At the start of her second autobiographical book, Oh Miriam! – less a straightforward memoir than a collection of anecdotes and pearls of wisdom on living a good life – the Bafta-winning actor Miriam Margolyes merrily reflects on where she is in her career. At 82, she notes, “I have never been older or busier”, adding that her appearances on The Graham Norton Show and her messages on the personalised video site Cameo, many of which have gone viral on TikTok, have “made me more famous than I have any right to be. Now, every day, people send me gifts, letters, emails, ask me to their parties … tell me I’ve made a difference to their lives … Complete strangers share their sex secrets with me; it’s touching and humbling and I’m extremely grateful, though seldom aroused.”
With chapter titles that include The Joy of Bottoms and Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down, Oh Miriam! is a mix of eye-watering candour and engaging self-reflection as it hopscotches between stories of her Oxford childhood, tales from her acting career – she loathed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Leonard Rossiter, and developed a schoolgirl crush on Vanessa Redgrave – and her spluttering fury at the Tory party (a sentiment that last year saw her escorted off Radio 4’s Today programme after she let fly a sweary invective about the incoming chancellor Jeremy Hunt). While on the page Margolyes’s unfiltered provocations have the capacity to wear thin, in audio, administered with her staccato RP delivery, they take flight. Her tone is that of a performer thoroughly enjoying her late-blooming celebrity: “I say to you, as I will say to God – should He turn out to exist: ‘Thanks so much for waiting. HERE I AM!’”
• Oh Miriam! is available via John Murray, 10hr 43min
Further listening
Politics on the Edge
Rory Stewart, Penguin Audio, 16hr 20min
The former MP and diplomat reflects on his unlikely journey from foreign minister to prime ministerial candidate to chart-topping podcaster.
Holly
Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton, 15hr 24min
Succession’s Justine Lupe reads the latest instalment of King’s Holly Gibney series in which the titular private detective investigates the disappearance of the young girl from a midwestern town.
