All hail Miriam the outrageous octogenarian
The latest Imagine… film, Miriam Margolyes: Up for Grabs (BBC One), was a quietly revealing portrait. That doesn’t seem very apposite for an actress who delights in being provocative, and who has hit her stride late in life as an outrageous chat show guest. Richard E Grant, a former co-star, described her thusly: “I think her volume button fell off at birth. She is like a five-year-old masquerading as an octogenarian.” The pair appeared together in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of The Age of Innocence in 1993; Grant recalled that, when Margolyes went into hair and make-up, she decided to enliven proceedings by lifting up her T-shirt and flashing her breasts. Margolyes explained that she had just wanted to cheer everyone up at the end of a long day.
However, what became clear from the programme was that this behaviour is a cover-up. Margolyes spoke of the pain and humiliation that she felt as a teenager at school dances, a “fat and ungainly” wallflower who was never asked to dance. Her subsequent career in the spotlight, we learned, was about “seeking attention and approbation and love”.
That is not confined to the screen, or appearances on The Graham Norton Show. The film began, amusingly, with presenter Alan Yentob lurking behind a hedge while watching Margolyes sitting on the steps outside her front door and engaging passers-by in conversation. Apparently, she does this often.
Her career is impressive – this profile barely scratched the surface but mentioned Blackadder, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, Call the Midwife, Harry Potter, various Dickens adaptations and her Bafta for The Age of Innocence. Most people are aware that she was the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny in the famous 1980s adverts, but did you also know that she voiced the border collie in Babe, a PG Tips chimp and a sultry model in the 1970s ads for Manikin Cigars? The director of the latter, upon hearing Margolyes, marvelled: “I can’t believe that voice has come from that body.”
Margolyes is pathologically honest, admitting here that she once struck her paralysed mother when the stress of being her carer became too much. She was frank about everything else, too, from her career insecurities to sex, and admitted to feeling both bemused and delighted by her latest stage of fame as she enters her ninth decade. Some people find her too coarse and too much. But in a world where so many celebrities are Pr-trained bores, let us be thankful for one who makes an effort to keep us entertained.
Have you ever wanted to carry out a burglary in an exclusive suburb of Los Angeles County? Channel 4 can help! “You wanna break into a celebrity home? Here’s how you do it,” explained Nick Prugo in Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist, an unnecessary and superficial documentary dredging up an old crime spree that targeted Paris Hilton, among others. There followed a step-by-step guide, although it’s only handy if your victims – like Hilton – have no security and are stupid enough to leave their doors unlocked.
The story of this gang has already been made into an unremarkable 2013 film, The Bling Ring, starring Emma Watson. The friends turned criminal because they had seen the likes of Hilton enjoy the trappings of fame without having any discernible talent, and decided they wanted the same. They started by stealing handbags from cars (also with the doors left open – does no one in California lock anything?) and progressed to houses, checking social media to find out when the celebrities would be out.
It’s a mystery why the story (the crimes took place in 2008-09) is being revived now. The film was mainly interviews with two of the gang’s vapid members, Prugo and Alexis Neiers. Prugo smirked from beneath a succession of stupid hats. Neiers pouted between make-up touch-ups.
In a sense, one can’t blame them for behaving like stars, because the programme-makers treat them as such and have made a failed attempt to give the show a layer of ironic cool. They appeared in cheesy reconstructions and read truly awful scripted voiceovers. “Now, over to me,” Neiers said before we switched to her part of the story; when a location shot was overlaid on screen with “San Fernando Valley” in large type, Prugo sneered: “Hold on, you’re not going to use big text, are you? That’s so cliche.” Ugh.
Prugo bragged about the great time he’d had raiding Hilton’s home, and of the quality of cocaine he took (“I mean, like, Scarface coke”). There are another two episodes of this. Perhaps it will turn into a tale of contrition, shame and redemption. Mmm… I doubt it.
Imagine... Miriam Margolyes ★★★★ Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist ★