Profile of Meera Syal on Famous Like Me

Meera Syal MBE (born June 27, 1961 in Essington, near Wolverhampton) is a British Indian comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actress. She was born in Wolverhampton and grew up in Essington, a mining village a few miles to the north. Her Punjabi-born parents came to Britain from New Delhi.

Career

Syal won the National Student Drama Award for writing One of Us while studying English and Drama at Manchester University. She spent seven years working for the Royal Court Theatre and won the Betty Trask Award for her first book Anita and Me and the Media Personality of the Year award at the Commission for Racial Equality's annual Race in the Media awards in 2000. She was awarded the MBE in 1997. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the fifty funniest acts in British comedy.

As a journalist she writes occasionally for The Guardian. She scored a number one record with Gareth Gates and her co-stars from The Kumars at No. 42 with "Spirit In The Sky", the Comic Relief single.

In June 2003 she appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme with a selection of music by Nitin Sawhney, Madan Bala Sindhu, Joni Mitchell, Pizzicato Five, Sukhwinder Singh, Louis Armstrong and others. The luxury which she chose to ease her life as a castaway was a piano!

Personal life

In 2005, Syal married her frequent collaborator, Sanjeev Bhaskar, who plays her grandson in The Kumars at No. 42. She has a daughter, Chameli, from her first marriage to journalist Shekhar Bhatia. which ended in 2002. In 2004, she took part in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? which looked into the family histories of various well-known personalities. Syal was surprised to discover both her grandfathers had actively campaigned against British rule in India: one was a communist journalist and the other named a Punjab Martyr in the Golden Temple having been imprisoned and tortured after protesting.

In August 2005 she announced she was expecting a child with Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Books

• Anita and Me (1996)
• Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee -

Films

Appearances

• Anita and Me
• A Little Princess (1986)
• A Nice Arrangement
• Beautiful Thing (1996)
• Crossing The Floor (1996)
• Flight (1995)
• Girls' Night (1997)
• Gummed Labels (1992)
• It's Not Unusual
• No Crying He Makes (1998)
• Sammie and Rosie Get Laid (1987)

Writing credits

• Anita and Me
• Bhaji on the Beach

Plays

• One of Us
• Bombay Dreams

Radio

• Goodness Gracious Me
• Legal Affairs (1996)
• The World As We Know It (1999)

Television

Appearances

• Absolutely Fabulous
• All About Me
• Bad Girls
• Band of Gold (1995)
• The Book Quiz (1998)
• The Brain Drain (1993)
• Degrees of Error (1995)
• Drop The Dead Donkey (1996)
• Goodness Gracious Me
• Have I Got News For You
• Keeping Mum (1998)
• The Kumars at No. 42
• Late Lunch (1999)
• Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (2005)
• New Best Friend (1994)
• The Real McCoy
• Room 101 (1999)
• Ruby (1997)
• Sean's Show (1993)
• Sunday East (1986-1987)
• Who Do You Think You Are?

Writing credits

• Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (2005)
• My Sister Wife
• Tandoori Nights

Academic reception

The book Anita and Me has found its way onto school and university English syllabuses both in Britain and abroad. Scholarly literature includes:

• Rocío G. Davis, "India in Britain: Myths of Childhood in Meera Syal's Anita and Me", in Fernando Galván & Mercedes Bengoechea (ed.), On Writing (and) Race in Contemporary Britain, Universidad de Alcalá 1999, 139-46.
• Graeme Dunphy, "Meena's Mockingbird: From Harper Lee to Meera Syal", in Neophilologus 88, 2004, 637-59.

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