’s self-deprecating scripts, which she says made her laugh out loud, when the show was a fledgling comedy on Radio 2. Since the show transferred to television in 2009, Patricia says the most difficult thing has been keeping a straight face on set. ‘There have been appalling moments when we’ve had to stop recording because we’re all so convulsed in giggles none of us can utter a line. You have to crash through finding it funny yourself because it’s hard work making people laugh. Humour’s a very serious business.’ There’s no escaping the comparisons between Patricia and Penny, though. When the cast went out for afternoon tea at a fashionable London restaurant to celebrate Miranda’s birthday, all conversation stopped when Patricia picked up the teapot. ‘We wanted to see whether she did it the correct way – tea first, milk second – just as my TV mum would,’ recalled Miranda.

‘Then, when the scones arrived, everyone held their breath to see if she put the jam or the cream on first.’ Nervous meeting: When the actress met Miranda's real mother, Dee, right, on whom her character was based Patricia herself was blissfully unaware she was being watched. ‘I just did things the way I always do them,’ she insists. Refreshment, it seems, is important to the Miranda team. After the British Comedy Awards they all went back to Miranda’s place – ‘and toasted ourselves with cups of tea and chocolate creme eggs.’ Patricia is a huge fan of Miranda Hart. Even on the radio she was in awe of the magic she worked on the show’s studio audience ‘without all the physical stuff she does on TV’. Patricia reveals it was doing the role on radio that she learnt to ‘go with the madness of it all’. And on TV, she says, ‘It’s become like a rock concert with queues of people trying to get into the recordings. As soon as Miranda appears, they go mental. People fall off their seats laughing, so we have to stop filming. One woman became hysterical – almost ill with laughter.

They had to ask her to keep it down a bit so we could carry on.’ Much has been made of the physical resemblance between Miranda’s real-life posh mum and Patricia, who were once interviewed together by Miranda on TV. Patricia says she was a bit nervous meeting the real-life figure, but Dee herself was even more daunted. ‘Actually, she is a lovely woman. She’s modest, charming and not at all like I portray her. Apart from saying “Such fun!” and getting inordinately excited about Christmas, of course.’ The nation was nearly denied the pleasure of seeing Patricia act. She initially wanted to be a ballet dancer but then, cast in a school play at 15 and thrilled by seeing Where The Rainbow Ends on the London stage, decided she wanted to be an actress instead. Her parents Eric and Marion ran Grimsby’s smart Royal Hotel near the port gates. With her Dandy Dick co-star Nicholas Le Prevost: The play is on tour with plans for a West End transfer ‘Every morning I’d be woken at 6am by the sound of the dockers’ clogs as they trudged past. After work, they’d come into the bar for a beer and sometimes there’d be terrible fights.

Upstairs in the cocktail lounge, though, we’d get celebrities like Rolf Harris and Violet Carson [Coronation Street’s Ena Sharples]. And once Paul Jones [of the 60s band Manfred Mann] sat my sister on his knee.’ After boarding school, Patricia worked in a fish finger factory and later in a shoe shop in London’s Bond Street. ‘If a customer asked for a shoe size we didn’t have, we had to get a bigger size and hide a foam insole under the proper insole so it fitted.’ She qualified as a primary school teacher but the stage still beckoned and at 22 she took drama lessons. Her big break came in a play called Happy Yellow. One night playwright John Mortimer came in and decided she’d be perfect for Rumpole Of The Bailey. The series ran from 1978 to 1992 and made her famous. Then, in 2009, by then married to music publisher Peter Owen and with two teenage sons, she was asked to take her clothes off on stage, in Calendar Girls. ‘I had initial reservations, but we worked out a way of doing it that kept everyone within their comfort zone,’ she recalls.

There’s definitely no nudity in her new play, Dandy Dick. The play co-stars Nicholas Le Prevost as a country vicar, the Very Reverend Augustin Jedd, a pillar of Victorian respectability whose promise to contribute £1,000 to the renovation of the church steeple – together with a couple of spendthrift daughters – has left him in dire straits. Patricia steps in as his estranged sister Georgiana who, despite his religious distaste for gambling, encourages him to put his money on a horse, Dandy Dick. Mayhem ensues with romantic intrigue, mistaken identity and a runaway horse, and the play is packed with what Patricia calls ‘joyful characters with thoroughly recognisable frailties.’ Written in 1887, it was last revived in the West End in 1973, with Alastair Sim and Patricia Routledge. After that, it’s back to TV for the new series of Miranda. ‘It’s going to be fun,’ she says. Such fun, surely? ‘Yes, even more than that. Terrific fun!’ Dandy Dick opens on 28 June.

0844 871 7650, Miranda (TV Series 2009–2015) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Socially inept Miranda always gets into awkward situations; working in her joke shop with best friend Stevie, being hounded by her pushy mother, and especially when she's around her crush Gary. Stars: Miranda tries to convince herself and others that she is over Gary. 9.1 Depressed by Gary's failure to reply, Miranda consoles herself by buying kittens but, after meeting Helena, who has returned from a trip to Morocco, decides she will travel abroad - if only to escape... 8.9 Seriously dating Mike, Miranda sets out to prove she can behave in an adult manner though an escapade at a children's playgroup suggests otherwise, as does her visit to an osteopath, in whose ...

