This Much Is True

It started in 2005 with Dickens in America: ten episodes for BBC Two directed by Richard Shaw. Both Dickens and I had unexpectedly gone to America in the middle of our careers and following in his footsteps, I felt I understood the man and the writer better than before. And it seemed we shared an opinion about America. He had written: ‘this is not the Republic of my imagination’. His delight in the new democracy had soured. But I had to wait for eleven years before my next foray into dockos. In 2016, I did a little morning programme about the NHS in Scotland and got a smashing review in the Guardian (the headline ran: MORE MIRIAM MARGOLYES PLEASE)^[23] and I took part in the first The Real Marigold Hotel documentary. The BBC sent me, singer Patti Boulaye, former newsreader Jan Leeming, chef Rosemary Shrager, dancer Wayne Sleep, former Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy, comedian Roy Walker, and former World Darts champion, Bobby George, to live for three weeks in a luxurious private mansion in Jaipur, to see if we could contemplate retiring there.

E. M. Forster wrote that when you go to India you come face to face with yourself and I hoped that would happen, but I found that the heat proved too difficult for me. I wasn’t keen on the lack of flush toilets beyond the confines of our hotel. The caste system and the disparity of wealth was equally hard to stomach. In one day we visited both the slums and the palace of the royal family in Jaipur. The striking thing was that the standard of politeness and grace was exactly the same in both milieux. The people of India — their courtesy, energy and intelligence — are remarkable; I’d love to go back, despite my disgust at their prime minister, Modi. He’s one of the evil men of the world.

When we won the Grierson Award for Best Constructed Documentary Series, it opened the door for more series, and I have travelled to many more foreign places since, meeting geishas and tango dancers and pandas, making many new friends along the way. The documentary-makers threw me together with an unusual selection of vintage celebrities, mostly delightful.^[24] And I discovered I loved making documentaries. You don’t have to learn lines, you have a licence to be inquisitive and to travel the world — with somebody else paying.

And in learning more about the world, I’ve learnt much more about myself, which has led to documentaries about fatness and death, subjects that most people avoid talking or even thinking about. But for me, no subject is off limits. I believe strongly that being able to talk about everything is the only way to face our demons and it is why I decided to confront the subject of dying. I went to see my parents’ grave in Wolvercote Cemetery. Jews are pragmatists. We don’t bring flowers when we visit a grave; we bring a stone. Flowers die like people, stones don’t. As soon as I arrived at Mummy and Daddy’s burial place, however, I realised that, stupidly, I’d only brought one stone; so with real chutzpah, I had to nick one from a nearby grave. I hope Daddy doesn’t mind that it was just a little stone, but it was like that in life too — Mummy was big and he was little. I think they would have approved of Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure, which I made precisely because I’m terrified of death. I hoped it would help me to be less frightened. And to some extent, it did.

A good death, to me, means that you die in bed, hopefully without pain, surrounded by people you love, and you can smile at them, close your eyes and go. That’s what I long for. But, as the last eighteen months have shown, you can’t count on anything. So many people have died in isolation wards, without being able to see their loved ones. The pandemic has even removed the therapeutic side of funerals. Funerals don’t work on Zoom: the whole point is the living, breathing people. I want to see all my friends and fellow mourners and be able to talk and sing and cry together, sharing our memories of the person we are there to honour. And experience the black humour, finding joy in those shared memories of the dead, that’s what I love most about funerals. I think laughter is better than God.

I think of myself as in the autumn of my life — it’s my favourite season. I like the idea of ripening, maturing into my prime. I hope I have learned on my journey, but I still want to keep improving. I have always resisted any kind of meditation, self-contemplation or spirituality as an indulgence. But now I’ve reached eighty, however, this might be an appropriate moment to look into my soul rather more critically — and learn. The goal of life is to end up wiser. But more importantly, I think it should be to end up kinder, both to yourself and everyone around you (unless, of course, their surname happens to be Johnson).

Dirty Talk