Miranda Hart - Such Fun. Sophie Johnson
Across the pond, outspoken comedian and broadcaster Sara Benincasa developed a one-woman show in 2009, documenting her experiences with agoraphobia and panic attacks. This is now being made into a book called Agorafabulous! to be published by William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Regarding her own experience of agoraphobia, Miranda is honest about her experience but prefers to keep it below the radar, prefacing answers to interviewers with: ‘I won’t bore you with it, because it wasn’t very nice…’
And, unlike many of these cases, Miranda’s was a temporary condition that she has moved on from: ‘Though I’ll always be a fairly anxious person,’ she admits. ‘I have a good old cry at bad news and get rather down. Pessimism is my default setting.’
In 1993, Miranda picked herself up and moved to Scotland – to Edinburgh. She lived there for a year, writing comedy and preparing herself for the 1994 Festival. This wasn’t cosy Hampshire at Mum and Dad’s house. It was a challenge. ‘I went to live in Edinburgh for a year and forced myself out of feeling sorry for myself. I had no heating, so that’s enough to wake you up.’
Coming out as a comedian to her parents was a turnaround moment. She had been working as a PA in the charity sector when she told them what she really wanted to do. ‘They weren’t discouraging,’ she told the Guardian, ‘but they weren’t fully encouraging – which they are now – and that helped in a way. They just said, “Why don’t you stick with being a PA, you’re good at it,” and that made me, in a teenage way, go, “You just wait then, I’ll try and prove you all wrong.”’
Determination combined with resilience meant that, no matter what people told her, or however few people turned up to see her, she carried on trying. ‘There must always have been a sense of “I’ve got enough to carry on”. You know, however much I’m terrified and think I look and sound ridiculous, there is a confidence that keeps me going. Every comedian has to be like that. You wouldn’t get on stage if you didn’t think that you were good.’
She even managed to accept the way she looks. Or, at least, she found a way to make the most of her height by adopting a certain Python’s style of slapstick. ‘Anyway, look at John Cleese. Why not use those limbs if you’ve got them? If he contained himself, he wouldn’t be nearly as funny.’
Still, she says she would like to be a little less tall. ‘I’d like to be 5ft 10in. That would be very nice, because then you can wear a heel and not look like a transvestite.’
Of course, this is not the case. As well as old university chums, many fans have admitted to finding her very attractive. When one newspaper even named her ‘Crush of the Week’, her response to the Guardian’s Kira Cochrane was typically self-deprecating: ‘Shut up! That’s very worrying. But I can guess what they would say – something like, not the obvious choice, not the conventional choice, but for some reason Crush of the Week.’
Charles I, a user of Digital Spy’s, was one smitten fan. He asked his fellow discussion-board friends: ‘Does anybody else find her attractive? I think I’d like to sit on her lap.’ We should probably leave it there quoting Miranda’s fans’ fantasies, but it proves a point. Hart told Stylist magazine that, since she has become famous, men’s reaction to her has changed: ‘I was out for the first time recently and there was definitely a palpable difference in response, which was lovely, but I haven’t had time to reflect on any offers of marriage yet. I’m bound to get more…’
Miranda has been single for three years because she’s been working so hard and hasn’t had time for a relationship. ‘I’m much keener to be with people than I used to be and I can definitely see myself sharing my space in future… perhaps finally I’ll go on a road trip with someone apart from Peggy – I’m open to offers, write in!’
But this tongue-in-cheek invitation came with a caveat: ‘The relationship will only work if my partner understands I need the odd day on my own from time to time. I’ll be the perfect wife: “Of course, darling, please go and have a weekend with the lads at football. Please get out of the house!”’
So who’s the perfect husband for her? She told Stylist magazine that the main thing she looks for in a man is funniness. ‘I don’t need to be the funniest in a relationship; in fact, it would be really nice to have someone entertain me.’
In the main, Miranda has conquered her appearance complex and has put her above-average height to good use, entertaining the nation with her fabulous pratfalls. But before she got there, she had to conquer Edinburgh and the radio. It was quite a struggle for the Queen of Comedy.
She went from contented schoolgirl, showing off in class for laughs, to disaffected twenty-something, desperate for affirmation and a career in comedy. She is a strong woman and a role model for many young women, but who are the sisters of comedy that came before her? And is she alone in her suffering?
‘Men find funny women threatening. They ask me, “Are you going to be funny in bed?”’
– Joan Rivers
All set to throw off her worries and find her fortune at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, what did Miranda Hart, as a woman, face when she put herself out there in the male-dominated world of comedy? Many female comedians insist there is no difference, but it is a discussion which dates back many years. Comedian Kerry Godliman told a Guardian interviewer that, when she was at the Comedy Store, she was looking at press cuttings they have on the wall at the back. ‘There’s bits and pieces there from 1984 about women in comedy and you think, Nothing’s changed! We’re still having that conversation!’
As we know, one of the main reasons Miranda doesn’t look at reviews is because they mention her looks, whereas she doesn’t think it is the case for men in the business: ‘A fat male comedian isn’t a “fat comedian”, he’s just a comedian. It’s really frustrating… People are obviously going to mention what I look like, but it’s a shame it has to be a key part. I can’t just be Miranda.’
While men do get this same journalistic treatment about how they look – one recent article described Tim Minchin as ‘kohl-eyed, poodle-haired, ivory-tickling’ – with women, it does seem to get more personal about looks. This has even affected how some comics choose to represent themselves on stage.
Isy Suttie says that she never wears a skirt or tight top when she’s performing stand-up: ‘I never want them to be thinking about me as a sexual object of any kind.’
Some might argue, though, that doing so only perpetuates the myth that good-looking women can’t be funny, and funny women are only so to make up for their lack of looks.
You might assume this attitude is dead and even consider it laughable, but, only in 2007, Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece for Vanity Fair called ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny’. Although he offers the disclaimer ‘This is not to say that women are humourless, or cannot make great wits and comedians’, he does go on to bring up the archaic theory that women feel no need to be funny as ‘They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift’. The thrust of his article is best summed up by the following extract: ‘My argument doesn’t say that there are no decent women comedians… Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three.’
Ouch! Sexism in comedy is gradually going out of fashion but, as with any sociological change, it takes its time. The term ‘comedienne’ is being phased out, and it will only appear in this book inside quotation marks.
Giles Coren, restaurant critic and Gary-from-Miranda lookalike, wrote that he was looking to buy a stand-up comedy DVD as a Christmas gift: ‘So, what to choose? Looking at the