8.8 a list of 29 titles created 25 Jun 2013 a list of 32 titles created 02 Feb 2014 a list of 48 titles created 02 Apr 2014 a list of 47 titles created 23 Aug 2014 a list of 32 titles created 30 Jul 2015 Search for " Miranda " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 8 wins & 18 nominations. See more awards » Photos A part-improvised comedy about a couple bringing up their three young children. Stars: Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner, Tyger Drew-Honey Monday Monday (TV Series 2009) Comedy | Drama A supermarket fallen on hard times moves its headquarters to Leeds.

Stars: Morven Christie, Holly Aird, Peter Wight Not Going Out (TV Series 2006) Comedy The mishaps of slacker Lee, Lee's best mate Tim, Lee's long-suffering landlady and the love of Lee's life, Lucy, and Tim's well-meaning but dim-witted girlfriend Daisy. Stars: Lee Mack, Sally Bretton, Katy Wix Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the creators of this character-comedy sketch show, delight in all that is mad, bad, quirky and generally bonkers about the people and places of Britain. Stars: Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Tom Baker A boisterous female minister comes to serve in an eccentricly conservative small town's church. Stars: Dawn French, James Fleet, Trevor Peacock Comedy about Ben, a dentist, and his family. They don't exactly get along well. Stars: Robert Lindsay, Zoë Wanamaker, Gabriel Thomson Gavin & Stacey (TV Series 2007) Comedy | Romance Gavin and Stacey have been continuing their romance on-line and by telephone for the last six months. Now they want to be together but will their friends and family let them?

Stars: Joanna Page, Mathew Horne, Alison Steadman Skits by Catherine Tate and her comedy troupe. Stars: Catherine Tate, Mathew Horne, Niky Wardley The Little Britain team parodies the various types of characters associated with life in a major British airport. That includes flight and ground staff from regular - and low budget ... See full summary » Stars: Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Lindsay Duncan A snobbish housewife is determined to climb the social ladder, in spite of her family's working class connections and the constant chagrin of her long suffering husband. Stars: Patricia Routledge, Clive Swift, Geoffrey Hughes Call the Midwife (TV Series 2012) Drama Chronicles the lives of a group of midwives living in East London in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Stars: Vanessa Redgrave, Jenny Agutter, Laura Main Edit Storyline Miranda works in her joke shop with her best friend Stevie. She struggles when in social environments and no matter how hard she tries, she is always making a fool of herself ,especially in front of her crush Gary.

Plus her pushy mother, penny, is forever trying to find her a suitable husband and turn her into a respectable lady. 9 November 2009 (UK) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Miranda Hart (Miranda), Patricia Hodge (Penny) and Tom Ellis (Gary) are the only actors to appear in all 20 episodes of the series. Sarah Hadland (Stevie) did film scenes in all episodes, however her appearence in series 2 episode "Just Act Normal" was cut from broadcast. See more » Connections (Netherlands) – See all my reviews 'Miranda' manages to succeed with an 'in-your-face' approach where the main lead constantly address her audience and where most of the humor is seen coming miles ahead. This normally would boil down to an utterly tepid experience , but with Miranda Hart the effect is hugely more than the sum of its parts. I'm sure the division is similar to watching the late Tommy Cooper. You will either notice the brilliance or find it utterly boring. I 've no idea why the format of continuously speaking to the audience works within this series. It simply does.

All cast members are above average, with Patricia Hodge stealing every scene she is in. A huge factor may be the neck-breaking speed. I like that. Suspect it's simply too much for part of the public.. 6 of 10 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Miranda Hart: 'I was never in the cool gang' | The Independent Profiles Miranda Hart: 'I was never in the cool gang' Gerard Gilbert meets the six-foot-one former lacrosse champ and discovers she’s nothing like her character Miranda. Honest... Saturday 3 December 2011 00:00 BST Click to follow Miranda Hart: 'I was never in the cool gang' 1/3 Hart with Lee Mack in Not Going Out BBC Hart stars alongside Patricia Hodge in Miranda BBC Hart with Simon Le Bon at this year's British Comedy Awards Rex Features Hart with Lee Mack in Not Going Out Among the ducks and the geese and the pram-pushers there are three celebrities who regularly haunt Ravenscourt Park – my local green space in west London – although not regularly enough to interest stalkers or paparazzi.

Firstly, there is Michael Gambon, to be seen sitting hunched outside the park café on very occasional weekend mornings. Then there is Toby Young and young family, although there seems to have been less of him since his 'free school' opened in September. And finally there is Miranda Hart, out walking her pet dog, a shih-tzu called Peggy – Peggy's owner resolutely avoiding eye contact with anything but the ground about six inches ahead of her. Otherwise I might have stopped her and told her how much I enjoy her sitcom, Miranda. "Mainly I just find it a bit awkward to be honest," she says, when we finally do meet up, in a local gastro-pub halfway between the park and her house, just as my next-door neighbour walks by our table as if to illustrate the point. "I know who you are, you're a comedian," he tells Hart. "You make me laugh anyway... I can't remember the programme." She takes this in good grace, and then returns to the subject of her awkwardness.

