It is not difficult to prompt Miriam Margolyes to talk about those people she doesn't like. And there are a few of them. Over the years she has badmouthed fellow actors, comedians and musicians; everyone from Warren Beatty to Mick Jagger in fact. Even in our short time together over Zoom she will have a go at a number of politicians, including Nigel Farage ("an a***hole)." and Donald Trump ("an evil b******").

Indeed, ask her who she hasn’t enjoyed working with over the years and she’ll happily tell you. “The people that I didn’t like were Glenda Jackson, Terry Scott and John Cleese. They haven’t changed.”

But, she immediately adds, “nearly everybody else was gorgeous.”

Still, it’s that outspokenness - along with her willingness to talk openly about sex (including her own sexuality; she came out in 1966) and money - that have made her such a regular on TV talk shows in recent years and, as a result, put in the running for 'national treasure' status.

The invigorating fact is that Margolyes, at 83, is not going gentle into that good night.

Margolyes has, she admits, become much more political as she has grown older. That said, she is not in her nature angry or disaffected. She feels rage, yes, but, really, any conversation with her leaves you with a sense of joy. Angry Miriam always gives way eventually to happy Miriam.

Indeed, one of the pleasures of talking to her is to hear how much she seems to be enjoying her own life these days.

Much of that comes down to her relatively recent elevation to celebrity status prompted by her talk show appearances. She seems really rather thrilled by it.

Miriam Margolyes has badmouthed fellow actors, comedians and musicians over the yearsMiriam Margolyes has badmouthed fellow actors, comedians and musicians over the years (Image: PAUL_STUART)

“Yes, of course, it’s lovely. Every now and again if I am on Facebook and I read something that somebody’s written about me and it says, ‘Oh, I think she’s vile. What a hideous woman, so ugly, she shouldn’t be on our screens.’ Well, I don’t like that. That’s just rude and unhelpful.

“But for the most part people are just lovely and the thing people most often say is, ‘Oh, I just love you.’ I’m going into the airport, I’m going into a petrol station on the motorway and someone says, ‘Hello Miriam, I love you.’ And that’s gorgeous, of course it is. I’m deeply flattered by that.”

It’s late afternoon when we talk. Even during the introductory blandishments it’s clear she is an open book. A polite “how are you?” enquiry and she’s off.

“I’m not as well as I’d like to be, but I’m alive. I’ve just recovered from asthmatic bronchitis which was bloody awful.”

Sorry to hear that.

“You’re well?” she asks.

“I’m fine, Miriam.”

“No, but you're Welsh.”

Umm, no. I’m Northern Irish, actually.

“Oh, like Ken Branagh. And who else?” She racks her brain, before changing direction.

“I love Northern Ireland.”

It’s a beautiful place, I say.

“Ah ‘play-ace.’ I’m hearing it.”

She then launches into a pitch perfect Northern Irish accent. The first of a few accents I’ll hear this afternoon.

We’re talking because she is coming to the Fringe this year. Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits, her show at the EICC, is a celebration of her favourite author. The goal is to “open people’s eyes to the glories of Charles Dickens,” she says.

Read more

“I think I am not uniquely gifted in being able to do that, but there aren’t an awful lot of people who have such an affinity with Charles Dickens that they can just do it. Certainly Simon Callow is one of those people. But Simon doesn’t own Charles Dickens and neither do I.”

It is Margolyes’s first time at the Fringe for 12 years.

“I know. Aren't I brave?”

You’ve said in the past that the Fringe makes you brave.

“It does. It is a group of people who say, ‘Let’s have a go. Why not? Let’s do it.’ And I think that's what we should be doing as artists. We should risk. And it’s a place where risk is on display hundreds and hundreds of times a day.

“And I am scared. Of course I am. But, you know, I’ve got to do it.

“I just thought if I don’t do it this year …”

She pauses, jumps tracks. “And I’m quite crippled. I can’t walk very well, I can't climb, I can’t stand for long because I’ve got spinal stenosis. But for some reason I can still talk, so I’m doing it. I’m going to be brave and be on a stage because I still get joy from performing. There’s no question about that.”

Margolyes has a long history with the Fringe, stretching back decades, she points out.

