In 1963, the young Cambridge English student Miriam Margolyes went on University Challenge, 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 This Morning 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.”