"When walking the dog I just want to be in a world of my own, and you forget that somebody might point at me, or shout 'Such fun!'..." 'Such fun!' is, of course, the very apt catchphrase from Miranda, Hart's BBC2 (now BBC1) sitcom about an accident-prone singleton who works in a joke shop. While the critics traded endless permutations on the words 'slapstick', 'old-fashioned' and 'acquired taste', Miranda built up a devoted word-of-mouth audience able to appreciate her humour without tying themselves up in knots to justify their enjoyment of something seemingly so old-school and uncool. "Seemingly," says Hart, pointedly. "People are so passionate about comedy it makes a lot of people very cross that something seemingly a bit rubbish, seemingly mainstream and un-thought out... maybe there's anger that it's so popular. They think, 'Why are people so stupid as to think that's funny?'." In fact, Hart constantly reworks Miranda, constantly writing and editing, she says, with the vision of a viewer holding a remote control and able to switch channels at the first hint of a longueur.

And if you still feel there's anything accidental about Miranda's success, then visit YouTube to see what 'overnight success' really looks like. There's a video there of a sketch, shot over 10 years ago at the 2001 Edinburgh Fringe, in which Hart and her then comedy partner, Charity Trimm, vie for the attention of a handsome male TV producer. It's an almost exact template of the competitive relationship Miranda now has with her joke shop co-worker Stevie (Sarah Hadland). Other characters in Miranda include her old school friends, Tilly and Fanny (played by Sally Phillips and Katy Wix), Miranda's mother (Patricia Hodge), and Gary (Tom Ellis) – aka the love interest – who works in the restaurant next door. The milieu is unashamedly middle-class, another reason for some people to look down on it – although Hart claims to be unaware of such inverted snobbery. "I've never heard that," she says. "Perhaps I was naïve, but I hadn't considered that until this very moment. I suppose my thing is to make sure it's as universal as possible.

I only really think comedy's got a problem if the central character is middle-class and her values are only middle-class and then people aren't going to relate or be interested. This character is completely classless really. She happens to be from Surrey but her goals and her fears and her problems could happen to anybody. But as the producer said, 'If they don't like the show they're probably not going to like you'." In fact the show is so personal that Hart deliberately didn't read any reviews, although she adds that: "I definitely got a sense of the hatred – my stupid fault for being on Twitter, I suppose. Mind you, I always assumed people in the industry would hate it and completely the reverse has happened. Jimmy Carr loves it, Russell Brand loves it..." And many women love it too, one female journalist calling her character "an uproarious embodiment of women's everyday neuroses". "I suppose that's my thing about keeping it universal," says Hart. "You can play the big fool and hopefully people like you for it and then go, 'Thank God I'm not as bad as her'. Everyone wants a friend like that, don't they?

They all want a friend that's worse." A friend that catches her skirt in a taxi door, so that she ends up running down the street in her tights, perhaps, or falls into an open grave at a funeral, or one who endlessly tumbles into coat racks – is any of this stuff autobiographical? "None of it really," she says. "They'll be things like my attitudes to stuff – like I really do love a hotel room... I get excited about the kettle and the room service – but in terms of scenes they never happened to me. OK, there's two – one being called 'Sir' all the time and the other was being locked in a park. But I was locked in for five minutes and managed to scrape out. In the sitcom world you have to take your clothes off, it's in the middle of the night, your love interest walks past, etc, etc." In my much lither, long-haired and long-ago student days, I tell Hart, I was once whistled at by a taxi driver. I'll never forget the look of horror on his face when he drove past and realised his mistake. "Welcome to my world," she replies drily.

Miranda Hart Dyke was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1972 (it's her 39th birthday next week) – the daughter of a Royal Navy officer, Captain David Hart Dyke CBE, who later briefly served as aide-de-camp to the Queen. During the Falklands War, Captain Hart Dyke was the commanding officer of the HMS Coventry when it was sunk by the Argentinians, the 10-year-old Miranda's father was badly burnt while escaping the stricken ship. "To be honest I don't think it had an effect particularly on me," she says. "I just remember coming home from school and loads of press being outside and having to go round the neighbours to get into the house. Mum very much kept it from us. Next thing I know is that 10 days later he's back. It's an amazing story but its impact on me was minimal." She was sent to an all-girls boarding school, Downe House in Berkshire, when Clare Balding was head girl but long before Kate Middleton spent a term there.

It was the Eighties, and while the alternative comedy scene exploded in the outside world, Hart spent her time watching and re-watching her videos of Morecambe and Wise, and reworking Joyce Grenfell sketches for her sister Alice (a former actor and now a full-time mother). Miranda herself was too shy to perform or even audition for school plays. "I got stuck in that Seventies era of comedy and I still don't know things like The Young Ones and all that very well," she says. "And then in my twenties I kept watching Morecambe and Wise. I always preferred that silly, light, fluffy..." A county-level lacrosse player ("Even if I say so myself," Hart says, with a very Miranda-like mock arrogance), she was popular for being sporty, and says that "in my old age I'm a sportswoman trapped in a fat body. Mind you, the sportswoman is slowly coming out again". What is she doing? "Pilates. I'm taking it slowly..." At school she also showed early slapstick tendencies. "I wasn't one of the cool gang," she says.

