Fame proved 'bit too much' for Miranda
Miranda Hart has described her struggle with fame, saying she found it “all a bit too much” but is now “much happier and more confident”.
The comic and actress, who will be seen in the upcoming Call The Midwife special on Christmas Day, told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that things came to a head while filming a documentary about her “hero” Eric Morecambe.
She told host Kirsty Young: “I think I got to a point a year ago possibly when it was all a bit too much.
“It was quite lonely and I was struggling and that’s when I did the documentary about Eric Morecambe and I thought is it worth it because you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for an audience and are they out there laughing and is comedy a noble, worthwhile career?
“So that was the key question I would have asked Eric and I hoped he would say ’Yes, it was worth it’.
“Then you find ways to manage your life that mean you’re not in that place, which I’m not now, and I’m much happier and more confident and celebratory about what I’ve achieved, and feel it’s fine as a woman to be confident and pat myself on the back.”
Hart chose the Morecambe and Wise theme Bring Me Sunshine as one of her choices for the Desert Island along with a Mozart piano concerto her father listened to while serving in the Falklands War.
She said her father David Hart Dyke, who was commanding officer on the warship HMS Coventry when it was sunk by an Argentine airforce attack killing 19 crew, had been “lucky to survive”.
She said: “He didn’t speak at all when he got back but he put everything on tape and then when I was in my early 20s he allowed me to type them all up which was amazing and quite emotional listening to his voice going through it so close to the event.
“He was absolutely convinced he was going to die and then he just heard a voice saying ’Go to your left’ and he thought rationally that makes no sense because the ladder isn’t to the left but the ship went down in 15 minutes so it was such a strange angle at that point that it did make sense to go to left and he got out and he was so lucky to get out alive.”
