I SPEAK to Miriam Margolyes over Zoom the morning after England’s defeat to Spain in the final of the Euros.
She is still in her nighty while she gives me her verdict of the team’s performance.
“The Spaniards were better,” she said.
“I’d have been happy if England won because it sends such shockwaves through the nation but I didn’t think they played as well as they had in the previous match.
“The passing was poor, the attack was poor. It just wasn’t a very good game of football.”
In recent years, Margolyes has become just as well-known for her refreshingly unfiltered appearances on chat shows as she is for her storied career on screen and stage.
It’s for this reason that she is beloved by journalists and audiences alike.
If you ask Margolyes a question, no matter how left-field, she will answer with the full weight of her honesty and humour.
We are joined by her cousin Annabel Leventon – herself a successful actor with roles in classics such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show – who has taken on the mantle of director in Margolyes’s upcoming Fringe show: Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits.
Two great passions
MARGOLYES first performed her one-woman show Dickens’ Women at the Edinburgh Festival in 1989.
The show became a runaway success and eventually led to a world tour and an Olivier Award nomination.
This new show will see Margolyes reprise some of her favourite characters from Charles Dickens’s novels before opening the floor to the audience for questions.
“Just recently - because I’ve had a heart procedure and I’m getting old - I kept thinking I wanted to do something Dickensian again and I wanted to go back to the festival,” said the 82-year-old Margolyes.
“I knew that I had to have a director and Annabel is my cousin as well as my friend and admired colleague. So, I asked her and that was that!”.
The affection Margolyes and Leventon feel for one another becomes obvious throughout our interview.
So much so that at times, I feel as though I’m eavesdropping on a pair of gossiping sisters as they trade anecdotes.
“It’s going to be a bit of a mishmash,” said Leventon.
“Incorporating two of Miriam’s great passions: Dickens and performance.
“If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see one of Miriam’s book tour events, she has the audience crying with laughter within 30 seconds and they’re on their feet at the end wherever she goes.
“So, we’re trying to combine that with her absolute love and knowledge of Dickens. It could be a very strange mix but it will be all Miriam so I think it will work.”
Scottish independence and the harms of Brexit
WITH Margolyes set to return to Scotland for the festival in August, I asked how she felt about the ongoing movement for Scottish independence.
“Well, if I lived in Scotland I would be SNP,” she said.
“I really believed in Nicola Sturgeon. I thought she was an incredibly exciting, intelligent and charismatic figure and I was totally shocked and amazed by all of these allegations of financial incompetence and possibly worse.
“That really shocked me and upset me because she was a voice I believed in.”
She added that she was happy to see the Tories “annihilated” at the General Election but that due to her Scottish heritage, she would still welcome independence.
“If I lived in Scotland, I’d want to be separate and, of course, it would suit me personally if the UK were broken up because then I’d be able to go and live in Italy, which is what I really want to do.”
Margolyes owns a house farmhouse in Italy with her long-term partner. However, she remains unable to live there full-time due to the complications of Brexit.
“If Scotland were an independent nation and a member of the European Union, I could go live in the house I bought 50 years ago with my partner.
“But I can’t now because of Brexit so I’ll always keep an open mind [about independence].
“I love Scotland. Of course, it’s where my father came from and he was always alive to Scottish culture in the sense that he had a dram every shabbas and was moved by the bagpipes.
“So, Scotland is emotionally there for me.”
Jewish heritage and the horrors of Gaza
MARGOLYES, who is Jewish, has also been outspoken in her criticism of Israel’s ongoing assault in Gaza and said it spoke to her of the need for everyone to consider one another as human beings rather than mere identities.
“I’d like to see a ceasefire immediately and I’d like to see all the hostages released and the Israelis have a more sensible, humane attitude and stop treating Palestinians like dirt, which is what they do,” she said.
“My grandfather was the co-founder of the Pollokshields Synagogue which opened in 1927.
“I’ve still got family in Scotland who I love very much and I hope the Jewish life in Scotland continues.
“But I think we all have to settle down and not be too separate.
“I feel like that with homosexuals, too. Everybody’s talking about gay pride and that’s great, that’s good.
“But I don’t want people to just be in a gay world. I want them to be in the world.
“I personally feel the whole horror of Gaza is the work of Netanyahu and the people who support him so I would like to see a complete change of attitude towards Palestinians who are human beings exactly like us.”
The Edinburgh Festival and the city fathers
BOTH Margolyes and Leventon have long histories of performing at the Edinburgh Festival but questioned whether it was treated with the respect it deserved by local authorities.
Indeed, Margolyes was blunt about her preference for Glasgow.
“I don’t bother with Edinburgh as such,” she said, slipping into her Glaswegian accent.
“The so-called city fathers are shite because they don’t acknowledge the power of the festival.
“They get irritated because the streets are too full or there are traffic jams but what they don’t realise is that it’s an explosion of artistic achievement.
“People are really risking things in Edinburgh that they wouldn’t risk anywhere else.
“So, all I’ll say is that I thank Edinburgh for receiving us but just make sure you know what side your bread is buttered on!”
Leventon added that the festival had changed her life as a young actor but agreed that, sometimes, it felt as though it didn’t enjoy the full backing of the city.
“I have huge affection and respect for the Edinburgh Fringe,” added Leventon.
“But what Miriam says about the city fathers does ring true.
“My father was Jewish and we had Scottish relatives on his side who lived in Edinburgh.
“One of them, Henry Levitt, was terribly wealthy and incredibly mean. His wife used to have to beg him for a postage stamp.
“But his son-in-law, Meyer Oppenheim, offered to build an opera house for Edinburgh with his own money.
“And the city fathers turned him down because he was Jewish. At least, that’s what they say in my family.
“So, I agree with Miriam. If they were sensible back in the 1960’s, they might have a beautiful opera house, now.”
The power of honesty
MARGOLYES’S fierce honesty contrasts starkly with the carefully curated personas of so many celebrities.
Allowing audiences to ask absolutely any question at all, with no vetting, is the kind of situation most publicists would urge their clients to avoid.
Yet she appears to thrive on it.
“I’ve never been terrified of an audience,” she said, when I asked if allowing people such undiluted access is ever scary.
“I’ve been scared of failing as an actor but I’ve never been scared of an audience”.
It is then that Levenson asked if she can tell a story.
“It must have been about a week after October 7 [the day of the Hamas attack on Israel],” she said.
“And Miriam was about to do a book tour event for her second book.
“We were chatting and she said she was concerned because tempers were running so high that, perhaps, she should be careful about what she said about Gaza and Hamas in front of 2500 strangers.
“And I said, well, it’s a really difficult one but just maybe for the next few weeks don’t bring it up yourself.
“Because she doesn’t have security or anything and if people are really angry, we’ve all seen what can happen. Look at Trump.
“And Miriam said ‘Yes, I’ll think about that’.
“Anyway, the event comes and we get to the questions and she said: ‘I’ve just been told I shouldn’t speak about Gaza but I think I should!’
“She just opened the batting and told everyone what she thought. Of course, the audience were all behind her regardless of what they might have thought themselves.
“The power of that honesty stopped, I think, any chance of retaliation because she just brought it right out into the open so we could all see it.
“I so admire her for that.”
Margolyes smiled.
“Thank you, dear,” she said.
“Well, you know that’s what I’m like.”
Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits is running from August 7 – 15 at the Pleasance at EICC with tickets available on Edinburgh Fringe website.