"I wasn't smoking or drinking cocktails, I was throwing water balloons at the staff." She wasn't particularly academic but opted to study politics at the University of the West of England in Bristol, while harbouring an ambition to be a comedian that would remain her own secret for at least another six years. After the all-girls school ("I'm not sure it's the healthiest thing really"), Hart found herself confronted by "a new species of people" – men. "I was quite shy until I was about 20 and there were no serious relationships," she says. "We had a big group of friends and you all ended up snogging each other – that's it." She's single at the moment and – being six foot one herself – says that only tall men need apply. "I think it takes a particular type of woman to be with a smaller man... Sally Bercow [the wife of House of Commons Speaker John Bercow], for example," she says. "I would like to feel protected as a woman and you wouldn't feel like that with a smaller man, I suppose. "Being tall when I was younger I was always a bit awkward.

As a teenager I was very, very thin, so I was very gangly and limby, and would sweep things off the table without realising how big my wingspan was – just out of control. A lot of women write to me and say I'm six foot and exactly the same happens – that's been lovely therapy." This awkwardness would later feed into her comedy, of course, but her comedic ambitions were still unexpressed when, after university, Hart suffered what she calls "a six-month blip", back living with her parents, and suddenly agoraphobic and with what she has described before as depression, but what she dismisses more lightly to me as "sitting around in my pants feeling a bit sorry for myself. That's an official syndrome, by the way... "Everyone – particularly my female friends I speak to – all say 'I wouldn't be in my twenties again if I was paid. It's a difficult time. If you did go to university you're leaving that environment and suddenly you're working out what on earth your life's meant to be.

But it's when I started writing, so a good thing came out of it." First, however, there was a succession of temping jobs, including working as a PA at Comic Relief, all the while honing her comedy at Edinburgh and appearing in steadily larger TV comedy roles, from BBC2's sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive to Nighty Night and Not Going Out. Having finally come out to her parents about her comedic ambitions, they proved supportive. "Initially they were a bit worried," she says. "They kept instilling in me how being a secretary and a PA was a very good job, but equally they never said 'Don't'. My mum said to me once years ago, which really spurred me on, 'You're the funniest person I know'. I loved that." Her mum, Diana, it should be added, is nothing like her mother in Miranda – played by Patricia Hodge with such relish ("although she's worried that people would think it was based on her"). It's been a long apprenticeship – Hart says that the first two series of Miranda took her 15 years to make – although she doesn't feel the odds were in any way stacked against her as a woman.

"There are fewer women [in comedy] but that's never bothered me because I've always known that would be the case," she says. "I've never felt like a woman fighting in a male world, I've never felt penalised. I do think there's still an inherent sexism in audiences – when a woman comes on stage in a comedy club the audience will sit up and be nervous for them and wonder what the hell's going to happen, but when a man comes on they all relax into it. And again I don't begrudge audiences that, I think, hands up, I've done that too." Given the holy grail of TV commissioners is to find "the next French and Saunders", there is some aptness in the fact that Hart's big breakthrough came in 2008 when she was asked in to read her prototype script for Miranda at the BBC, and Jennifer Saunders happened to be in the audience – laughing uproariously. "I'd like to think it would have got commissioned anyway," says Hart.

And so Radio 2's Miranda Hart's Joke Shop was born, as well as the BBC2 sitcom that took her first name as its title ("I didn't want to call it that but it was the producer's idea and I think it was the right one in terms of the nature of the show"). The next series of Miranda, which she is just about to start writing – her least favourite part of the creative process – will go out next autumn on BBC1. In the meantime, starting in January, there's Call the Midwife – a new Sunday night BBC1 drama based on Jennifer Worth's bestselling novels about a team of midwives in the East End of London in the mid-1950s. Hart plays Chummy, an upper-class viceroy's daughter who's a bit of a fish out of water. It's Hart's first straight acting role. Well, almost. "She's clumsy and there was some stuff in the script about falling over and knocking over plate stands, and I slightly cringe because I want to step away from that. I'm sure it will take viewers quite a while to get used to it...

they might be expecting me to go for a quick laugh." Or to look at the camera, perhaps – breaking 'the fourth wall' being just one of the trademark aspects of Hart's eponymous sitcom. "I really tried to make a very old-fashioned genre contemporary, by looking into the camera, it could have song and dance moments in it if you wanted, 'You've been watching' and all that. But I was completely aware that this was most likely to die on its arse." The opposite was the case, of course, Miranda winning converts by the week as well as multiple British Comedy Awards and Royal Television Society prizes. So is Miranda anything like Miranda? In a far less heightened way, I suppose – although accidentally spitting out some of your parsnip and apple soup could happen to anyone. And she doesn't trip into the coat rack as we're leaving the pub. She's smart, a bit shy and (obviously) funny, but not remorselessly so. She claims she's suffering from "verbal diarrhoea" because she's been ill for the best part of a month and hasn't seen anybody much, but she doesn't seem overly garrulous to me.

And just when I'd given up finding some sort of defining image of her, and am walking home, she greets me from her bicycle that has, yes, one of those wicker baskets on the front of it. It's Joyce Grenfell cycling to the village shop, which in a sense she is (this is one of those London neighbourhoods that calls itself a village, and she's heading off to the local deli). "Such fun!" I could have exclaimed, but it's such a miserably dank and chill late November afternoon that I wave back and just keep walking. 'Miranda Series Two' and 'Miranda Series One & Two' box-sets are out on DVD now.

