In 1963, the young Cambridge English student Miriam Margolyes went on , swore after getting a question wrong, and has been bragging about being the first person to say “f**k” on the BBC for 63 years.
Three things this tells us about Miriam Margolyes: she is superlatively intelligent, she has never displayed much respect for the mores of broadcast television and she absolutely loves attention. So why, now that she is 85 years old, do we feign shock every time she goes on air and behaves appallingly, when that is precisely the reason she keeps getting booked in the first place?
Yes, Margolyes has got herself into trouble again. And in other surprising news, water is wet. In an excruciating appearance on Friday’s to promote her new book Miriam’s Full English: A Grand Tour of All Our Best Bits, a study of the British identity “examining fairness, free speech, and what unites Scotland, Wales, England, and Ireland”, Margolyes got onto the subject of presenter Andi Peters’s skin.
“What are you?” “Have you got a black daddy and a white mummy?” “I think you’re what I would call ‘high yaller’… That’s what they call it in America… When someone isn’t deeply black.” A perplexed-looking Peters replied: “I didn’t know there were shades,” tapping his earpiece, warning that the producers were getting nervous. “Don’t be nervous,” Margolyes said calmly. “We welcome everybody, and that’s what I want to write about in my book.”
Asking where a British person of colour comes from, using derogatory, colourist terms (“high yaller” or “high yellow” is a racist expression whose origins are in the 19th-century American South) and scrutinising a person’s degree of “blackness” – it was bad. It was deeply uncomfortable to see such dated language and inappropriate questioning on daytime television.
Or would be, if it had come from anyone other than Margolyes, who has never been encouraged to move with the times or observe other people’s sensitivities and – probably because she holds progressive views and is reliably “good value” – has been getting away with doing and saying whatever she wants for decades. Surely, she knows how insulting and inappropriate a term like “high yaller” is – the issue is, she’s never adequately reprimanded for anything she says, only egged on to outrage-bait and provoke.
She is blunt, she is explicit, she quizzes people about their protected characteristics and talks about sex and is rude to people’s faces and called Leonardo Di Caprio “smelly” and eats raw onions for breakfast and farts all the time and said, live on the programme, as she took a seat vacated by then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt: “I really wanted to say [to him], ‘f**k you, bastard!’ but you can’t say that…” Justin Webb was forced to apologise to Radio 4 listeners and Margolyes later expressed deep shame about her breach of etiquette, but come on. She knew she was on-air and producers knew the risks of getting her on, live, too. She’s an actor – she’s got a Bafta and an OBE – and she’s playing the role she was cast.
Don’t mistake that for an excuse. Margolyes is an accomplished, well-travelled and well-educated woman who is more than capable of grasping what is and is not appropriate, and it is her responsibility to learn and adjust her speech and behaviour accordingly. She is also more than capable of being held accountable when she doesn’t. But given her past record of saying something a bit dodgy during an interview, it is disingenuous to express shock when she does exactly that, even when it is more offensive than usual (this latest exchange has been removed from ITVX).
Like a lot of other people, I have goodwill towards Margolyes. She’s obviously very funny; she’s got personality and opinions unlike far too many bland or cowardly celebrities these days and I respect a lot of her politics.
I’m not sure, however, of how much respect broadcasters have for her. By encouraging her to “speak her mind”, getting headlines or viral video clips out of it, pretending to be disappointed by her imprudence and then writing it off as if she’s some, for want of a better phrase, “mad old lady” who doesn’t understand what she’s doing or saying (never more blatant than during her participation in Channel 4’s ), they infantilise her and undermine their own integrity. It lets everyone down: setting an implicit precedent that older generations need not bother learning why times and sensitivities evolve and permitting younger generations not to take older people too seriously.
A couple of years ago, I watched David Baddiel’s Channel 4 documentary, Jews Don’t Count. In the film, he and Margolyes debated whether British Jews should be expected to discuss Israel – he believes that to demand it of them is antisemitism; she disagrees. It was a relief to see Margolyes engaging with nuance and depth of thought on a serious topic with someone who is genuinely interested in her opinions, rather than in trotting her out for a quick, cheap soundbite.
It was a reminder that, in the right arena, she can be articulate, open-minded and considered. For far too long, she’s made it her shtick to be anything but. It’s about time broadcasters stopped indulging her – and time she grew up.