I know how to keep that pesky Putin at bay — send in Miriam!
Stand by for World War III. the Russkies may have intercontinental ballistic missiles and novichok nerve agents, but we’ve got Miriam Margolyes.
the 77yearold ball of fire was exploring St Petersburg in The Real Marigold On Tour (BBC1) with a bunch of chums, and causing havoc at every step.
She began the day by munching on a raw onion for breakfast, but her antics soon became a lot more eyewatering.
at the busstop, she demanded to know the name of an inoffensive babushka or elderly grandmother. ‘Olga,’ said the lady.
Mim burst into a rendition of Olga Pulloffski, the Beautiful Spy, a saucy thirties ballad, as she imitated a secret agent in mime. the Russians edged away from her nervously: whatever country you’re in, no one wants to sit nex t to the loonie on the bus.
With an extraordinary absence of selfawareness, Mim declared loudly that she hated conflict. Half an hour later, she was standing in a queue for train tickets when a middleaged chap in a fur hat accidentally stepped in front of her.
Fury erupted. Mim’s eyes boggled as wide as a Cheshire Cat on steroids. ‘Be Careful!’ she screamed, advancing on the terrified queue-jumper. ‘I will not be bullied.’
Her fellow travellers were scarcely shy, but they had a hard time getting a lookin with Mim around.
Stanley Johnson, 78, showed off his fitness at an outdoor gym, with exercises that included hurling disarmed hand grenades. La Margolyes wasn’t impressed: ‘I don’t know much about Stanley,’ she huffed, ‘ but his son Boris Johnson is a pillock.’
Stanley was more interested in Sheila Ferguson of the three degrees, teasing her that he thought she was a Bee Gee. Sheila loved the attention, though she was wary of Russian warmongering — hostility between her nation and the Reds went back a long way, she said, right back to the space race to put a dog in orbit.
that’s about the standard of history on this series. the incorrigible oldsters are curious about everyone they encounter, but we learned absolutely nothing about St Petersburg. It’s entirely an exercise in personality — you could drop Mim and co in Hartlepool and they’d wreak just as much chaos.
not that Hartlepool needs any more chaos, as Skint Britain: Friends Without Benefits ( C4) sadly showed. this one off documentary, a typical instance of Channel Four’s taste for ‘poverty porn’, claimed to be looking at the effect of the changeover from unemployment and invalidity allowances to the new Universal Credit.
Really, though, it was an excuse to eavesdrop on the lives of people who were struggling to survive.
You’d need a heart of stone not to feel for tracy, harrowed and toothless, with an adored teenage daughter and a husband sick with multiple sclerosis. tracy’s doctor suspected she had a malignant cancer, and her welfare payments were dwindling: she was on the point of giving up.
It was harder to have any glimmer of sympathy for nathan and his mates, who lived on what they could poach or steal till the monthly payout came through — when they were straight on the phone at midnight to order takeaways.
But the man whose plight really rang true for me was dave, 40, who spent hours on hold to the welfare office, tortured by the synthesised soundtrack of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
‘this music is psychological warfare,’ he groaned. ‘Henry VIII would dance round the coffee table to it.’ then he burst into tears. Who can blame him?