'Call the Midwife' will be on BBC1 in January More about: Just a funny, old-fashioned sort of girl - Telegraph TV and Radio Just a funny, old-fashioned sort of girl Critics once accused Miranda Hart of producing dated and corny comedy - but the hugely popular TV comedienne is having the last laugh Miranda, posh comedienne Photo: Springs Miranda, posh comedienne Photo: Springs By William Langley 7:00AM GMT 23 Dec 2012 Miranda Hart, the St Trinianesque, six-foot-one-inch former lacrosse champ must be – for these reasons and others – one of Britain’s less likely comedy stars. Much of Miranda’s act revolves around being plain, falling over, pulling faces and behaving in ways that performers generally haven’t since comedy stopped trying to please and decided it ought to be cool. In the business, people still wonder how she made it.

By the time Miranda first emerged in the late Nineties, the tyranny of “edginess” had descended upon television, mostly in the form of yoof-fixated broadcasting executives who believed that traditional sitcoms were elitist, and the antidote was to hire lots of working class acts to hose down audiences with F-words, and explain away the lack of laughs by calling the result “alternative”. This wasn’t the sporty girl from Hampshire’s idea of being funny at all. The daughter of a Royal Navy captain, she had been through an expensive boarding school, earning few academic accolades, but developing a devotion to classic comedy shows in the Morecambe and Wise, Tony Hancock, and Two Ronnies mould. No one had to explain to her why these old stagers were so loved. Or why the new generation of TV whizzes, fixated with “issues” and “attitude”, should find them cringeworthy. Miss Hart’s show, Miranda – the third series of which begins on Boxing Day – is as old-fashioned as it gets. Switch on the lava lamp, cook up a Vesta meal and you could be back in the Sixties.

She plays the owner of a joke shop, with no talent for business, whose bossy mother (Patricia Hodge) disapproves of the venture and wants her daughter to get a proper job and a husband. The show plays heavily off Miranda’s clumsiness – both physical and social – and a long-running gag is the number of customers who mistake her for a man. As with so much good comedy, there’s a certain poignancy at work here. In real life, Miss Hart, who also writes Miranda, is 40, un-attached, childless and honest enough to admit that she’s not the hottest date in town. She has said that she’s “a romantic at heart” and would like to marry, but there is scant evidence of boyfriends past or present. In the show, she harbours a secret crush on the waiter in the restaurant next door, but you sense it won’t end with candlelight and roses, and even if it did she would knock the vase over and set the table on fire. Related Articles Miranda: love her or hate her? 21 Dec 2010 The new orthodoxy would see this kind of portrayal as not only corny but condescending to women.

For all its ratings success, the show receives plenty of brickbats. Telegraph TV critic Catherine Gee sighed: “The jokes are about as original as a clown slipping over on a banana skin”, while the internet seethes with complaints that she has put comedy back by 30 years. Miranda tends not to take these attacks kindly. They arise, she implies, from the idea that sophistication makes for superior comedy, and the old slapstick approach is obsolete. “People are so passionate about comedy it makes a lot of people very cross that something seemingly a bit rubbish, seemingly mainstream and un-thought-out… maybe there’s anger that it’s so popular. They think: 'Why are people so stupid as to think that’s funny?’ ” It’s a busy festive season for Miranda. On Christmas Day she is back as Fifties East London midwife Chummy Browne in the hit drama, Meet the Midwife. When she joined the series earlier this year it seemed an odd casting choice, but Chummy, “a tall, fish-out-of-water type like me”, as Miranda puts it, has helped bring a softening effect of English eccentricity to what can be raw and gritty fare.

She grew up in Petersfield, in a well-to-do family of strong naval pedigree. Her father, Captain David Hart Dyke, commanded HMS Coventry, a Type 42 destroyer that was sunk in the Falklands War, and later served as an aide-de-camp to the Queen. Miranda was sent to Downe House, an all-girls boarding school in Berkshire, where Clare Balding was head girl. It was a time that saw the refashioning of British comedy with the rise of Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall and Ben Elton, but Miss Hart Dyke found more fun in watching the old stuff, and knowing – from the age of 13 – that she would lead the counter-revolution. For the time being, she found popularity through being good at sport. “I wasn’t one of the cool gang,” she has said. “I wasn’t smoking or drinking cocktails, I was throwing water balloons at the staff.” “Such fun”, to use Patricia Hodge’s catchphrase. But not for long.

After Downe House Miss Hart went to university in Bristol, where, for the first time in a sheltered life, she encountered men and discovered that, while being a Valkyrie-like six-footer may have its advantages on the lacrosse field, it didn’t necessarily get you dates. “I was very worried about not being attractive to men,” she says, “of not feeling like your stereotypical girl. It took me a lot longer to feel comfortable in my body and in myself than others.” She later suffered what she describes as a six-month “blip” – some kind of depressive breakdown – during which “I sat around in my pants feeling sorry for myself.” She isn’t sure whether the blip ignited the comedy or unlocked what was already there, but soon afterwards she was on stage in Edinburgh, and landing small parts in BBC shows. She says it took her 15 years to bring Miranda to the screen, although, given the unpromising nature of the times, this was practically an overnight success. Today, she doesn’t have to worry about those who say she’s living in the past. Or even to worry about her size. When you are a star this big, you don’t have to.

