What has China done to deserve the shocking Miriam Margolyes?
The gloomy French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre liked to say: ‘ hell is other people,’ which explains why he never went on cruises or coach tours.
At least he never had to share a hotel room with the extraordinary Miriam Margolyes, a woman for whom words such as odd, eccentric or bonkers are wholly inadequate.
With her foul mouth and fouler habits, coruscatingly rude one moment and sentimentally sweet the next, actress Miriam is as appalling as she is charming.
She was the star of The Real Marigold On Tour (BBC1), which took four ageing celebs from an earlier documentary, about the perils of retiring to live abroad, and sent them to Sichuan in China.
We learned very little about the Chinese: there are lots of them, they have pandas, that’s about it. Fellow travellers Wayne Sleep, Rosemary Shrager and Bobby George — a dancer, a chef and a darts player — barely got a look in.
The producers wisely decided to let Miriam take over, which was sensible since she was going to do just that, whether anyone objected or not.
Arriving at the guest house in the city of Chengdu, she vetoed Rosemary’s choice of room, insisted on claiming all available beds for herself, then settled for commandeering a whole storey.
Ignoring the gaping faces of the others, she flopped onto a mattress and began snoring loudly.
Miriam treated everyone with utter disregard for their feelings and was quite sure they loved her in return. Introducing her companions to their bewildered Chinese landlady, she boomed: ‘We know each other very well. We don’t sleep together, there’s no sex — we’re just friends.’
The camera couldn’t get enough of her and her outrageous behaviour. On a fake beach, in the sterilised splendour of a five- star shopping mall, she shrieked at a frightened attendant: ‘I hate this place!’ She declared local food was ‘too bloody authentic’ and, surveying a park thronged with cheerful Chinese, warned darkly: ‘They’re gonna rule the world, I’m telling you.’
But then she visited a wildlife sanctuary and wept buckets at the sight of a giant panda. As she fed it a carrot, she looked as happy as a toddler at the zoo.
Whether China might make a good bolthole for British pensioners was never clear. The mountain retreat did look lovely and you can pick up a nice wok for under a tenner. But it might take Sichuan years to recover from Miriam.
Celebrities were mercifully absent from the documentary Concorde: Designing The Dream (C5), a history of the world’s most beautiful airliner. It was low-budget but straightforward — and that was all we needed.
Too often shows like this are ruined by their presenters, who pretend to be ‘fulfilling a childhood dream’ or ‘ racing against a deadline’.
Concorde doesn’t need gimmicks. The plane is the star. every statistic about this engineering marvel was a headspinner. When it flew at twice the speed of sound, it was ten per cent faster than a bullet . . . just like Superman. even an RAF Tornado couldn’t catch it.
Best of all, we met the genius who invented much of the engine, Dr Ted Talbot, now in his 90s. he still relishes the fact he beat our U.S. rivals, whose designs just wouldn’t fly.
‘If you throw enough money at anything,’ he remarked, ‘you can usually sort it out, unless you’re American . . . and then you don’t get a supersonic aircraft!’
his eyes sparkled with mischief as he said it.
MERRY VICAR OF THE WEEK: The Rev Kate Bottley confessed on Hairy Bikers Home For Christmas (BBC1) that she wears pyjamas under her Anglican Church robes on Christmas morning . . . and puts champagne in the goblet for Mass. Hallelujah!