Miranda Hart - Such Fun. Sophie Johnson
the more it was mentioned, the more ill at ease she felt. Despite fitting in well, she never felt happy in her own skin. ‘Perhaps that’s being tall,’ she reflected later, ‘not being comfortable with men until my mid-twenties.’
And, although she was happy at the time, Hart reflects that going to an all-girls’ school may have affected her confidence and approach to men: ‘I think, for a shy person – and I was very shy until my mid- twenties – having been to an all-girls’ school is not brilliant on the boyfriend front later.’
She had reached her full height by the time she was in the sixth form, but looked different to the Miranda we know today: ‘I was also very, very thin, and people used to laugh at the gangliness rather than the precipitousness.’
Everything in Hart’s life pointed her to comedy and performing, and she applied for stage-management courses but, under parental pressure, she went to Bristol Polytechnic (now the University of the West of England) to study politics. There were new people to meet, new experiences to be had and opportunities ahead of her. But being so image conscious held her back. ‘It was definitely like meeting a new species of people. Suddenly, at age 19, I was thinking, Can you speak to these people? I was very, very nervous.’ She was worried about not being attractive to men or, as she puts it, ‘of not feeling like your stereotypical girl’. But it is exactly this aspect of her personality that people find attractive. It is her truth that people relate to when they watch the show’s character – on-screen Miranda is very ‘warts ’n’ all’ – or the endearing honesty and humility of the lady in interviews. She has said that, in retrospect, she realises she was ‘God knows how many stones lighter’ and that friends she was at university with have since told her that they thought she was sexy and wanted to make a move. She wishes she could stop thinking of herself negatively, but it seems a weakness she can’t rid herself of. ‘It’s such a waste of energy, I know. And I still do it now. I’m an idiot.’
She graduated with a 2:1 in politics from Bristol by ‘pretty much winging it with what amounted to a photographic memory’. But then she reset her sights and enrolled on a postgraduate acting course at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London (ALRA) in London. She told the Sunday Times how even the tutors couldn’t overlook her appearance. In ballet classes with her teacher Betty – ‘We called her Betty Ballet, which I thought was hilarious’ – her height was an issue. ‘She used to say, “A metre apart, please, at the barre,” and, with no sense of a joke, she added, “And two metres apart if you are next to Miranda.”’
Miranda could see the funny side the first time it was said, but, as it was mentioned every lesson, the novelty quickly wore off. It set a precedent for the attitude of casting agents in the future. ‘Nobody would cast me as a lead in a sitcom and nobody would cast me as the girlfriend or the daughter. I was 6ft 1in and not of televisual frame.’
Miranda found some solace writing sketches at university, but, after graduating, any work she could find was on the mundane side. Her first job was cleaning student flats, what she says is the worst job she ever had: ‘One flat’s sink was blocked and they were doing the washing up in the bath. Oh yes.’
She went back to Hampshire to live with her parents and, as she had to cope with the alien world of growing older, life became a little trickier. ‘I was getting used to being tall. And then in my mid-twenties I ballooned in size. Then I was tall and big, and that I found difficult.’
Miranda was struggling with agoraphobia, anxiety and panic attacks, and it didn’t help that the anti-depressants she had been prescribed added to the weight gain of some five stone. ‘It all happened after university,’ she told the Guardian. ‘I think I was just very anxious. I thought the world was a bit scary. Some people get depressed for six months and then pull themselves together. I just hid in a room and didn’t go out for two years.’
Although university and negative comments contributed to her depression, she has described it as her natural disposition. ‘It’s just bad genes, bad luck, really. I’ll always have to force myself to see the positive, because I’m wired badly, I’d say. I’m just naturally a bit under, a bit depressed.’
This manifested itself as agoraphobia, but, rather than a fear of open spaces, it was more people and crowds that Miranda feared. Now, Miranda loves to visit the countryside. When she had finished filming the first series of her sitcom, she went on a road trip around Wales, Cumbria and Yorkshire. ‘I love being in the middle of nowhere and looking up at the stars – it gives me this incredible feeling of peace.’
She said that people are often surprised that she enjoys being among these vast expanses because of her former agoraphobia, ‘but the condition is nothing to do with a fear of open spaces. Agoraphobia goes hand in hand with crowds, so I’d have a panic attack in the theatre when I felt I couldn’t get out, or in a supermarket queue.’
During one appearance on Have I Got News For You, they asked her if her agoraphobia was the reason she choose to do the sitcom Not Going Out. ‘Now that’s funny. And may I congratulate you because you are the first one to make said joke. How satisfying for us all. Oh and no, it’s not the reason.’
But it turned out there was some pertinence to the question. ‘Although I have to say, on a more serious note, when I did still have agoraphobia, I found a theatre or a TV studio total bliss to be in – dark, soundproof, total escapism from the world.’
It seems that some good came out of this unhappy situation: Miranda began to write. ‘I started writing comedy around that time because it was more fun inside my head than in the real world.’
There is a theory that putting one’s problems down in words can help you overcome them. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2008, author David Lodge said, ‘I find most writing therapeutic,’ and Graham Greene famously said, ‘Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear, which is inherent in a human condition.’
‘The Hills Are Alive’ was Miranda’s attempt to put the situation to bed by telling her story. Broadcast in October 2006 as part of BBC Radio 4’s series Inner Voices, it was a character monologue, written with the help of her sister Alice, and was inspired by her time of suffering from agoraphobia. The description, ‘Imprisoned in a bedroom, you can only dream of going on a Sound of Music coach tour’, suggests that her sense of humour about the situation meant she had moved on to some extent.
‘I’ve been there and done that,’ she has said. ‘I’m not a Stephen Fry, it’s not going to be with me forever.’
Fry is one of four million people in the UK with bipolar disorder, which has affected him throughout his life. He attempted to break the social taboo of discussing mental health with his BBC Two documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive, talking to other sufferers of the condition. He says that, when he was diagnosed at the age of 37, ‘I had a diagnosis that explains the massive highs and miserable lows I’ve lived with all my life.’
This idea of the sad clown is one that echoes throughout comedy history. The list of comedians who have suffered from depression is a lengthy one, and includes Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Lenny Bruce and Tommy Cooper. Other sufferers of bipolar disorder who went on to be comedians include Tony Slattery, Russell Brand, Bill Oddie, Ruby Wax and Spike Milligan.
Milligan’s co-star in The Goon Show, Peter Sellers, was probably one of the condition’s most famous sufferers. The film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (based on Roger Lewis’s book) was devoted to his struggle with his mental health. The pressure of Goon deadlines and a sick wife became too much for Milligan, as he later recounted: ‘One day I was with Peter Sellers when something inside me snapped. I tried to kill him with a potato knife. Either that or I just wanted to peel him.’
Tony Hancock was another comic hero who was consumed by a sense of despair. He took his own life in 1968, aged just 44. Years later, Spike Milligan said that Hancock was a ‘very difficult man to get on with. He used to drink excessively.