Miranda is on BBC One at 9pm on Boxing Day; Hart also stars in Call the Midwife on BBC One at 7.30pm on Christmas Day Miranda Hart on mirth, marriage - and Matthew Perry | Radio Times Twitter Miranda Hart on mirth, marriage - and Matthew Perry The comedienne is galumphing, gorgeous and game for a laugh – not even turning 40 can wipe the smile off her face... Comments Ginny Dougray 8:12 AM, 26 December 2012 Our interview was such fun! And with a very, what I call, Miranda Moment. At one point, I almost fell off my chair – something that Miranda, at least in her eponymous show, does a lot. Could this be “method” interviewing? We meet in a photographic studio in Fulham, south-west London. Miranda lopes down the stairs to meet and greet, and you’re immediately struck by her sensational height. She’s 6ft 1in, has creamy skin, a jolly good bosom, a rather lovely, dewy-eyed face, but needs to work on her deportment.

The fact is that if Miranda strutted her stuff, rather than looking vaguely apologetic about herself, she would be a stunner. Down in the bowels of the building, in a somewhat oppressive, windowless room, the pair of us sit across a large table, both suffering from blocked noses and a cold. She will be 40 at the end of the year and when I ask her how she feels about it, she says: “Quite excited.” Excited about ageing? “I’m excited about getting older in that each year brings more confidence and I don’t care and I can be me, which is just brilliant. And, also, yes, I do want to go to bed at nine o’clock, thanks.” You expect actors and comedians in semi-autobiographical shows such as Miranda’s to present an exaggerated version of themselves; a persona rather than a person. But it’s the other way round, if anything, with Miranda. Or maybe that’s the effect of hearing someone, under 70, who doesn’t live in a stately home in the sticks, use expressions like “What a hoot”.

At her all-girls boarding school, Downe House, where Clare Balding was head girl (and later, famously, Kate Middleton), Miranda was a lethal lacrosse-player, popular and not particularly academic. She went to Bristol – the polytechnic, as it was, rather than Bristol University – to read political science, rather unfathomably, which she hated. “I was a bit miserable because I was doing something I didn’t want to do but I loved Bristol, made lots of friends and had a laugh. I just didn’t go to any lectures.” She comes from a pukka, upper-middle-class background and was brought up, with her younger sister, in Petersfield, Hampshire. Her father, Captain David Hart Dyke, was the commanding officer of HMS Coventry when it was sunk by the Argentinians during the Falk-lands War. (Miranda dropped the Dyke, kept the Hart but now seems to have dispensed with a surname altogether.) He was badly burnt when escaping the ship, but Miranda has said that the effect on her ten-year-old self was minimal. Her uncle is Lord Luce, courtier to the royal family and a former Conservative MP.

Her mother actually does say “such fun” – the catchphrase of Miranda’s mother in the show, played brilliantly by Patricia Hodge, who is obsessed with getting her daughter married off. But there the similarity ends, although since off the screen Miranda also remains uncoupled, people inevitably jump to conclusions. After leaving university, Miranda had a sticky Harrisonpatch, which she has referred to, variously, as depression, agoraphobia, panic attacks and a blip. Opting for the understatement, I ask her if she’s had any more “blips” since then. “No, and the ‘blip’ became an over-exaggerated blip. It’s simply, as I have said before, that after leaving university, I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I went back to Mummy and Daddy for six months.” You have also said before that you are wired to be on the depressive side, that it runs in the family?

“Well, there is a slight default setting of ‘Oh, it’s going to be a disaster’, which I have to fight against but I have retrained myself to say, ‘No, it’s going to be fine.’” In fact, she’s rather more level-headed than some of us, that’s for sure. When we are talking about her fantasy cottage in the middle of nowhere, I ask her whether she wouldn’t be a bit alarmed at night in the wilds on her own. “Oh, that never worries me,” she says. “The idea that someone would come to kill me with an axe never crosses my mind.” The phobia she does have is quite niche – fear of choking. She avoids lifts and is possibly a bit claustrophobic; other than that, just the usual professional panic: “You know, is series three going to die on its arse or are people going to laugh?” It’s fair to say, I think, that Miranda is comedy Marmite.

There are those of us who relish the respite from spiteful or blokey, endlessly knocking humour, and find Miranda’s funny, old-fashioned world rather a relief, with her good-hearted galumphing through life – the maddening but recognisable mother, the ghastly old schoolfriends (Tilly and Fanny), the hunky love interest (Gary, the chef ), the joke-shop gags (love the Heather Small, face on a stick, as selfhelp guru shtick). And there are others who either loathe it or just don’t get it. Miranda responds to comedians in the same way. “Comedy is so subjective… I mean, there’s some comedy on at the moment which makes me furious – I don’t understand why people like them because I hate them so much. No, I couldn’t possibly tell you who… "As a comedian, the audience think you’re saying, ‘Look at me!