“Well, I think mummy and daddy took me in, oh gosh, it would have been the fifties. And I saw Gwen Ffrangcon Davies play A Long Day’s Journey into Night and it’s a performance that I’ve never forgotten.

“After that, I actually came with the Footlights from Cambridge. We put plays on and did revues and that was fun. And then I actually joined the Traverse as a company member and did a revue. Gosh, it’s always been there, part of my life. And then I did Dickens’ Women with Sonia Fraser in 2012.

“And before that I’d won several Fringe Firsts and you just think, ‘How wonderful, how thrilling. I think of it as a kind of holiday, a magical time really.”

Her connection with Scotland predates the Fringe though. Margolyes grew up in Oxford the only daughter of a GP father and a property developer mother. Her dad Joe was Scottish so Scotland was always part of her story.

Miriam Margoyles Miriam Margolyes (Image: PAUL_STUART)

“Yes. We used to go up and stay in Glasgow with Auntie Eve and Uncle Harold and grandma and then they would go through to Edinburgh and see a few shows. I remember we all went to see the La MaMa company. Beth Porter, who died last year, was naked from the waist up, I think. And I remember looking at my father and I’d never seen an expression like that on his face before. Because it was a kind of mixture of delight and horror. That’s what the Edinburgh Festival is like actually. It’s delightful and horrifying at the same time.”

Reading about her parents, I tell her I rather had her dad pegged as a little dour, even a bit Presbyterian, in fact. But given that he was Jewish I fear I may be projecting somewhat.

“He was a Jewish Presbyterian,” Margolyes concedes.

She wants to talk about Scotland rather than her dad, though.  “All my life I’ve heard that Scottish accent, that sound, wonderfully familiar and I love it.

“As soon as I hear a Scots accent I feel totally at home.”

This is said in a perfect Scots accent, of course.

I've been thinking about that “mummy and daddy” from a few paragraphs ago. Not the vocabulary you might expect from an 83-year-old. But then there has always been something of the naughty child about Margolyes, in both her performances and in her public appearances; that love of shocking people, of saying the unsayable. “Like a little girl showing her knickers,” her friend Alan Cumming once said of her.

I wonder, is adulthood a dirty word to her?

“No, I don’t think being an adult is a dirty word at all. But I think that my own nature has retained rather more of the mischievousness of childhood than most people seem to need to retain and I quite like that in myself.

Read more

“I’m not sorry that I’m still a little bit childlike. Or maybe childish, I don’t know. I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s a rare quality and I’ve never been so conscious of being popular, or being well known. I don’t like using the word celebrity, but I have more celebrity now than I’ve ever had.

“But I haven’t let it change my irreverence. I think it's important to have a larky spirit within.”

Well, does that imply that, for her, acting is a form of attention-seeking?

“Oh, without question. In my case I am a show-off, no question about that. But it has to be tempered otherwise it’s very tiresome. And I hope that my natural performative gifts are under control so that it’s not just attention-seeking, that there is a wanting to open a character to the audience.”

Is the Miriam Margolyes she presents to the world a “character”?

“I think if I become too self-conscious it would not be good, but I think I’m still capable of just being myself. I don’t think that I should ever think of myself as a character. I don’t think that’s helpful. I’m a person. I’m an actress and I’m a person and I’m an entertainer and if I can put all those into one and have some control over it so it isn’t just naked exhibitionism then it has a use, then I become an artist.”

Indeed. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Margolyes had a long history on stage and screen before she ever turned up on Graham Norton’s sofa. Her IMDb listing dates back to 1965 (she was in Crossroads in 1967), and she has turned up in everything from Blackadder to Call the Midwife. She has also worked with Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), Barbra Streisand (Yentl) and Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet).

In all, Margolyes has nearly 200 credits to her name. These days there is a lot of voiceover work for children’s telly. She is still busy, even as she moves beyond the foothills of her ninth decade. Hence her Fringe show.

The question is, why? Why, given all her health issues, doesn’t she take a step back?

“Because I love it. I get the kind of charge and a sense of being alive that you don’t get from anything else. And I haven’t lost that ability to sit and talk to an audience and they want to be there with me. It’s a covenant, like God made with the Jews.”

Let’s play a word association game, I say. If I say appetite …?

“Food,” she answers immediately.

That’s the main appetite? Has it always been?

