Miranda Hart - The Biography. Sophie Johnson
hands and wrists. While the ship’s company attempted to escape, the captain awoke to a near-empty cabin and, suffocating from the smoke, felt near to admitting defeat. He recalled seeing severe devastation, figures on fire, and began to calmly accept his fate: ‘There was no alternative but to die and so I prepared myself accordingly. Suffocation begins with a welcome calming effect, yet it is only one small step away from collapse and death. I was not far from it… I had thought of home and, ridiculous as it seems now, wondered who was going to mow the lawn in my absence. Then my mind had gone blank.’
Although he has no memory of how it happened, the captain found himself in clearer air. Despite the ship having no power and being in the process of sinking, he ordered Lieutenant-Commander Mike O’Connell to send the ship east into safer waters. But it was clear that the ship was going nowhere. Captain Hart Dyke felt helpless but, with help from the ship’s company, finally managed to escape.
On that fateful day, 19 crew members were killed and 30 injured. Some were sent to a hospital ship, while the less serious cases – including Miranda’s father – received first aid on the nearby Broadsword. Officers and public figures paid tribute including the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher: ‘Our fighting men are engaged on one of the most remarkable military operations of modern times… Our hearts go out to all the families who had men in those ships. We in Britain know the reality of war. We know its hazards and its dangers. We know the task which faces our fighting men.’
It was important to all men – and families – involved to know they had not been fighting in vain.
But when the news was announced on the BBC’s World Service, the name of the ship was not mentioned and, even when it was, families had to wait hours to find out if their loved ones were safe. It caused severe worry back at home. In the first letter he received after the incident, D told David how difficult that night had been, how she had tried to distract herself by making up beds and sorting clothes.
Eventually, the call came and D knew her husband was safe. It was what she described as ‘the most wonderful moment [she] can remember’.
During that time of uncertainty, D decided it was best not to tell Miranda and Alice that their father’s ship had sunk, and so she sent them off to school as normal. But people at school had heard about the ship and were naturally concerned for the children’s welfare. Miranda recalls one teacher asking how she was and her response – being something of a hypochondriac at the time – was ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold, but I’m fine, thanks.’
When the children got home, their mother told them the terrible news. In interviews, Miranda has tended to put a comic sheen on the experience, saying she responded, ‘Oh dear. Can I have a flapjack?’, but her father’s memoirs paint a more serious reaction. ‘[Miranda] sat down, went very red in the face and kept repeating, “Oh dear, oh dear, poor Daddy, oh dear.”’
When David Hart Dyke was finally reunited with his family, it was an understandably emotional moment. His wife and daughters were led up to his cabin on the QE2 when it came in to berth, and he and D had a tearful embrace. Once back in Petersfield, his life regained some normality, but he refused to speak publicly about the traumatic event for 25 years. In 1990, he retired from the armed services and now lives with D in Hambledon, Hampshire, near to Miranda’s childhood home.
During its time in service, HMS Coventry brought down more enemy aircraft than any other ship in the Falklands, in its order to entice the enemy away from and protect British troops in San Carlos bay. Years later, he spoke pragmatically about the realities of conflict: ‘That’s war. It’s like a game of chess. You’ve got to give up some pieces to get checkmate at the end. I was one of those pieces’.
Captain Hart Dyke was made an aide-de-camp to the Queen and was stationed in the United States. In the meantime, Miranda was sent away to boarding school in Berkshire. It doesn’t seem that her father’s ordeal affected the future comic any more than the small changes she experienced in her home life – a lot of women coming round for tea and the anxiety of cycling proficiency tests. Maybe she was to find distress waiting for her at boarding school, that she would have to therapeutically work out on the stage of a comedy club at a later date.
Or maybe not, for Miranda has described her school days as the happiest of her life. She attended Downe House boarding school in Berkshire, an independent girls-only place of learning. Karl Simpson, the current Director of Admissions, says, ‘Downe House is not so much an independent girls’ boarding school, it is more a school for independent girls.’ This maxim seems to be reflected by the success of the school’s alumni.
Miranda aside, former pupils at the school have included award-winning comedian Laura Solon, BBC sports presenter Clare Balding (who was head girl while Miranda was there), Sophie Dahl (and her mother Tessa), actress Geraldine James OBE, and even the possible future Queen Kate Middleton, who attended for one term before moving to Marlborough College. In an interview on The One Show, Balding – who Miranda remains friends with – reminded her of the school ethos: ‘You know what we were taught at school – stand up for yourself, be independent in thought and deed, pull your socks up, don’t pull your sleeves down, don’t fiddle with your hair, don’t spend more time trying to make your classmates laugh than you do concentrating on lessons and, above all, don’t show off. Sad to say, you’ve made a living out of doing just that. And rather successfully.’
Indeed, rather than it being a nasty experience to forget, Miranda has huge fondness for her days at Downe House. Despite sporting a head brace and retainers for some of her time there, she was always popular: ‘I flitted between gangs; it was a deliberate choice. If you were good at sport, then you were popular, and I was very good at lacrosse, if I say so myself. I played for Berkshire. I’m a lean, sporty woman trapped in a fat body.’
Hart has used her school days as inspiration for her comedy. In an interview on the red button following the first episode of the second series of Miranda, Downe House’s Clare Balding said that she recognised the character of Tilly, played by Sally Phillips. Phillips is a well-respected comedy actress and writer who made her mark on Lee and Herring’s TV series Fist of Fun in the mid-1990s, though she is probably best known for her performances in Channel 4’s Smack the Pony and the Bridget Jones films. Her character Tilly is introduced in the first episode of series one, ‘Date’. Miranda dreads meeting up with her old boarding-school friends for lunch (including Fanny, played by Katy Wix), but she gives in. ‘As Tilly says, when you’re dumped in a boarding-school dorm aged nine, you all bond for life. Even if you hate each other’.
Miranda wrote the series herself and says Tilly’s language is based on the sort she heard during her time at boarding school. ‘They do that thing of making English words sound a little bit European by going, “Marveloso!”’ In the first episode alone, Tilly conjures up such classically quotable lines as ‘Utmost cooliosity, kissingtons, marvelismos, brillo pads’, and variations on Miranda’s nickname Queen Kong: ‘You’re the Empress of Kong! You’re Kongdeliza Rice!’ It also introduces her recurring catchphrase ‘Bear with… bear with…’, used whenever she pauses conversation to look at a message on her phone. When she has finished, she returns to her reluctantly patient company with ‘Back!’
Throughout the series, Miranda is referred to as Queen Kong (because of her height, of course), among the other ridiculous nicknames cited. Miranda admits this actually happened at Downe School – she knew a Tilly, Fanny and Podge, and in the series refers to Milly, Bella, Bunty, Hooty and Pussy. Claire Balding (aka ‘Balders’ or simply ‘Head Girl’) remembers her friend Sarah who everyone called Piffle (‘because she talked such piffle all the time’). Viewers are left wondering who Tilly is referring to when she says, ‘Stinky was the best head girl ever! Do you remember when she immac’d a squirrel?!’
On her blog for the BBC during the show’s broadcast, Miranda said that, by the third week of rehearsals, the cast had all taken to speaking in Tilly’s language. ‘It’s very contagious. Patricia Hodge will leave a rehearsal room saying “missingtons”.’
In an interview for the Sunday Times Culture magazine, Miranda suggested that these