I’m the funniest person in the whole world!’ You’re setting yourself up for people to say ‘Why on earth does she think that?’ But that’s not what it is – you’re just doing your job.” We talk a bit about romance in Miranda and why she decided on the Gary and Miranda, will they/won’t they narrative thread. It’s a bit Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, isn’t it? “Just much more highbrow!” A Miranda giggle. “I never wanted it to be about a single woman looking for love, but I suppose I did want to tap into as many universal themes as possible and love is the sort of key universal theme that runs through life.” So will she and Gary finally get together in the next series? “I couldn’t possibly reveal…” – a sideways, owlish look. I say that when I interviewed Julian Fellowes for RT last year, it was all I could do to stop him telling me the whole plot, he was so enthralled by the next season of Downton. “Oh, how sweet,” Miranda says, genuinely.

“There are a couple of new characters, but it would give things away if I said who they were and what they did.” Her childhood dream was to be in a West End play – and she would still like to fulfil that dream. What does she fancy? Eddie Izzard, for instance, had an important role in a David Mamet play. “Hmmm… yes, I’d love a bit of Mamet,” she rolls the word around like a whipped creamy bonbon in her mouth. “But I’d really like Noël Coward to come back from the grave and maybe me and, say, Dame Judi and Julie Walters and all my favourite actresses – Emma Thompson, Penelope Wilton, Imelda Staunton.” And Maggie Smith? “Possibly… she’d have to audition!” A big whoop of laughter. But who would be your romantic lead? “Matthew Perry.” Matthew Perry? “Imagine him with an English accent and black tie.” Well, why not Matthew Crawley [Dan Stevens] from Downton, then? “I am quite obsessed with Matthew Perry. I have met him [Stevens] but he’s not quite tall enough. He’s sort of my height and I need someone taller.

I’m really specific, but it’s important. Pierce Brosnan?” How about Richard E Grant? He’s tall, isn’t he? “Yes, but he’s not sexy – at least not to me. Sorry Richard E.” Call the Midwife, based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs of midwifery in the East End just after the Second World War, returns next year and in the meantime there is a special episode on Christmas Day. Miranda plays the part of Chummy (short for Camilla Fortescue- Cholmeley-Browne) as a version of “Miranda”, but she’s also very affecting in it. Writing, for her, is a necessary torture but what she really enjoys is the camaraderie and warmth of working with a group of actors. “I got into this business to be around people and to be in an ensemble setting where you meet such fascinating, open people – where you become instant friends and you share things – is just brilliant. There’s none of that British reserve and small talk, which is what I wanted to get away from. Because I always knew I wanted to be around ‘theatricals’ – and that’s why I loved being with that amazing group of girls.

We all got on so well, and it was such a hoot.” For Miranda to have one tattoo (a bird and a heart on her ankle) is surprising enough but to discover she has two is almost shocking. She confesses that she has another one on her arm, a pair of Beckham-ish Chinese letters: “It’s pretty horrible and no, I wasn’t drunk – I was stonecold sober. But I do regret it.” So what were you thinking? Were you trying to be edgy? “Yes, I think so. I think I just wanted to say, ‘I’m not the public-school stereotype you think I am.’” She is now in the orbit of fame, which means she’s on the list of celebrities who will do a turn for the Queen’s birthday or be photographed on the red carpet for the new Bond premiere. She has had some photographers camped outside her house “and I’m just thinking, ‘Why me?’” Her friends worry that she’s now so famous that it’s going to be difficult for her to meet anyone because “men are going to feel nervous approaching me but I’m surprised that anyone’s interested in my love life. I’m always surprised that people are interested in me, full stop.

“I don’t feel like a famous person. If I’m walking the dog and someone comes up to me, it’s a surprise. I forget that I’m on telly.” In the meantime, I consider it an honour and my duty as one of her loyal fans to conclude with a romantic personal ad, in her own words: “No, I’m not neurotic at all. I’m very easy. I’m possibly too easy and open. Tell Matthew Perry that!” Miranda will air on both Boxing Day and New Year's Day at 9:00pm on BBC1. The Call the Midwife Christmas special will air at 7:30pm on BBC1 on Christmas Day Like this? Share it. Miranda Hart | Miranda Hart Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Born in Torquay , Devon to Royal Navy officer David Hart Dyke and Diana Margaret Luce, Hart grew up in Petersfield , Hampshire . She was educated at Downe House , Berkshire , an independent girls' boarding school, where she was a contemporary and friend of the sports presenter Clare Balding , who was head girl.

[4 ] She graduated with upper second-class honours in politics at the University of the West of England , followed by training at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts . Despite studying politics, she always wanted to be a comedienne. In 2002, she did a solo show in Edinburgh, and in 2004 she pitched a comedy show to the BBC. At her read-through for BBC executives, Jennifer Saunders was there, laughing throughout. [5 ] While appearing on Frank Skinner's Opinionated in 2010, she stated that she was from an upper-class background, but hated saying that and did not consider herself upper-class. She added that her family tree has been traced back to the 12th century, and that her aunt and uncle live in a castle that they cannot afford to run. Live performance Edit Avoiding the normal stand-up circuit for more character -based comedy, including an appearance in the Edinburgh and touring show The Sitcom Trials , Hart has written her own theatre material for the Edinburgh Fringe . Her one-woman shows include Miranda Hart – Throbs, It's All About Me and Miranda Hart's House Party .