“Probably. Probably. I think it has. It’s certainly not drink. I’m not interested in drink. I love food, yes. I think it has been. That’s why I am so fat.”

She talks a lot about her weight. Does it really matter?

“It matters for health. My mother had a stroke when she was 69 and she was seven years paralysed and unable to speak. I don’t want that to happen to me. Especially these days when treatments and the National Health and the way the nation looks after the ill of our nation. It’s very problematic, so I do worry about health. And I try to take care. I don’t eat rubbish. I probably eat too much, but I don’t eat rubbish.”

OK, if I say the word faith?

“I don’t have faith and I’m afraid of death, I suppose. Death and double incontinence.”

Honesty?

“Essential.”

When was the last time you told a white lie, Miriam?

“If I was asked if I enjoyed a meal which perhaps I didn’t enjoy. I would never criticise anybody’s cooking. I could criticise somebody’s acting but not the cooking.”

You would criticise someone’s acting to their face?

“Yes, in a gentle way. You should never say anything hurtful and destructive right after a performance. That is not helpful but if people really want to talk about something then you can talk about it. But not immediately after a show.”

Another word. Love?

“Well, I mean, I would just say my partner Heather.”

Money?

She laughs. “Love.”

It’s that important to you?

“Yeah, because when you’re old you need somebody to look after you to care for you and that’s expensive. So you need to have enough money to pay people properly to take care of you. That’s why I keep working. And why I do lots of Cameos and things like that.”

Miriam Margoyles is 83Miriam Margolyes is 83 (Image: PAUL_STUART)

For those that don’t know, Cameos are personalised videos that celebrities record on request for people who are maybe getting married, have a significant birthday coming up, or exams to sit.

It’s a very welcome new development, Margolyes says. “Today, for example, I have 42 Cameos to do. And when I’ve finished them I will have made about £5000. That’s pretty incredible.

“I have had people wanting me to propose to their loved ones. I’ve had people ask me to cheer up people who have terminal diagnoses of cancer. These are hard things to do when you don’t know the people.

“A lot of people write for advice or just for help living. They have lost confidence. And I think it’s very nice to be able to say to people, ‘Now look, you’ve got to stop worrying about yourself. You can still read. You can still see. You can walk. I can’t do that so well. So think about things like that.’ “And, also, I try to get people to volunteer more; that they should stop thinking about themselves and think about people who lie in hospital and have no one to visit them or in care homes and are just so lonely. There’s an awful lot of loneliness around. That’s sad.”

I’m amazed no one has proposed a Miriam Margolyes problem page yet, I say.

“Well, they keep on at me to do it, to be the reincarnation of Claire Rayner, who was a friend of mine. But she was the best. I couldn’t match her. I just do amateur stuff.”

Margolyes may have retained her childhood sense of mischief but she has inevitably been forced to be an adult over the years. Following a stroke her mother was paralysed for seven years before her death in 1974. Margolyes looked after her dad in his later years when he was suffering from dementia. He died in 1995, aged 95. So, now in her eighties does she believe that life is essentially tragic or absurd?

“I think it’s probably a mixture of both. But at the moment it’s more tragic. In general. When I think about how public life has been defiled by the people who have run the country for the last 14 years, the general unkindness that seems to be prevalent everywhere, the way that asylum seekers are scorned and made little of, the fact that people are prepared to throw somebody - just because they are a different colour or [speak] a different language - into a prison hulk as they used to do in the days of Dickens, to me that is shameful. We have not become - in the best sense of the word - a more Christian nation.”

There is angry Miriam again.

What are you proudest of, I ask her?

“My work with Dickens, which is continuing.”

What do you look back on with regret?

“I wish I hadn’t hit my mother when she was paralysed and I lost my temper. It was tough and she forgave me, which was the toughest thing of all.”

Finally, what is the state of life for Miriam Margolyes in 2024?

“Unbelievably lucky. I have never had such good fortune in my life as I have it now. It is great. It is very unexpected and I am deeply grateful for it. I never thought I would write books and be a bestseller and have people recognise me in the street and want to talk to me. I’m deeply blessed.”

Miriam Margolyes is in a good place. And not even Nigel Farage and Donald Trump can spoil that.

Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits is on at the Pleasance EICC, August 7-15 at 4pm