She also performed in Alecky Blythe 's 2006 play Cruising at the Bush Theatre . In 2010 she and six other TV celebrities raised over £ 1 million for charity by cycling from John O'Groats to Land's End . [6 ] Television and Film Hart starred as Teal in two series of the BBC television comedy sci-fi series Hyperdrive , which ran from January 2006 to August 2007. She has also appeared in French & Saunders , My Family and Other Animals , Nighty Night , Absolutely Fabulous , The Vicar of Dibley , Lead Balloon , William and Mary , Smack the Pony (for which she wrote and performed in a couple of sketches and a number of video diaries ), Not Going Out and Stupid! She appeared in the third series of Comic Relief does Fame Academy in 2007, and became the second contestant to be voted off the show. [7 ] In 2009, she appeared in the last ever sketch from French and Saunders , also in aid of Comic Relief.

Hart appeared in a short film by Tim Plester World of Wrestling in which she played Klondyke Kate, a wrestler billed as 'hell in boots'. The film was released in late 2007 alongside its companion shorts Blakes Junction 7 and Ant Muzak. In 2006, she appeared in an episode of Not Going Out as an acupuncturist. Her performance impressed the producers so much that they wrote a regular role for her in the next series as clumsy cleaner Barbara; a part she continued to play until 2009. However, due to a busy filming schedule, the character did not return for the fourth series, aired in 2011. [8 ] In 2007 Miranda played the part of Shelley a Min Cab Driver in Channel 5 Comedy Angelos which ran for 6 episodes In 2008, she recorded the pilot episode of Miranda for BBC Two . The sitcom is based on her semi-autobiographical writing which went on to become a radio series, Miranda Hart's Joke Shop on BBC Radio 2 .

On 9 November 2009 Miranda, nominated "one of the top 10 forthcoming TV shows for Autumn 2009" by The Sunday Times , [9 ] began transmission on BBC Two . [10 ] She appeared as guest host of Have I Got News for You in October 2009. She also presented a BBC spoof programme looking back over 2009 called 2009 Unwrapped with Miranda Hart. A similar show looking back over 2010 was also broadcast in December 2010. She has also appeared twice on Strictly Come Dancing:It Takes Two. She is a fan of the series Strictly Come Dancing. Miranda Hart has appeared in the TV series Monday Monday starring Fay Ripley : Miranda played the role of "Tall Karen". She appeared in a T.V.

advert for Alpen.[ citation needed ] In the final quarter of 2009, Heather Small 's back catalogue sales increased by 73% as a result of frequent references to her hit single " Proud " in Miranda '.[ citation needed ] In 2010 she appeared in the final of Old Dears Club as snooty receptionist Beverly Gates.[ citation needed ] The second series of Miranda began on BBC2 in November 2010. The series ended with a viewing high of 4.1m and has been re-commissioned by the BBC for another two series to air in 2011 and 2012. Hart was described in the FT as "the most original and farcically hilarious female clown since Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders . [11 ] A Miranda mini-episode set in the world of Pineapple Dance Studios was filmed and broadcast on 18 March as part of Comic Relief. Miranda Hart also took part in a Red Nose Day edition of MasterChef, which she won. Also for Comic Relief 2011, Hart starred as a judge for the finale of Let's Dance for Comic Relief, alongside Rufus Hound and Louie Spence.

She also gave a signed Miranda script to be auctioned in aid of Comic Relief. Awards Edit In 2010 she won the Best Comedy Performance award from the Royal Television Society for her performance in Miranda, [12 ] and was also nominated for best comedy writing. [13 ] She and Patricia Hodge were both nominated for "Best Comedy Actress" awards at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival 2010.

[14 ] In 2011 she won [15 ] "Best Comedy Actress" and "People’s Choice Award For The King Or Queen Of Comedy" in the British Comedy Awards 2011, where Miranda also won "Best New British TV Comedy" and was nominated for "Best Sitcom" [16 ] In 2011 she has been nominated for a BAFTA for Best actress in a comedy role and her hit BBC2 sitcom Miranda has been nominated for the Bafta YouTube choice award which is the only award voted for by the public Personal Life and Family Edit Hart's father is retired Royal Navy officer Captain David Hart Dyke CBE LVO RN [3 ] who was commanding officer of HMS Coventry when it was sunk by the Argentinians in the 1982 Falklands conflict , as a result of which he was badly burned trying to escape the stricken warship. His later career saw him serving as Aide-de-Camp to HM The Queen , 1988-9. [17 ] He retired from active naval service in 1990 with the rank of Captain (OF-5) .

Recently, he used his transcripts to write a book chronicling the events surrounding Coventry's sinking in a book entitled Four Weeks in May: A Captain's Story of War at Sea. [18 ] [3 ] Her mother is Diana Margaret Hart Dyke née Luce, the daughter of Sir William Luce GBE KCMG OBE (1907-1977), who was the British Governor and Commander in Chief of Aden, 1956-60. [3 ]

Question: Who plays Miranda Hart’s mother in her comedy series Miranda?
Answer: Patricia Hodge